ABSTRACT
South Koreans (henceforth Koreans) have traditionally considered themselves as a homogeneous nation bound together by a common bloodline and culture. They did not and, in fact, could not endorse any immigrants and political refugees until the 1980s. Very limited numbers of old ethnic minorities, such as resident Chinese and ‘mixed-blood’ people were objects of exclusion during the last century. Recently, however, Koreans have been seeing a lot of foreign residents as a result of rapidly increasing numbers of international marriages and migrant workers since the mid-1990s. The number of foreign residents is about 1.4 million (Ministry of Justice, 2011), comprising 3 per cent of the total population, and is expected to reach 5 per cent in 2020. This phenomenon of rapidly increasing numbers of foreign residents has not only been changing the composition of the population, but has also made Korean society more ethnically and culturally diverse.
