Effects of the Residential Ethnic Composition on Korean Attitudes toward Foreigners

The burgeoning influx of international residents into Korea has been diversifying the demographic structure as well as increasing the size of the foreign population. This swell in ethnic heterogeneity is a novelty to Korean society which has had homogeneous ethnic-cultural features. The main objective of this paper is to examine the effects of foreign population size on Korean attitudes towards foreigners and heterogeneity of its effect according to the foreigner’s ethnic group. This study hypothesizes that perceptions of threat posed by a larger size of foreign population in a county are likely to increase Korean negative attitudes towards foreigners. Micro-data from the 2010 Korean General Survey and municipal data of foreign residents and Korean citizens in 2009 are analyzed. The effects of the foreign population’s perceptible size on Korean attitudes towards foreigners vary depending on the foreigner’s ethnic group. The primary result in this study shows that greater size of foreign population in a county tends to have more negative effects on Korean acceptance towards Japanese, Korean Chinese, Han Chinese, and Southeast Asians in comparison to the result that foreign population size has a statistically insignificant effect on Korean attitudes towards North Korean defectors, North Americans, and Europeans.