Looking over the status of multicultural students for the past 10 years, the number is increasing every year from 46,954 in 2012 to 160,056 in 2022. The proportion of multicultural students among all students is also continuously increasing from 0.7% in 2012 to 3.0% in 2022. Looking at the proportion of multicultural students over the past five years, the proportion of those born domestically (internationally married) is still the highest but is gradually decreasing, while the proportion of children and adolescents with immigrant backgrounds (immigration) and foreign students has recently increased relatively.
Korean society is rapidly changing into a multiracial, multicultural society. As of November 1 last year, the number of foreign residents living in Korea was 2,258,248. According to the standards of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which classifies a country as a multiracial and multicultural country if the population with a migration background is more than 5% of the total population, Korea, where the number of foreigners residing in the country is 4.4% of the total population, has already reached the threshold of becoming a multiracial and multicultural country.
Among these, students with immigrant backgrounds who entered Korea are called 'youth who immigrated misway' These children and adolescents show very different background characteristics from children from multicultural families born in Korea. Because they are teenagers who were born and raised in their home country and then come to the country, they often experience difficulties after entering the country. The biggest difficulty among them is the language barrier. Academic difficulties due to language, cultural shock that they face without preparation, and teasing that belittle their appearance are all too much for these teenagers to endure. Moreover, some of them enter the country on tourist visas and are often classified as illegal immigrants.
Regardless of whether they have Korean nationality or not, children and adolescents have the right to be protected and educated. To guarantee basic rights, support is needed for youth with immigrant backgrounds, especially immigrant youth. Nevertheless, our society is still not fully prepared to accept them.
We have a social task to provide Korean language and basic education to children and adolescents who have immigrated to Korea to improve their language skills and learning levels and to provide information for living in Korea and help them adapt to their new environment.
In particular, children and adolescents who immigrate to Korea feel alienated even though they live with their mothers in Korea. If you are staying as a foreigner for various reasons, you are living with psychological and emotional anxiety, so you need a warm welcome to those who are discouraged by everything and have a bleak future. What can we do to become a welcoming environment?
First of all, we must accept the current society that has become a multi-racial country and practice welcoming people as close neighbors to us. Let's look for data and share it with families and neighbors to gain a correct understanding of children and adolescents who entered the country. Let's welcome our children as friends so that they can feel love for their neighbors and build stable relationships. Let's teach them how to communicate and how to say hello when talking to adults and friends. Let’s help them so that they do not “reveal that their school life was mentally difficult by saying that their friends imitated their speaking style and made fun of them”
“I give you a new commandment, love one another. Love one another, just as I have loved you!” (John 13:34) Let’s give our children and teenagers from different cultures a chance to slowly adapt to our Korean culture.
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