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The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has expressed concern at persistent ethnocentric thinking in South Korea. "There was a genuine fear that overemphasis on and excessive pride in the ethnic homogeneity of Korea might be an obstacle to the realization of equal treatment and respect for foreigners and people belonging to different races and cultures,¡± it said. It urged the country to include a human rights awareness program ¡°that stressed understanding of societies with multiple ethnic/cultural backgrounds¡± in the official education curriculum.
Meeting in Geneva from July 30 until Aug. 17, the 71st UNCERD reviewed national reports on Costa Rica, New Zealand, Mozambique, Indonesia, and South Korea and released recommendations for them. On Aug. 9-10, it looked into reports submitted by the South Korean government. In the recommendations, UNCERD expressed discomfort about a prevalent notion in Korean culture of "pure-bloodedness," saying, "The whole concept came very close to ideas of racial superiority."
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Bangladeshi migrant workers rally for better rights in front of Seoul Station on Sunday./Yonhap
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The committee praised the Korean government for the National Action Plan for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights and the Basic Act on the Treatment of Foreigners adopted in May and establishing an Interpretation Support Centre for Foreign Migrant Workers last year. But it urged Korea work out better systematic devices and suggested the country legally guarantee equal rights for foreign workers and children born from international marriages in employment, marriage, residence, education, and interpersonal relations. It called for information about the history and culture of various ethnic groups and peoples to be included in elementary and secondary school textbooks.
UNCERD also expressed concern that foreign women are improperly protected from potential harassment from either their Korean husbands or international matchmaking agencies. It highlighted cases of abuse -- some international marriage agencies demand exorbitant fees for their services or confiscate passports and travel papers from foreign wives-to-be without giving them sufficient information about their future husbands. Foreign workers, it noted, ¡°were allowed to change their place of employment four times during the course of their three-year stay. They gravitated to relatively low-paying jobs that were deemed difficult, dangerous or dirty by the Korean population.¡±
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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