Is Korea becoming more xenophobic to foreigners?

Question

This article is about 2 years old, but it is still kind of scary:

http://greatreporter.com/mambo/content/view/359/

is there any truth to this?

Answer 1

No, from my experience Koreans welcome all as long as they respect the people and the culture.

Answer 2

BB and V-man have already said all that is worth to say...
I am an American living here.
Someone else asked why westerners do not learn the language.. I don't think that person lives here, or ha been here for very long... I can tell from his answer.
Actually, if you live here long enough to learn the language, you can understand the anti-foreigner, often anti-American, sentiments on the radio and in print.
i was just some naive, clueless resident for the longest time. Coming from the US, where you could NEVER have popular talk-radio blasting foreigners all day long, I thought I was misunderstanding the words at first.
We are a lot more politically correct in the US... we just don't hang all that sexist, racist stuff out there... it is still ok here but will change as Korea becomes truly competitve in International Business and trade. (see Japan)
I have /never felt scared here.. all of my friends are Korean.
We all seem to have the same goal. (to be living/working/studying in the US real soon)
But this is a country that was isolated and fighting for survival very recently... it will take awhile. But they are moving forward.

Answer 3

No. More Korean live and are educated abroad than ever. It's not some tiny locked up village you know.

Americans, on the other hand, are definitely more xenophobic now.

For all the foreigners who come to Korea: why don't you actually try and learn the language for once? I don't go to France and speak English in a LOUD and SLOW fashion; English speakers are pretty lazy when they go to other countries, but are strangely puzzled when they seem to have a shallow, stressful and somewhat negative experience.

Take some responsibility, people.

Answer 4

I'm a foreigner working in Korea.

Yes, there are three truths in that article.

1) There have been two times that I'm aware of where the anti-Americanism has been at a boiling point. The first was the financial crisis in the late 90s and the second was after the military accident in 2002. President Roh rode that anti-Americanism and won the election. Look where that got Korea.

2) Korean men still hate to see Korean women with foreigners. I have to deal with this all the time.

3) Koreans don't like foreign teachers in Korea. The teachers that are really disliked are those that disrespect the culture and the people and are only here to make money and leave. They're also tired of unqualified teachers, forged documents, criminals, etc. That's why the E-2 visa regulation changed. This I can understand.

That said, I've never seen or heard of any foreigners that were fearful of being in Korea. I think the tone of the article exaggerates the levels of xenophobia greatly. Getting directly to the point:

Are there Koreans who don't like foreigners? Absolutely.

Are there Koreans who like foreigners? Sure.

Are there Koreans who are indifferent about foreigners? Yes.

The same could be said about foreigners in any country. One other point in the article stated that tourism is down among non-Asians. That's true too. Korea just isn't very tourist friendly. It's too bad because this is a great place to be.

Answer 5

It is impossible for Korea to become more xenophobic. The place used to be called The Hermit Kingdom. One of the reasons Japan was able to take it over at the turn of the 20th century was because Korea had blocked out foreign technologies, to include weapons.
Generational memory is strong. And trends have their ups and downs. Korea has been moving steadily to being a more open society since 1945. There have been hiccups and setbacks along the way, but it is still much more accepting of foreigners now than it has been in the last 200 years.

Except Nigerians. For some reason a lot of joints in Itaewon have signs specifically banning Nigerians. (Note: not black people. Nigerians.)