Cultural policy in South Korea: reinforcing homogeneity and cosmetic difference?

The public policy narrative in South Korea as ‘having to be multicultural’ due to a falling birth rate and a demand for labour is linked to an often fragmented and yet highly centralized policy orientation. This institutional limit is complicated by competing narratives on multiculturalism, which often reinforce cultural segregation and hierarchy while simultaneously advocating for select migrant groups a policy of assimilation usually as ‘multicultural families’. This article considers alternative public policy options and approaches, which link the recent development of multicultural education to wider questions of Korean national identity and national heritage. This means an educational policy strategy that questions the setting of boundaries and which substantively interrogates the question of who are the ‘we’ in a multicultural society.