Study on the Current Status of Multicultural Education in South Korea

In recent days, Korean society has rapidly become multicultural society due to the sharp increase of immigrants. However, the cultural exclusiveness of Korean has caused the lack of understanding multicultural education, which has led to the misguided discussions and practices of multicultural education and therefore, raised significant problems. In addition, educational materials and information for multicultural education are not only insufficient, but also culturally biased, which is not intended. This study aims to explore the tasks and alternative plans by understanding the current status of multicultural education. The literature research was employed as the study method. It was found that, 1) NPO is mainly charged with education for the foreign worker's families, 2) the official education institutes are insufficient and 3) the admission counseling by municipal and provincial offices of education does not practically guarantee the educational opportunities. The contents of the multicultural education for international marriage families are limited in Korea and Korean traditional culture and there are only 10 model schools for multicultural education nationwide. The number of children of saeteomins has not been exactly identified and the educations in Hanadul school while staying at Hana Center and alternative schools are all that are given to children of saeteomins. Children of saeteomins show low rate of enrollment to middle and high schools and higher rate of dropout than the other students. To solve the issues mentioned above, alternative measures in the policy level were found as follows: 1) the expansion of multicultural education opportunities, 2) the diversification of multicultural education contents, 3) the cultivation of specialized personnel, and 4) the guarantee of equal opportunity of education