At first glance, Dunpo Elementary seems no different from the thousands of elementary schools scattered across South Korea.
But if you look just below the surface, you will see that the differences are enormous.
First, most students at this school in Asan, an industrial city near the capital Seoul, look Korean but do not speak the language.
“If I don’t translate into Russian for them, the other children won’t understand any lessons,” says 11-year-old Kim Yana.
Yana speaks the best Korean in her class, but she and most of her 22 classmates are native Russian speakers.
Nearly 80% of students at Dunpo are categorized as “multicultural students,” meaning they are foreigners or have a parent who is not a Korean citizen.
Although the school says it is difficult to know exactly what nationalities these students are, it is believed that most of them are Koryoins: ethnic Koreans who typically come from countries in Central Asia.
Amid a declining birth rate and associated labor shortages, South Korea touts the settlement of Koryoins and other ethnic Koreans as a possible solution to the country’s population crisis. But discrimination, marginalization, and the lack of a proper settlement program make it difficult for many of them to integrate.
Essential workers
Koryoins are descendants of ethnic Koreans who migrated to the far east of the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before many were forcibly relocated to Central Asia in the 1930s as part of Stalin’s policy of ‘border cleansing’.
They lived in former Soviet states like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and assimilated to those cultures over the generations. They stopped speaking Korean, which was forbidden.
South Korea began granting residency permits to Koryoins and ethnic Koreans in China after a groundbreaking ruling by the country’s Constitutional Court in 2001. But the number of Koryoin migrants began to grow rapidly from 2014, when they were also allowed to bring their families to the country.
Last year, about 760,000 ethnic Koreans from China and Russian-speaking countries lived in South Korea, representing about 30 percent of the country’s foreign population. Many have settled in cities like Asan, which have more factories and thus more job opportunities.
Ni Denis, who emigrated from Kazakhstan to South Korea in 2018, is one of them.
“Nowadays I don’t see any Koreans in the factory (where I work),” he says. “They find the work difficult, so they leave quickly. More than 80% of the people I work with are Koryoins.”
It’s not just Koryoins who are benefiting from the immigration boost, however. The influx of ethnic Koreans from abroad is also helping to address a severe labor shortage in a country whose population continues to shrink.
South Korea has the lowest fertility rate in the world, which continues to decline year after year. In 2023, the birth rate was 0.72 — far short of the 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population in the absence of immigration.
Estimates suggest that if this trend continues, South Korea’s population could halve by the year 2100.
According to South Korea’s Ministry of Employment and Labor, the country will need an additional 894,000 workers over the next decade, mainly in the service sector, to achieve its “long-term economic growth forecasts.”
Foreign workers help bridge the gap.
“Although the Korean overseas visa is often seen as a form of support for ethnic Koreans, it mainly serves to provide a stable workforce for production,” said Choi Seori, a researcher at the Migration Research and Training Centre.
Mr Lee, a recruiter in Asan who asked to be identified only by his last name, highlighted the workforce’s dependence on immigration in another way.
“Without Koryoins,” he said, “these factories wouldn’t be running.”
Segregation at school and beyond
Immigration may be a solution to the country’s workforce problem, but it also brings its own problems in this ethnically homogeneous society.
Language is one of them.
“Korean children only play with Koreans and Russian children only play with Russians because they can’t communicate,” says 12-year-old student Kim Bobby.
In an attempt to overcome the language barrier, Dunpo Elementary School organizes a two-hour Korean class for foreign students every day. However, teacher Kim Eun-ju worries that many children “hardly understand the lessons” when they move up to higher grades.
In South Korea, there is fierce academic competition and the school is losing local students. Parents worry that their children’s education will be jeopardized because lessons for Koryoins have to be taught at a slower pace.
According to an official national survey from 2021, the enrollment rate for multicultural students in secondary schools is already slightly lower than that of local students. Park Min-jung, a researcher at the Migration Research and Training Center, worries that more Koryoin students will drop out of school if they don’t get the support they need.
And language isn’t the only difference.
Mr. Ni says he has noticed that many of his Korean neighbors have moved away.
“Koreans don’t seem to like having Koryoins as neighbors,” he says with an awkward laugh. “Sometimes Koreans ask us why we don’t smile at them. That’s just how we are; it’s not that we’re angry.”
He says there have been fights between children in his neighborhood, and he has heard of cases where Koryoin children were “rough” during fights. “After that, Korean parents tell their children not to play with Koryoin children. I think that’s how segregation happens.”
“I worry about how Korea will be able to accept other immigrants,” said Seong Dong-gi, a Koryoin expert at Inha University, who explained that there is already “considerable resistance” to the influx of ethnic Koreans who “do not look different.”
The population crisis should be a “catalyst for society to look at immigration differently,” Ms. Choi said. “It’s time to think about how to integrate them.”
In 2023, South Korea was home to approximately 2.5 million foreigners. The country is also a popular destination for migrant workers from countries such as Nepal, Cambodia and Vietnam.
Most of them have a manual job, only 13% have a professional position.
“There is no clear plan for immigration at the national government level,” said Lee Chang-won, director of the Migration Research and Training Center. “Solving the country’s population problem with foreigners has been a side issue.”
Mr Lee adds that current immigration policies are “heavily biased towards low-skilled workers”, leading to a “general perception” that foreigners only work in South Korea for a short period of time and then leave. As a result, he says, there has been little discussion about long-term settlement for all immigrants.
Under current laws, the government is only required to provide support with things like vocational training for foreigners who marry locals. However, the same rights are not granted to families made up entirely of foreigners.
Analysts say a new law for these families is urgently needed.
An Asan official, who asked not to be named, said it was difficult to secure funding for more support services for Koryoin families as there was no legal requirement to do so.
But despite these challenges, Mr. Ni says he does not regret the decision to move to South Korea. Despite the challenges, he still gets a better living environment and higher wages.
“For my children, this is home. When we visited Kazakhstan, they asked, ‘Why are we here? We want to go back to Korea.’”
