Racism and Koreans in the UK
I’ve been following the excellent writing of Oh My News correspondent in the UK, Pak Song-jin, over the last few months and posted here before about his articles. His latest is on a very disturbing subject - the effects of racism on the Korean community in London (thanks to the friend who e-mailed me this).
The article concentrates on two recent incidents that have disturbed the London Korean community. The main one, which gives the article its title, was a racist hammer attack on a Korean student in New Malden (London’s ‘Koreatown’). Despite seemingly ample evidence against the perpetrator of the crime (photos of the incident, multiple witnesses, the weapon used etc), the authorities decided not to prosecute the attacker…. for lack of evidence. The second recent incident has been the very lenient sentence (five years) handed to British man who brutally murdered his Korean wife (I wonder in the latter case whether sexism wasn’t as much the problem as racism).
Pak rightly connects this with the revelations of the last decade or so about ‘institutional racism’ in Britain, particularly in the police force. The most notorious case, and the one which really put this problem into the public arena was that of the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the subsequent bungled police investigation.
While I’ve no doubt that the Korean community here does suffer from racism, both institutional and from the public at large, I think it would be wrong to get it out of proportion. I have little doubt that it is people from an African/Afro-Caribbean or South Asian background that suffer the worst racism in the UK. Obviously this is partly due to the relatively small size of the Korean community and its social makeup, which must be dominated by students and middle-class professionals. However, one thing that struck me while reading this article is that the relative size and weight of the community is clearly growing and Koreans in London can no longer be an ‘invisible minority’ on the sidelines of society. As time goes on more and more Koreans are going to be born or grow up here and Koreans will no doubt become a more active and ‘visible’ minority. Which can only be a good thing of course.
