South Koreans Learn to Love the Other

FROM JAPAN TO THE UNITED KINGDOM, developed countries face a two-pronged problem: aging populations and a deepening hostility toward the immigrants who could keep their aging economies growing. One country may have found the answer to both. In South Korea, a top-down campaign begun in 2005 to remake the nation’s ethnic self-image has had remarkable results. In less than a generation, most South Koreans have gone from holding a narrow, racial concept of nationality to embracing the idea that immigrants of Chinese, Nigerian, Vietnamese, or North American descent can be as Korean as anyone else.

Part of what makes South Korea’s story so striking is its speed. Until the) had existed for millenniums, in writing the country’s new textbooks. Ethnonationalist rhetoric became commonplace among both teachers and politicians.