Snips below.
Entire article here. https://www.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/asia/the-arrival-of-refugees-in-jeju-south-korea-is-sparking-a-furious-backlash/news-story/358da4bcddad27a5299c2fa888f5b876
As far as South Koreans are concerned, refugees are not welcome.
Earlier this year, 550 Yemeni asylum seekers landed on Jeju, a resort island popular with honeymooners and other tourists.
Unlike the mainland, Jeju has offered visa-free arrival for many nationalities as a way to boost declining tourism numbers since 2002.
For Yemeni asylum seekers, who had fled their war-torn country and were stationed in the South-East Asian country, it was an opportunity to gain entry into mainland South Korea.
Over the last five months, over 500 Yemenis have arrived in Jeju, up on just 51 across all of last year.
But the arrivals haven’t gone down well with Koreans. Outcries have broken out both on the island and in the country’s capital, Seoul, with the Yemeni arrival wave sparking what the New York Times described as South Korea’s “first organised anti-asylum movement”.
Locals have held demonstrations in recent months, brandishing signs that say “GET OUT” and “FAKE REFUGEES GO HOME RIGHT NOW” in English and Korean.
“From an early age, they learn to treat women like sex slaves and to beat them as they like,” said Yang Eun-ok, 70, a leader of the Jeju protest, according to the newspaper. “They can take many wives and produce many children. Now, there are 500 of them. In 10 and 20 years, how many of them will there be?”
In July, Se-Woong Koo, the publisher of an English-language magazine in Seoul, wrote an opinion piece for the Times decrying South Korea as “racist” and “intolerant of outsiders”.
This prejudice, she argues, is a product of Korea’s homogenous culture.
“None of this is surprising given South Korea’s education system. For decades, children, myself included, were taught to believe that this is a single-blooded nation — dubbed danil minjok in Korean. This myth of racial purity was promoted to foster national unity.”
Entire article here. https://www.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/asia/the-arrival-of-refugees-in-jeju-south-korea-is-sparking-a-furious-backlash/news-story/358da4bcddad27a5299c2fa888f5b876
As far as South Koreans are concerned, refugees are not welcome.
Earlier this year, 550 Yemeni asylum seekers landed on Jeju, a resort island popular with honeymooners and other tourists.
Unlike the mainland, Jeju has offered visa-free arrival for many nationalities as a way to boost declining tourism numbers since 2002.
For Yemeni asylum seekers, who had fled their war-torn country and were stationed in the South-East Asian country, it was an opportunity to gain entry into mainland South Korea.
Over the last five months, over 500 Yemenis have arrived in Jeju, up on just 51 across all of last year.
But the arrivals haven’t gone down well with Koreans. Outcries have broken out both on the island and in the country’s capital, Seoul, with the Yemeni arrival wave sparking what the New York Times described as South Korea’s “first organised anti-asylum movement”.
Locals have held demonstrations in recent months, brandishing signs that say “GET OUT” and “FAKE REFUGEES GO HOME RIGHT NOW” in English and Korean.
“From an early age, they learn to treat women like sex slaves and to beat them as they like,” said Yang Eun-ok, 70, a leader of the Jeju protest, according to the newspaper. “They can take many wives and produce many children. Now, there are 500 of them. In 10 and 20 years, how many of them will there be?”
In July, Se-Woong Koo, the publisher of an English-language magazine in Seoul, wrote an opinion piece for the Times decrying South Korea as “racist” and “intolerant of outsiders”.
This prejudice, she argues, is a product of Korea’s homogenous culture.
“None of this is surprising given South Korea’s education system. For decades, children, myself included, were taught to believe that this is a single-blooded nation — dubbed danil minjok in Korean. This myth of racial purity was promoted to foster national unity.”