Joongang Ilbo on Biracial Koreans

The Joongang Ilbo’s Kim Soe-Jung has a very long, thoughtful, and comprehensive piece on the subject.  It never lost my interest for a moment.  What makes this article unlike so many in the Korean press since the Hines Ward phenomenon is that it deals more with the question about how people should be treated than the question of who is Korean.  There are also facts you may not have known, such as the explosive growth in mixed marriages in Korea, and this:

In December 2004, the National Human Rights Commission aired a commercial with black-and-white photographs of middle-aged biracial Koreans. The voice-over narrator intoned, “I am Korean, but they say I am different because of my skin color.”

The campaign caught the public’s attention; many people said they were moved. The commission pronounced it a consciousness-raising success.

But Bae Gy-chul, who appeared in the commercial as a model and the narrator, said he was unhappy with the result. “I was upset because of the way they portrayed me,” he said. “Although I had better clothes, they dressed me in humble clothes and made me play the guitar in front of a crumbling apartment building. I thought that people would see us in the wrong way, as different.”

An interesting reflection of the HRC’s own stereotypes, although I still credit them for taking the issue on.   More on those HRC ads here.