Korean Chinese: Once Compatriots, Now Targeted of Xenophobia
South Korea is one of the countries in which reading news via online channels is the most common way and, of course, has its own unique way of online news consumption. Search engine companies like Naver, the country's biggest search engine, run their own online news platform by curating articles provided from a variety of sources alongside open comment sections. The corporates’ neglect, unfortunately, often causes the comment sections to be easily plagued by inappropriate and hateful remarks to the extent where this remarkable trend in online remarks has been noticed recently, commenters of which accuse one another of “Joseonjok" — a term coined by Joseon, the last dynasty of South Korea, plus Jok, meaning ethnic group — saying they are attempting to manipulate the public’s opinion when other’s opinions are not in line with theirs.
The data was collected from MLBPARK, an online baseball fan community with predominantly far-right male users. This chart shows that the usage of the word, Joseonjok, skyrocketed nearly 5 times in 2020 presumably for Covid-19 outbreak, followed by a slight drop a year later, and as of 2022 was quickly restored in the similar range of volume to the year 2020, around 3,500.
Defined as Chinese of Korean descent who are regarded as one of the 55 minor ethnic tribes, it is technically not a derogatory name despite its current belittling pattern of usage. Before there was Joseonjok, they had preferred being called “Dongpo", the literal definition of which is siblings who were born to the same mother, a comprehensive name widely used to call Korean expatriates. In recent years, however, exclusively for Chinese Korean, Dongpo has yielded to Joseonjok since antipathy against inclusivity and intimacy within the term grew immensely as the chart above presents.
Where has this immense amount of negative sentiment, especially toward Joseonjok, who we once believed shared culture and uniform ethnic identity with, originated?
Unverified Accusation and Anti-China Movement by Conservatives
It was March 2020, when harsh feelings against China were soaring for 2019 novel coronavirus, one anonymous user in Ilbe, a notoriously far right anything-goes forum, claimed that they are part of Chinese Koreans ordered to do online operations of politically dividing the mass by writing pro-China posts and comments, which was quickly picked up by traditionally conservative news media and so-called China Gate made headlines.
Internet companies that run an independent news platform denied the accusation and released records of Chinese IP being accounted for only 0.5%. Former United Future Party, current ruling party renamed as People Power Party, went further on the next step regardless of the clarification by filing a criminal complaint in March 2020, though the result of investigation into China Gate has not been publicized yet until 3 years later at this moment.
First Visible Migrants in An Intensely Exclusive Society
Many scholars stated that the mechanism of biases and discrimination works differently here in Korea: It was often pointed out that Koreans adopted lenses of orientalism in the beginning periods of opening gates to the western, through which perceiving the world resulted in deeply internalized materialism and racism. It could provide answers to some Koreans describing China as unrefined or uncivilized, but it doesn’t make a good reason why Chinese with Korean heritage are particularly targeted.
Some also point toward the fact that they make up the largest number of migrants, positioned as the most visible outsiders experiencing racism, that is barely surfaced or addressed in the closed society, before any other groups of migrants.
For decades, migrants had been almost invisible to the nation. They were thought to only exist in factories and farm fields in rural areas and to take labor-intensive or low-waged jobs Koreans avoided, effortlessly concealing their presence from sight. Taking advantage of being fluent in Korean language, Korean Chinese broke the unwritten rules, flooding and blending into a long-forbidden space since the Act on the Immigration and Legal Status of Overseas Korean was introduced. They were widely hailed by fields where it is required to work very closely with native Koreans, such as hospitality, service and nursing, and mid-to-small sized companies with shortage of labor force problem.
As of last year, 4.37% of the population accounted for foreign aliens residing in Korea, out of which 37.8% are Chinese, followed by Vietnam, Thailand, the U.S. and so on. Though Chinese take up the biggest chunk of the foreign residents, it was only 1.65% of the population. This figure shows how closed society Korea still remains.
How Arts Reinforced Preconception about Joseonjok
Produced in the 2010s, the total 18 mainstream movies featuring Joseonjok characters, were classified
In the 2010s, South Korea had a cultural renaissance. The country started to emerge as a culture house in the early 2000s, not only producing creative k-pop music and original shows but also well-regarded films. In particular, for the film industry, the 2010 era seemed to decorate its finale with international awards and prizes when Parasite, a satire movie about capitalism by Bong Joon-Ho, swept the Canne and Oscar.
Inside the Korean film industry, in spite of presenting itself globally with the very high quality and maturity, it was not free of blame for insensitive portrayal of immigrants at the same time. In 2017, Josenjok immigrants group made a collective statement to plead for suspension of screening of Midnight Runners in theaters, saying it fueled hatred toward Joseonjok and aroused unnecessary tension between Koreans and Chinese. Midnight Runner is a buddy cop movie about two young and feisty Korean male police officers assigned in Daelim-dong district in Seoul, which is uptown to Korean Chinese migrants both in the movie and the real life, discovering despicable crimes committed by Joseonjok, described even the local police can’t dare to control.
Actually the perception that Joseonjok is highly involved with crimes does not align with reality. Published by the National Police Agency, the 2022 Crime Statistics shows that chinese crime rate is 1.2%, even if narrowed down to violent crime, it’s 1.17. It’s hard to conclude that the number of crimes committed by Chinese is distinctly high given that 1.6% of the population is Chinese.
“In fact, in society, minorities are often caught up in bad things, so is the United States. Even in Korea, people from that side of the world often commit violent crimes, which is why Korean movies often feature such settings,” Kwak Kyung-taek, whose movie ‘Resurrected Victims’ depicted Joseonjok character as a killer, said in the 2017 interview. “As a storyteller, I think I had no choice. I couldn’t give up on things like Chinatown as a fictional space in that sense. A movie has to be plausible, and if you think about these things too much, you can’t do that. I, actually, have sympathy for Korean-Japanese, Korean-Chinese, Korean-Russians and so on. If I have the opportunity to tell their story someday, I want to do it right, and I’ll make up for it then,” he added.