By Michael Breen
When Seoul City and some local governments last month ordered all non-Korean workers to submit to COVID testing, people quickly condemned it as inappropriate and discriminatory. Some went further. The ruling Democratic Party lawmaker Lee Sang-min, for example, called the decision an "unjust racist action against foreigners."
Putting aside the question of what a "just" racist action against foreigners might look like, was he right? Yes, the policy was ill-judged ― in fact, Seoul City was so persuaded and changed the order to a recommendation ― but was it racist? In other words, did this measure arise from a place of discrimination and prejudice toward people based on their race?
As we know, the trigger was a cluster among foreign workers living in dormitories in Gyeonggi Province and statistics which showed foreigners, who accounted for 2.2 percent of cases in Seoul this time last year, now accounted for 6.3 percent.
Someone decided that something should be done to pre-empt more infections. But it doesn't take a genius to see that the idea of simply being foreign didn't make much medical sense and that the measure was an odd departure from the targeted thoroughness of Korea's test and trace strategy.
At first, though, officials were defensive. A spokesperson told CNN he thought of it "as a measure to protect the individual's safety rather than discrimination." In other words, it may seem like we're picking on you, but it's for your own good.
So, let's agree that it was a poor decision that was poorly communicated. But, to return to our question, was it racist?
This word gets thrown around a lot now in the English-speaking world because its meaning has broadened. Whereas it once referred to explicit prejudice and discrimination based on race, it has evolved to refer to bias and stereotyping attitudes that people may not even be aware they hold and to bias built into the system that we also may not be aware of but which is revealed by unequal outcomes.
Thus, people who are not racists according to the first use of the word can nevertheless find themselves being accused of being racists in the broader sense. To complicate matters, some people claim that non-white people can't be racist, according to which, of course, mandatory testing of foreigners in Korea by definition can't be racist.
In this regard, the usage is rather like that of the Christian notion of sin. Even someone who doesn't commit sinful acts or even have sinful thoughts nevertheless has original sin. The difference, though, is that those using the word racism tend to do so in accusation against others, rather than in acknowledgment of their own flaws.
That all said, I don't think the word correctly characterizes the problem. You could disagree, arguing that as Korean national identity tends to be ethnicity-based, prejudice against other ethnicities is a form of racism.
But even this, in my opinion, is more to do with nationality than race. Ethnic Koreans, we should note, make up a significant portion of the 375,000 foreigners in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province and were not entirely exempt.
There is a tendency here to view non-Koreans as "outside country people," to literally translate the Korean word for foreigner, rather than as neighbors. This was the norm a generation ago and was a consequence of nationalistic education.
Koreans were taught that their role in life was to contribute to the national economy and thought that foreigners, even if they lived here, were emotionally committed in another direction, toward their own countries.
While modern society is moving on from this way of seeing things, the habit of putting people in boxes and drawing assumptions about them remains. That is because, of course, identifying people like this is natural. We all do it.
When governments do it, there is always a risk because classifying people is both necessary for policy on one hand and the starting point of social engineering on the other.
Getting this right is easier said than done. In France, for example, the law forbids the government from collecting ethnic and religious census data. That seems like a good thing. It fits the Morgan Freeman remedy for the United States ― stop talking about race. But it also means the authorities have trouble recognizing issues that may be specific to certain groups.
To help prevent the Korean government embarrassing itself again, it would be handy if the authorities could look at non-Korean passport holders not as foreigners but as residents. They may lack the Korean passport and the right to vote, but they pay taxes, work here, study here, contribute to the economy and generally grow to love the country and the people.
And, of course, we all share the same interest in dealing with the virus. It's just that it doesn't check our passports and, in fighting it, nor should we.
Michael Breen (mike.breen@insightcomms.com) is the author of "The New Koreans."
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