South Korea as an ‘Ordinary’ Country

South Korea as an ‘Ordinary’Country:A Comparative Inquiry into theProspects for ‘Permanent’Immigration to KoreaTimothy C.LimSouth Korea has often been portrayed as a special country.Certainly,its rapid rise from a poor,technologically backward economy in the 1950s to a significant,even dominant,economic player in high-tech consumer and industrial markets by the 1990s has been exceptional.There is no denying,moreover,that the country has unique historical and cultural characteristics.Nonetheless,this paper argues that,in terms of those processes related to economic,social and political transformation,South Korea is an ‘ordinary’country.One of the most salient of these processes is associated with migration which,in almost every industrialised democracy,moves from temporary foreign-worker migration to permanent settlement.Because of South Korea’s rigidly monocultural and exclusion-ary heritage,however,many observers have assumed that the permanent settlement of large numbers of ‘foreigners’was out of the question.Yet,a close and comparative analy-sis of the economic,political and social dynamics of international migration to South Korea shows that this will not necessarily be the case.Indeed,this paper asserts that there is good reason to believe that South Korea will become a ‘country of immigration’.Keywords:Migration;Migratory Process;South Korea;Foreign WorkersImmigration and the Myth of Korean UniquenessKoreans have long taken for granted the ethnic and racial ‘purity’of Korean society.They have,moreover,generally viewed Korea’s ethno-racial purity as an almost singular characteristic.And,while they recognise that the country is part of the world,they have also tended to believe that Korea has a unique (cultural)dynamic that sets the country apart from it.This belief has had particular strength with regard Timothy Lim is Professor of Political Science at California State University,Los Angeles.Correspondence to:Pror.T.C.Lim,Dept of Political Science,5151State University Drive,CSULA,Los Angeles,CA 90032,USA.E-mail:tclim@.Journal of Ethnic and Migration StudiesVol.38,No.3,March 2012,pp.507Á528ISSN 1369-183X print/ISSN 1469-9451online/12/030507-22#2012Taylor &Francis/10.1080/1369183X.2012.658549508T.C.Limto the acceptance of‘outsiders’.To the large majority of Koreans,therefore,the very idea that their country would become a significant destination for hundreds of thousands of foreigners had been,for many generations,virtually unthinkable.Thus, the beginning of large-scale in-migration in the late1980s may have confounded (and certainly distressed)many Koreans.Yet,it is not at all inexplicable.Indeed,the basic reason is quite clear:after decades of rapid and sustained industrialisation* combined with a continuous increase in economic wealth*severe labour shortages started to appear in certain segments of the Korean economy.South Korea,in other words,experienced a phenomenon common to most other industrialised countries, namely,the migration transition(Martin et al.1996).The migration transition refers to the movement of a country from being a net la-bour exporter to being a net labour importer.The movement itself reflects a society’s general inability to keep up with an increasing demand for labour as industrialisa-tion proceeds.Given South Korea’s unprecedented high and sustained economic growth rates from the early1960s to the end of the1980s,the transition was not only inevitable but also fairly sudden:from a base of only a few thousand primarily professional foreign workers(nguage teachers,researchers and professors)in the early1980s,the numbers of foreign migrant workers increased in exponential terms beginning in1987.In that year there was a total of6,409foreign workers in South Korea(4,217undocumented workers and2,192skilled workers)but,only five years later,in1992,the number had increased more than ten-fold to73,686. And it took only two more years for this number to double*in1995,there were an estimated142,405foreign migrant workers in the country(cited in Seol2000: Table1).At first,the bulk of foreign workers came from China(most were of Korean ancestry,referred to as joseonjok),but there were also significant numbers of work-ers from the Philippines,Bangladesh,Nepal,Sri Lanka,Pakistan and Indonesia. By the early2000s,worker migration to South Korea had become a global phe-nomenon,with workers coming from at least54countries,including Nigeria,Iran, India,Vietnam,Uzbekistan,Kazakhstan,Afghanistan,Mexico,Ghana,Morocco, Egypt,Congo,Algeria,Hungary,Russia,Yugoslavia,Brazil,Peru and Jamaica(Lim 2003:426).Almost all of these‘new’migrants were unskilled workers engaged in so-called3-D jobs(‘dirty,difficult and dangerous’);more specifically,they were employed in small-scale factories,in construction,fishing and agriculture(for a more detailed discussion,see Lim1999:332Á5).The almost matter-of-fact emergence of the migration transition suggests that the purported uniqueness of South Korea is greatly exaggerated.Yet there remains a strong tendency among Koreans and scholars alike(Seol and Skrenty2009)to assume that South Korea is particularly resistant,if not immune,to the types of socio-economic,political and,especially,cultural changes which other countries and socie-ties have undergone in response to industrialisation and other macro-level processes. Nowhere is this more evident than in views towards immigration or perma-nent immigration:for the most part,Korean policy-makers have operated on theJournal of Ethnic and Migration Studies509 presumption that,unlike most other countries,Korea will never have to accept large numbers of‘foreigners’as a permanent part of Korean society.With all this in mind,a key objective of this paper is to assess the extent to which international worker migration,wherein the migration transition is but one element, tends to unfold in a broadly similar,although not identical,manner in different countries regardless of their specific social,institutional,political and cultural cir-cumstances.At a general level,then,I am concerned with the following interrelated questions:Why does migration,once begun,generally lead to permanent immigration (including denizenship and naturalisation),particularly in countries in which these inter-related outcomes are both politically undesired and actively opposed?1 What are the dynamics of this process and,equally importantly,what are the economic,social and political conditions that make the process possible?Will South Korea become a country of immigration?That is,will it follow the same path as other‘historical countries’that also attempted to resist the per-manent immigration of foreign migrant workers?My short answer to the last question is yes.Briefly put,I argue that South Korea is quite‘ordinary’.It is ordinary in the sense that it is similar,in a basic way,to other industrialised democracies.And it is the‘ordinary’institutions,practices and norms of democratic governance,combined with the imperatives of capitalist industrialisa-tion,that are key.They help to create a common social and political context within which the process of international migration plays out.The result is a generally fore-seeable sequence of events that leads from temporary migration to permanent immi-gration(including denizenship and citizenship).I return to this argument below.I begin my analysis with a brief overview of international migration to South Korea,focusing on the evolution of the country’s migration and immigration policies.2This review will provide a useful backdrop for my second section*a fuller discussion of the analytical and theoretical framework guiding my argument.In the third section,I address in more detail the prospects for permanent immigration in South Korea,firstly by providing a brief comparative examination with Germany and, secondly,by focusing on important developments that presage a movement towards permanent immigration in Korea,such as the establishment of a‘migration industry’and the nascent formation of migrant/immigrant communities.In the final sub-stantive section,I examine the political and legal dynamics in South Korea that are likely to turn,and to some extent already have turned,South Korea into a‘country of immigration’.The Evolution of International Migration to South Korea,1987Á2006Since the late1980s,international migration to South Korea has proceeded through a number of clear but also overlapping steps.The first step(roughly1987to1991)510T.C.Limwas simply to adopt a‘wink-and-nod’policy towards worker migration.That is,the Korean authorities essentially allowed international migrant workers*most of whom had only tourist visas(or no visa at all,since Korea has long maintained visa-waiver agreements with a broad range of countries)*to enter Korea and find work.On this point,it is important to understand that Korean immigration law,until1997,only permitted the employment of foreign nationals in professional or entertainment occupations:all other types of employment(e.g.in factories or on construction sites,fishing vessels,etc.)were strictly prohibited.Despite these restrictions,tens of thousands of international migrants found jobs in non-authorised sectors.More importantly,the Korean government did very little to discourage this activity:crack-downs on unauthorised workers,while they did occur,were few and far between* partly because of resistance by Korean businesses,which desperately needed the labour provided by foreign workers(Seol2000).As a result,the number of unau-thorised workers grew steadily between1987and1993and,until very recently,has remained at a high level,reaching a peak of over306,000in2002.South Korea also employed a policy of encouraging‘co-ethnic’migration.The basic idea of this type of policy is clear:to minimise the social tension that pre-sumably arises when culturally distinct groups‘invade’an otherwise homogeneous society.Of course,co-ethnic migration is only possible if there is a large population of ethnically related workers to draw on and if these workers come from a relatively impoverished area.The Yanbian Autonomous Prefecture in China’s eastern Jilin province fulfilled both these conditions.Thus,in the early1990s,ethnic Koreans from China,the joseonjok,3constituted the largest proportion of international migrants to Korea.At the same time,almost all of these workers were undocumented; in other words,their migration was unequivocally a part of Korea’s‘wink-and-nod’policy.Despite clear problems with this policy,the Korean government continued to give preference to joseonjok.In May2006,for example,the Ministry of Justice announced plans to create a new employment visa(H-2)specifically for ethnic Koreans.This new visa would enable joseonjok and ethnic Koreans from Russia to freely enter and depart from Korea for five years(Korea Herald,19May2006). The second step(1991to2004)in the evolution of Korea’s policy on international migration was the creation and establishment of the Industrial Training System (ITS),which was,at its base,meant to provide a government-sanctioned system for institutionalising and legitimising the discriminatory and exploitative treatment of an entire class of workers,which the programme simply called‘trainees’.The ITS,it is worth noting,was borrowed from abroad:it was explicitly based on the Industrial and Technical Training Programme(ITTP)in Japan.Significantly,the ITTP was designed to circumvent an‘inconvenient’aspect of Japanese labour law:in Japan, the Labour Standards Law and the Employment Security Law do not distinguish between foreign and native workers(interview with Torii Ippei,Secretary General, ZWU Zentoitsu Workers Union,Tokyo,5June2002).This means that all workers* domestic or foreign,legal or illegal*are,in principle,entitled to the same basic pro-tections and benefits.As trainees,however,such rights could be legitimately denied.Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies511 Using exactly the same logic,the Korean ITS explicitly denied foreign migrants the ‘three basic rights’of Korea’s labour law:to unionise,to collective bargaining and to collective action.In addition to stripping foreign workers of basic labour rights,the ITS was designed to institutionalise very low wages*the basic pay was set far below prevailing wage rates,and was even substantially lower than that which unauthorised workers received for doing the same work(Seol2000).Another significant aspect of the ITS was its strict time limit:originally,trainees were limited to one-year stays (although this was subsequently extended to three years).The intent was obvious, namely,to create a system of worker migration whereby foreign workers would be rotated in and out of Korea in a smooth and predictable fashion.Over the years,a number of revisions to the ITS programme were made,including the decision,in1993,to allow a private-sector business organisation*the Korean Federation of Small Businesses(KFSB)*to run the programme through an entity named the Korea International Training Cooperation Corps(KITCO),which was also named after its Japanese counterpart,the Japan International Training Coop-eration Organization(established in1991).Another significant change occurred in 1997when the government made it possible for some trainees to acquire status as legal workers*as long as they completed two years under the ITS and passed a qualifying examination.The third and most recent step(2004to present)was the establishment of the Employment Permit System(EPS)or‘guestworker programme’which,from the government’s point of view,is meant to be the final step in the evolution of South Korea’s policy towards international migrant workers.It is viewed,in other words,as the long-term solution to the country’s chronic*and structurally embedded*labour shortage in the small-and medium-sized enterprise sector.This does not mean that no changes in the EPS are anticipated;certainly,the government recognised that the system would need to be fine-tuned.But,when the programme was developed, the Korean government firmly believed that it would provide an effective and viable framework for the management and control of foreign workers for as long as necessary.On the surface,it should be noted,the EPS represents a significant improvement over the ITS.In fact,workers hired through the EPS have exactly the same legal rights under labour-related laws as native Korean workers,including the right to join labour unions,the right to industrial accident insurance,and a minimum wage guarantee. The new system,however,has a number of important qualifications.International migrants,for example,are restricted to working in five industries:manufacturing, construction,agriculture and stockbreeding,fishing,and services(refrigerated ware-housing,restaurants,business support,social welfare,sewage disposal,auto repairs, nursing and household service).Secondly,in principle workers are not allowed to change jobs*a change of jobs is permitted,but only with approval and under certain conditions.4Thirdly,only international migrants from countries that have signed a bilateral agreement with Korea are eligible to send workers to Korea under the EPS. In addition,each country is assigned a quota.It is worth noting that the use of quotas512T.C.Limand bilateral agreements is meant to ensure tighter regulation of worker migration. The logic here,as one Ministry of Labour official,Kwon Ki-sup(2004),describes it,is simple:sending countries are meant to‘compete’for larger quota allocations, wherein the competition is based primarily on each country’s ability to adhere to sending procedures,to reduce sending costs,to eliminate‘irregularities’and to guar-antee fairness in recruiting.Finally,the EPS,as with the ITS,was premised on a strict time limitation of three years.This was meant to ensure temporary worker migration since,under Korean immigration law,foreigners are required to reside in Korea for a minimum of five consecutive years to be eligible for permanent residency.As the Director of the Foreign Employment Division at the Ministry of Labour,Kwon Ki-sup,bluntly put it,the three-year time limit in the EPS is expressly designed to ‘prevent the permanent immigration of foreign workers in Korea’;in2008,however, the government proposed extending this limit to just under five years.I will return to the significance of this point below.The evolution of international migration to South Korea,it is important to rec-ognise,reflects both careful planning and unanticipated failures.The wink-and-nod policy of tacitly allowing undocumented worker migration succeeded in bringing in much-needed labour,but the process could not be adequately controlled.The failure of the ITS is even clearer.It failed,in particular,to establish an effective system of regulation.In fact,throughout its more than two-decade-old history(which officially ended on1January2007),most international migrants simply deserted their trainee positions to take up better-paying work at different locations*at one point,almost 70per cent of trainees ran away from their assigned positions.In a similar vein,the programme failed to ensure a process of strictly temporary migration.The one-year and three-year limits,in particular,were routinely ignored.The programme also failed to keep trainee wages artificially low.In a significant way,too,the ITS failed to maintain the fiction that international migrants were not workers:in1995,foreign trainees were provided with government-run industrial accident insurance and medical insurance on equal terms with Korean workers*a de facto(albeit still limited)recognition of their status as industrial workers.The question remains whether the EPS will suffer similar failures.Of course,the argument in this paper is that it will,and that the biggest failure is likely to be the attempt to maintain a system of temporary worker migration.Framework of Analysis:Politics,Democracy and the Migratory ProcessTo understand why the EPS is likely to fail,at least in terms of its overarching objective of preventing permanent immigration,it is necessary to take a step back and consider the process of international worker migration in the larger context of South Korea’s economic,social and political development.On this point,it is important to recognise that South Korea,throughout its brief history,has gener-ally followed the same pattern of development*economic,political,social and otherwise*as other countries.The migration transition is one salient example.Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies513 Another,more noteworthy,example is South Korea’s not-atypical path from military authoritarianism to democracy:it is a path that many other countries have trod. Institutionally,too,South Korea falls well within the parameters of other democracies with regard,say,to the development and role of the judicial system,the legislative and executive branches,the economic bureaucracy and so on.This is not to say that South Korean democracy lacks distinctive characteristics(see Choi2005);only that it is clearly recognisable as a modern democratic political system.That may seem to be an obvious point,but it is one that needs to be highlighted for reasons that will become clear below.This said,to fully understand the prospects for permanent immigration in South Korea,it is useful to begin by focusing,first,on the mechanics of international migration itself.On this point,I draw liberally from the work of Castles and Miller (2003),who argue that(labour)migration is a dynamic social process,one that contains a powerful internal logic only partly tied to economic factors.Thus,while international labour migration may start off primarily as a response to economic forces,as it develops,it is transformed into a complex,multifaceted process which they refer to as the‘migratory process’.At its core,according to Castles and Miller, is the development of social networks tied to the life-cycle of individual migrants. For various reasons(economic,political and social),a significant proportion of international migrants who move to a new country will end up staying longer than they originally intended.As they prolong their stay,many send for their families or start a new one*they may marry a compatriot or someone from their new homeland.Marriage and the birth of children,in turn,create an even stronger incentive for permanent immigration.As more and more international migrants become de facto permanent immigrants,moreover,they create ethnic communi-ties or(minority)enclaves,which also involves the creation of business and social arrangements designed to serve their needs.This is another important part of the migratory process,known as the‘migration industry’(which,it is worth noting, usually begins well before permanent immigration).Once de facto permanent immigration starts to takes place,the stage is set: migrants begin to see themselves as part of the larger society*even if they continue to suffer from discrimination and marginalisation.With a greater stake in staying, their resistance to voluntary or forced repatriation grows.They will adopt various strategies for remaining*sometimes this entails making themselves invisible,and sometimes just the opposite:becoming more vocal,more political and more insistent that their status and rights as long-term residents be recognised by the larger society. We see this everywhere,including in the United States,which witnessed a surprising series of massive demonstrations by unauthorised immigrants in early2006.In the longer run,Castles and Miller argue,the continuing significance of new groups is likely to have a profound and far-reaching impact on the central social and political institutions of a society,and may even affect the very nature of the nation-state* i.e.the concept of national identity.This will be especially true in ostensibly homogeneous societies,such as South Korea,in which the integration of individuals514T.C.Limfrom diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds requires a rethinking of hitherto taken-for-granted assumptions of identity.Given the far-reaching and often profound changes the migratory process provokes within societies,we need to return to a question posed at the outset:Why do states and societies accept the changes brought about by this process,particularly those changes that are,simply put,unwanted?To answer this question,it is important to move beyond the dynamics of the migratory process and look into the larger social and political context in which the process unfolds.In this regard,I argue*following Christian Joppke(2006)and others*that existing domestic arrangements and cir-cumstances are critical and that the most important domestic considerations are political rather than,say,cultural or social.These domestic political considerations, however,are not unique to specific places;rather,as I noted earlier,they are grounded in a general framework of democratic institutions,norms and procedures*especially legal procedures.Democracy,to put it simply,provides the basis upon which the migratory process unfolds.Although,as Castles and Miller(2003:31Á2)note,the lack of democratic norms and established legal procedures does not necessarily or always short-circuit the migratory process,and democratic institutions make the move-ment from temporary(or rotating)migration to permanent immigration almost unavoidable.It is important to understand that‘democracy’does not,by itself, dictate specific outcomes;rather,the existence of democratic norms and procedures creates a(domestic)framework that constrains the power or capacity of states*and their societies*in ways that make it exceedingly difficult(although not impossible) to block the migratory process.In this sense,it is a self-imposed constraint in that democracy is ultimately an expression of sovereignty.To put it in slightly different terms,the changes brought about by the migratory process*especially unwanted changes*are a product of what Christian Joppke(2006)calls self-limited sovereignty.The practice of self-limited sovereignty is common to all democratic polities. In Joppke’s view,moreover,it is fundamentally premised on the legal process in democratic countries.The logic here is simple:courts and judges,as relatively neutral arbiters,stand between the generally exclusionary interests of the state and the inclusionary interests of migrants or immigrants(and domestic allies)who want greater legal protection and rights as both workers and residents.Just as importantly, courts can act as a shield against populist pressures and client politics,both of which tend to act as powerful forces militating against the interests of migrant and immigrant groups.Courts and judges are not necessarily pro-immigrant;rather,as Joppke puts it,they are beholden only to the‘abstract commands of statutory and constitutional laws’(2006:529).In practice,however,this means that courts tend to make decisions that enable the unfolding of the migratory process.Joppke’s analysis, I believe,goes a long way towards helping us to understand the political component of the migratory process;it is an essential insight.At the same time,a narrow focus on legal processes may lead us to miss another crucial part in the politics of the migratory process,namely,the purposeful exercise of power or agency by actors withJournal of Ethnic and Migration Studies515 concrete interests.For the migratory process does not merely unfold(in a passive sense),but must sometimes,instead,be pushed forward.In the case of South Korea,this was particularly evident in the early stages of the process,especially with regard to the expansion of labour rights for international migrant workers(which I also discuss below).The expansion of labour rights,it is important to note,was a strategic process:it involved the conscious creation of an alliance between migrant groups and Korean civic organisations;the intentional manipulation of symbols and norms(including the appropriation of discourses on human rights and social justice);and repeated use of civil disobedience(sit-ins, demonstrations,political organisation and so on).Without these activities,it is doubtful that any meaningful changes would have occurred.In the movement to-wards permanent immigration,therefore,it is equally likely that the exercise of agency by activists within the migrant and immigrant communities,by religious and civic organisations(i.e.non-governmental organisations or NGOs)and other interested actors will play a central,if not essential role.Towards Permanent Immigration?A Comparative PerspectiveThe bigger question is whether the strong and consistent demand for foreign work-ers in the Korean economy will result in long-term or permanent immigration. In countries that underwent a very similar process*most notably Germany*we have unequivocal evidence that it can happen.Indeed,Germany’s experience with its guestworker programme provides a useful perspective through which to assess the migratory process in South Korea.This is largely because the parallels between the Korean and the German programmes are very strong,both in terms of broad objectives and of concrete details.As in South Korea,for example,the German system was designed to institutionalise a system of temporary or rotating worker migration. Castles and Miller provide a useful summary:‘German policies[regarding the guest-worker programme]conceived migrant workers as temporary labour units,which could be recruited,utilised and sent away again as employers required.To enter and remain in the FRG[Federal Republic of Germany],a migrant needed a residence permit and a labour permit.These were granted for restricted periods,and were often valid only for specific jobs and areas’(Castles and Miller2003:72).In South Korea,the design and objectives of the EPS are almost exactly the same,as we have already seen.Despite the clear intentions of the German government,the guestworker pro-gramme failed*in quite dramatic form*to prevent permanent immigration.The programme operated for about18years(from1955to1973),during which time millions of‘temporary’workers entered Germany and millions stayed.By the end of 1990,in fact,the number of‘foreigners’(i.e.non-German citizens)in Germany had grown to5.8million(Federal Statistical Office Germany nd),much of which was the result of family reunion(Panayi2004:469).Even more,the largest single group of former guestworkers who decided to stay in Germany was from,among the seven。