With a View to an Inclusive Community

By Park Nahm-Sheik

Since elementary school, many of us Koreans have been fed the myth of our culture being “immaculately” homogeneous and thus incomparably superior to any other culture. I honestly cannot quite make sense of this egregiously chauvinistic take on our culture, however. Not grounded in truth at all, it definitely does not seem to stand to reason. At least, that is what I think.

In point of fact, wave upon wave of offshore culture has constantly made landfall in the Land of the Morning Calm ever since as far back as we can remember. The “uncomfortable” truth is that no culture on earth can ever survive, much less thrive, in complete isolation from the outside world. No man (or, for that matter, no community) is an island.

We are all citizens of Spaceship Earth, bound to always live and operate in tandem for ever and ever. It is our destiny, as it were, to share our collective home planet with everyone else, regardless of origins, identities, or ideologies. From this vantage point, the ultra-nationalistic take on our culture alluded to earlier in this article does not at all belong in any sane and rational mindset, does it? What do you say?

It makes sense at this point to more seriously think of the multicultural members of society in our very midst. We arguably owe them a heavy debt of gratitude for being a constant source of enrichment for all of us. Far from being a burdensome liability, as some irresponsible observers might claim, they are definitely a precious asset to our entire community in more ways than one – socio-culturally, psychologically, and economically, at the very least.

We should now wash our hands of this erroneous perception that our culture is somehow homogeneous and thus superior to all other cultures. Instead of blindly absorbing such baloney, we must face up to this: Inclusion, not exclusion, is the name of the game globally these days. Neither purism nor supremacism has a leg to stand on anymore.

Relevant to our discussion here is my first encounter with some intercultural activists at the Gwangju International Center (GIC) a few summers ago. I got to address them as a keynoter at a GIC forum. As I recall, they were a bunch of volunteers firmly committed to a campaign against prejudice and discrimination in the community.

The GIC was then and is to this day a major hub of intercultural activism in Korea. The GIC’s executive director, Dr. Shin Gyonggu, has had a pivotal role to play in helping mold the GIC into a genuine game changer of a catalyst here. Under his management, the GIC has become the incubator of a biosphere friendly to intercultural cross-fertilization. Thanks to this biosphere, things are already beginning to happen here and there with the footprints thereof being in evidence everywhere.

Dr. Shin and his loyal coterie of followers deserve plaudits from us all. May intercultural brotherhood find in the GIC a permanent home where the heart truly is.

The Author

Nahm-Sheik Park has a BA in English from Chonnam National University, an MA in linguistics from the University of Hawaii, and a PhD in applied linguistics from Georgetown University. He is now a professor emeritus after a long and illustrious career at Seoul National University.