Likely to have a hard time mixing with peers due to language, appearance


Students from multicultural families are at a higher risk of being bullied at school as they are likely to have a hard time mingling with their peers due to language problems and racial discrimination.

Four out of five foreign teenagers in Seoul are out of school largely because of discrimination and bullying, coupled with study problems, according to a recent city survey.

It hasn’t been long since the government started to protect the education rights for students from multicultural families, but it does little for that of undocumented children.

An 11-year-old boy born to a Bangladeshi father and a Korean mother was beaten by his classmates who reportedly hated him for no reason, a local media outlet said. He had been so abused until recently that he suffers from severe post traumatic stress disorder and sometimes feels the urge to kill himself.

A 2010 survey of about 186 students from multicultural families conducted by the National Human Rights Commission found that about 41.9 percent said they had been taunted by classmates because of their different accents when speaking Korean.

Of them, 36.6 percent said their peers looked down on them based on their mother countries, and 25.3 percent said they were insulted for their appearance, including skin color. Twenty-one percent were told to leave the country, and 15.1 percent were beaten by peers.

Many multicultural students who have been bullied at school said they wished to quit school, with 26.7 percent of students citing taunts and discrimination as the main reason.

Currently, Korea has about 1.2 million foreign residents who account for two percent of the total population as of last July, according to statistics from the Justice Ministry.

With the increase in the number of foreign immigrants, the number of their children has risen as well. From 2008 to 2009, the number of multicultural students surged by 53.9 percent to 107,689.

Many of them are of elementary school age. Some come to Korea in their adolescent years, but find it difficult to avoid discrimination and bullying in the classroom, as well as to adjust to their new school life here.

Experts say that foreign or multicultural teenagers, regardless of their legal or illegal status, should be guaranteed the same education rights as Korean nationals. They also point out that the current multicultural policy by the government is drawn up only for legal immigrants, neglecting the illegal ones. As a result, children without documents are left out of the social safety net and are excluded from education.

Considering the school problems faced by foreign children, the Education Ministry has included them in their policy range and tried to establish alternative schools to help these students adjust to the regular school system since 2010. But children of illegal immigrants are hardly protected in the system.

“The government should help them receive language education for their studies and future careers, and the education should be suitable to their age,” said Jang Myung-seon of the Seoul Foundation of Women and Family, who recently led a research project on foreign teenagers.

By Lee Woo-young (wylee@heraldcorp.com)