Socio-political Consciousness in Korea:Traditional vs. Multicultural Values

This paper is to analyze the characteristics of socio-political consciousness in Korea in terms of traditional Confucian values vs. multicultural values. Facing the situation of rapid increase of foreign immigrants, this paper firstly mentions that Korea has a strategic necessity to develop a multicultural society, and that it is related to accommodation to changing environments, preparing for reunification of Korean peninsula, and overcoming the existent discriminative socio-political consciousness. After reviewing the Korean scholars’ discussions of multicultural society and multicultural values, this paper examines the discriminative socio-political consciousness of Confucian tradition that plays a main role to block Korean multicultural society. The characteristics of Confucianism as a political ideology and its influences on Korean socio-political culture are mainly analyzed. Finally, this paper presents three alternative values compatible with Korean multicultural society with the premise that the values should reflect not only universality, but also Korean peculiarity. The presented values are reciprocal respect for individuality, relative viewpoint of values, and communal egalitarian consciousness. In conclusion, this paper points out if the three values could be developed and settled in Korean society as fast as possible, the prospect of Korea’s developing into a multicultural society may not be gloomy.