Are Koreans Racist?

This is probably not a great question. However I do get it a lot. Its not great in that it is unfair and stupid to expect a simple yes or no to such a multi-faceted issue as racism. I can only draw on my experiences in Korea and try to shed some light. I warn you that I am not an expert and a blog post will probably elicit more questions than it does answers. However let me know what you think and we will address the different angles to this issue.

Before progressing further let me note that Korean society is highly homogeneous. Koreans pride themselves on maintaining purity and a sense of national pride seldom replicable in other countries. Given the bloody war  they went through with their Northern brethren its perhaps not surprising. The point I am trying to make however is that most of this national pride and desire to be pure can manifest itself in uncomfortable racial skirmishes.

My first entry of note in my diary once I had settled in Korea reads "you know you are far away from home when the first thing you do when you enter a room is to subconsciously count how many black people there are." I should have added that "once you count, you deliberately perch yourself close to a black person even when they are total strangers". There were times when I would travel for hours in Seoul without sighting a black face and when I eventually did, I would smile a greeting not because I knew them, but because they were black too. The truth is that there are very few black people in Korea and for most Koreans the closest they would have come to black people is either seeing them on television or pictures.

Much of the answer depends on what one means by racism. There is a brand of racism that I choose to call ignorance and some of that was in evidence in Korea. Where people discriminate against you because they either completely lack knowledge about you or have been incessantly fed the wrong information. Take an advert by Korean Air for example. The airline decided to launch flights from Seoul to Kenya early in the year and advertised the new route by showing a montage of wildlife with shots of a spear wielding Masai tribesman in traditional garb leaping in the air. A booming deep voice accompanies the images, extolling the "primitive" beauty of Africa. This is just one example of the many media images that inadvertently put a certain imagery in the minds of those that are not very well acquainted with Africa and Africans. In later screenings, the "primitive Africa" commentary was taken down possibly due to one or two complaints from the public. I don't believe the airline was being racist but simply operating from a base of ignorance.

Me and some Korean friends.

Racism fueled on ignorance feeds on such products of the mass media and unfortunately we find ourselves in some kind of a rut as Africans as well. African tourism has inadvertently found itself promoting the idea of uncultured Africa. Understandably, as Africans we have to trumpet our competitive advantage which happens to be our vast lands populated with ample wildlife, our traditional ceremonies and our customs. We have no structures to rival the Eiffel Tower or the Burj Khalifa. We have no cities to match the world renown of Venice, Monaco or Amsterdam. We therefore face a dilemma in marketing our pristine beauty, untainted by civilisation yet somehow miraculously show that the people that inhabit our lands are civilised and can hold their own against any race.

My people in Monze

The advantage with this brand of racism, if I may call it that, is that it can be corrected with the right type of education. You only have to listen to some of the questions people ask once they get comfortable enough to venture, to arrive at this conclusion. It is better exemplified by the time me and some Korean friends visited a home for the disabled. My Korean colleagues had warned me beforehand, indicating  that for many of the people in the care home, it would be the first time they saw someone of my colour. They advised that I should brace myself.  However even that warning failed to prepare me for the commotion my presence caused in that home. Within seconds of arriving, I was mobbed. I later faced a barrage of questions and pokes apparently just to satisfy themselves that I was truly a human being. The friend who was interpreting had a hard time translating the questions to me. There were questions about my hair, whether I had ever seen an aircraft (to which I sarcastically replied that I hadn't and had actually swam all the way from Zambia to South Korea, although I doubt my translator relayed the message). Questions about my brain my family and pretty much everything in-between. And when it was suggested they take photos with me I couldn't help but feel like some rare species in a zoo. They were all clamoring to stand next to me in the photo. I call this honest ignorance and though irritating is a fair product of lack of exposure.

This is definitely different from the brand practiced by skinheads who are too eager to bash a black brother's head to pulp with a baseball bat. That involves a conscious decision to hate people who are not of your race. I can gladly report that I never suffered this type of racism which I consider more serious as it seldom succumbs to education. There was never a time when I was woken up in the middle of the night to be confronted by hooded cross wielding white supremacists.

Koreans are therefore not racist but there are a number that are ignorant. Much of this is honest ignorance, a normal reaction to an alien situation. A reasonable deal of it has been constructed from stereotypical imagery from the "dark continent". Perpetuated through movies, documentaries and pictures portraying hunger, ignorance, wildlife, people dressed in animal skins and so forth. Do I find it irritating?, most definitely but I can only deal with it by showing that I am far from the stereotype that their brain has constructed.