Diverse rural programs bear fruit for multicultural families

Jang Tae-in, from Vietnam, and husband Kim Chang-gu at work in an apple orchard (Photo: Weekly Gonggam Magazine)

With international marriages on the rise in Korea’s rural areas, the Korea Rural Community Corporation (KRC) has expanded measures to support multicultural families and migrant wives who are becoming an integral part of rural communities. These measures include grants for various cultural and leisure activities, Korean language education programs for children, and the opportunities for foreign-born wives and mothers to visit their home countries or even arrange for their families to visit Korea.

Twenty-nine-year-old Jang Tae-in lives in Cheongsong-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do (Cheongsong County, North Gyeongsan Province) with her husband, her mother-in-law, and three children. She moved to Korea from her native Vietnam in 2006 and was naturalized as a Korean citizen in January of this year. Jang, who has since adopted a Korean version of her Vietnamese name, works with husband Kim Chang-gu on their apple orchard. She also heads local meetings for Vietnamese migrant women.

This year, Jang and her family were among the 22 multicultural families that were sponsored by the KRC to travel to their respective home countries. Jang returned to Vietnam for the first time in five years, accompanied by her husband and children, reuniting with her parents in what she described as an unforgettable moment. She said that further development of the project would help in encouraging cross-cultural understanding and bolster the emotional well-being of female migrants in Korea.

Jang is representative of the international marriage trend that has significantly reshaped Korea’s rural population in recent years. Statistics published by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family found that 41% of bachelors in rural areas who got married in 2009 married women of non-Korean nationality. The findings also showed that that two out of five married couples working in agriculture today are international.

Kim Kum-lae, Minister of Gender Equality and Family, cooking with migrant women at the Jecheon Multicultural Family Support Center in Chungcheonbuk-do (Photo: Yonhap News)

Mirroring this upward trend, the KRC’s sponsored travel program began in 2008 with eight families and then increased steadily to 13 in 2009, 18 in 2010, and the aforementioned 22 families in 2011. Four years later, a total of 61 multicultural families have been sponsored, and the annual budget for the project was recently a total of 54 million won.

“There should be more social interest and support regarding the problems that these women face as a result of cultural differences, such as adapting to Korean society and raising their children in this new environment,” said Jeong In-no, head of the Office of Public Relations at the KRC. “We recently invited twelve multicultural families from rural areas to Seoul to learn about the culture and history of Korea by touring its famous sites, including Gyeongbokgung, the National Folkore Museum, and COEX.”

Similar initiatives aimed at improving the experience of married migrant women and multicultural families in Korea include Korean cooking lessons and online education resources. One recent project was a group effort by members of a volunteer service organization affiliated with the KRC to repair and restore old houses that have been worn down and become unsafe for these families to inhabit.

The KRC has announced that it hopes to help alleviate communication difficulties faced by migrant women by increasing funding for Korean language education. In addition to language training, the KRC will focus on creating more events for multicultural families and providing opportunities for information exchange.

Park Jae-sun, CEO of the KRC, affirmed multicultural families and children as being uniquely equipped to carry out a kind of civilian diplomacy between Korea and other countries. Their ability to understand and navigate between different cultures and languages, said Park, makes them truly ‘global’ in their potential, and the KRC will use all the resources at its disposal to cultivate this potential.

The Korean government, in addition, has created a network of Multicultural Family Support Centers throughout the country. These centers have been set up to provide family education, counseling and cultural services for multicultural families, support the early settlement of migrant women in Korean society, and to help multicultural families enjoy stable family lives. More information is available at (available in Korean, English, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Tagalog).

By Kwon Jungyun
Korea.net Staff Writer
Article adapted from the Weekly Gonggam Magazine