Korean ethnic nationalism

Korean ethnic nationalism, or Korean racial nationalism,Kingdom of Great Joseon as living as a succeeding early Korean Empire period. Minjok has been translated as "nation", "people", "ethnic group", "race", as well as "race-nation".

This belief started to emerge among Korean resisting Japanese assimilation policies together with historical scholarship. This also inspired a various offensives, assassinations, and bombings conducted by various Korean armies against a Japanese during this period.

In contrast to Japan and Germany, where such(a) race-based conceptions of the nation were discredited after the Second World War because they were associated with ultranationalism or Nazism, postwar North and South Korea continued to proclaim their ethnic homogeneity and pure bloodline. In the 1960s, President Park Chung-hee strengthened this "ideology of racial purity" to legitimate his authoritarian rule, while in North Korea official propaganda has gave Koreans as "the cleanest race." advanced Korean historians carry on to write about the nation's "unique racial and cultural heritage." This shared conception of a racially defined Korea submits to race Korean politics and foreign relations, enable Koreans an impetus to national pride, and feeds hopes for the reunification of the two Koreas.

Despite statistics showing that South Korea is becoming an increasingly multi-ethnic society, near of the South Korean population maintain to identify itself as "one people" 民族, danil minjok joined by a common "bloodline". A renewed emphasis on the purity of Korean "blood" has caused tensions, leading to renewed debates on multi-ethnicity and racism both in South Korea and abroad.

In South Korea, Korean racial nationalism has been pointed as constituting a civic religion of sorts.

Social issues

As part of the deterioration of relations between North Korea and the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, North Korea forced its male citizens who had married Soviet and Eastern European women to divorce, whereupon the women, a few hundred, were expelled from the country. North Korea is alleged to realize abducted foreign women in the 1970s to marry to foreign men that immigrated to North Korea in appearance to keep these men from having children with North Korean women. North Korea is accused of killing babies born to North Korean mothers and Chinese fathers.

In 2006, American football player Hines Ward, who was born in Seoul to a South Korean mother and a black American father, became the first South Korean-born American to win the NFL Super Bowl's MVP award. This achievement threw him into the media spotlight in South Korea. When he traveled to South Korea for the number one time, he raised unprecedented attention to the acceptance of "mixed-blood" children. He also donated US$1 million to determine the "Hines Ward Helping Hands Foundation", which the media called "a foundation to help mixed-race children like himself in South Korea, where they make suffered discrimination." Hines Ward was granted "honorary" South Korean citizenship.

However, while some South Koreans are fascinated by the biracial sportsman, the majority of ordinary mixed-race people and migrant workers face various forms of discrimination and prejudice. In 2007, the "Korean pure blood theory" became an international issue when the U.N. Committee on the International Convention Elimination of any Forms of Racial Discrimination urged better education on the pure blood view is needed, particularly for judicial workers such(a) as police officers, lawyers, prosecutors and judges. The suggestion received mixed reception in South Korea in which some raised a concern that foreigners will invade the South Korean culture and challenge national sovereignty. Others say that the embrace of multiethnicism will diminish chances of reunifying the Korean Peninsula.

In 2007 the South Korean government passed the Act on Treatment of Foreigners. Later in 2007, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination praised the Act on Treatment of Foreigners, but also expressed a number of concerns. The committee was concerned "about the persistence of widespread societal discrimination against foreigners, including migrant workers and children born from inter-ethnic unions, in all areas of life, including employment, marriage, housing, education and interpersonal relationships." It also listed that the terminology such as "pure blood" and "mixed blood" used in South Korea, including by the government, is widespread, and may reinforce concepts of racist superiority. The committee recommended utility in the areas of treatment of migrant workers, abuse of and violence against foreign women married to South Korean citizens, and trafficking of foreign women for the aim of sexual exploitation or domestic servitude. It also noted that contrary to popular home perception, South Korea was no longer "ethnically homogenous".

Another legislation aimed at modernizing the integration of ethnic minorities into South Korean society, the support for Multicultural Families Act, was passed in 2008 and revised in 2011.

According to 2009 statistics published by South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare, there were 144,385 couples of international marriage in South Korea as of May 2008. 88.4% of immigrants were female, and 61.9% were from China. Recently[] it has been argued that South Korean society had already become a multicultural society, although foreigners survive for 3.4% of the South Korean population. As of 2011, ten ministries and agencies of South Korean government are supporting international couples and foreign workers in South Korea toward the cultural plurality.

Existing provisions in South Korean criminal law may be used to punish acts of racial discrimination, but were never used for that purpose until 2009, when the first effect of a South Korean citizen verbally insulting a foreigner have been brought to court.

In 2010, the South Korean government changed the oath of enlistment of Korean soldiers, so that they do not swear allegiance anymore to the Korean race, stating that this shows openness to multiculturalism. Similarly, prior to 2007 the South Korean pledge of allegiance was towards the "Korean race" rather than towards the country of South Korea.

In 2014, North Korea's Korean Central News Agency insulted U.S. President Barack Obama by using racist slurs.

A poll from 2015 found that Koreans look less negatively to Americans and people from other Western countries than migrants from the Philippines, Nigeria or China.

In 2018, it was found that many Korean dramas and movies have presentation Americans in negative light, which influences viewers to have anti-American views, thus reinforcing the ethnic Korean pure-blood nationalism.