Multiculturalism in East Asia by Iwabuchi Koichi;Kim Hyun Mee;Hsia Hsiao-Chuan;Kim Hyun Mee;

Author:Iwabuchi, Koichi;Kim, Hyun Mee;Hsia, Hsiao-Chuan;Kim, Hyun Mee;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Unlimited Model

Section 3

Cultural Politics of Multicultural Subject Makings

Chapter 8

Can “Multicultural Soldiers” Serve the Nation? The Social Debate about the Military Service Management of Mixed-Race Draftees in South Korea

Hyun Mee Kim

Introduction

I, the undersigned, as a soldier of the Republic of Korea, solemnly swear loyalty to the state and the Korean people, and, observing all laws, promise to obey the commands of my superiors and to faithfully carry out the tasks given to me. (emphasis added)

New Soldier’s Oath

When new soldiers begin their military service, they sign this kind of oath. In 2012, the above phrase “the Korean people” was changed to the word “citizens.” Given the social trend represented by the rapid increase in the number of inductees who were the offspring of international marriages—the so-called multicultural families—this reflected public sentiment that the word “citizen,” which describes the composition of a nation, was more appropriate than the word “people” (minjok), which carries with it the concept of a Korean “race” (Yoon 2012).

Korea’s long-cherished cultural concept of the nation based on a homogenous Korean essence is being challenged by the rapid increase in migrant workers, marriage migrants, and Korean returnees who previously lived abroad due to migration, work, and study. These challenges create a pressing dilemma of how to preserve a homogenous ethnic society in the face of the increasingly hybrid cultures generated by a reliance on transnational reproductive migration to maintain and reproduce the Korean family. In response, the South Korean government coined the term “multicultural family” to refer to a marriage where one spouse was of non-Korean origin and funded and implemented a variety of programs to help migrant women take on the role of Korean wives and settle down in South Korea. The notion of such multicultural families as a vulnerable social group is deepening and the occurrence of expressions such as “the second generation multicultural family,” “multicultural children,” “multicultural adolescents,” and so on heard in day-to-day life mark such families with a social stigma. Young men beginning military service who are the children of multicultural families have been labeled “multicultural soldiers.”

The Korean military was for a very long time an exclusively male social institution founded on the principle of Korean ethnic purity. Against the backdrop of Korean racial purism, the homogeneity of the soldiers came to be seen as protecting the loyalty, solidarity, as well as the system of hierarchy between men, and so the military banned the inscription of men of “mixed race” who might upset the status quo. Men of mixed race were waived the responsibility of military service until 2009 when the regulation was abolished as anti-constitutional. Despite the fact that male citizens of mixed descent—half-Korean or mixed ethnicity—have been drafted since 2012 as a result of the revision of the Military Service Act, there are growing social concerns and debates about the direction that the management of such mixed-race service members should take. This chapter analyzes the nature of the social debates about conscription and management of these “multicultural soldiers” in the military in regard to issues of combat capabilities, allegiance, and loyalty.

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