Home > Opinion > Letters

[Letters] We need tolerance in the multicultural society

Published: 12 Aug. 2010, 21:22

Current Korean society is turning into a multicultural society. This is because foreign workers, marriage immigrants and their children, and escapees from North Korea are increasing in number. However, the closed mind of being a single-nation country that segregates and excludes immigrants is still dominant in our society.

Historically, we were never a single-race nation. People who lived originally in the Korean Peninsula from the Stone Age, the southern farming people that shipped from the South and the northern people from the Northwest were united to make the Korean race.

Goguryeo and Silla were the two strongest countries in Korean history. The two countries have made active trades with a number of countries, such as China, the distant Western countries, Southeast Asian nations and Arabic merchants.

These two country’s people accept different foreign cultures and emigrants and made active trades with other countries with an open mind. The policy to tolerate immigrants brought development in business and economic prosperity to strengthen Goguryeo and Silla.

According to the news, UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination stated that Korean society should admit that it is a multinational country and throw away the mind of ‘single-race country,’ which is not fit to reality.

It probably was not that the UN only pointed out Korean nationalism, but that UN wanted to warn the Korean people’s segregation toward international marriage immigrants, citizens by naturalization, half-blooded people and foreign workers. If we can accept and melt people into Korean culture, Korea will not remain a small country in the East but grow into a big nation with its people all around the world. This will be the fuel to become a great country like Goguryeo, who ruled over the Eastern Asia, and Silla, who dominated the Eastern Asian ocean trade.

Cho Won-shik,

a Yangchung High School student