Basic Report

  
  
   The world has entered ‘the age of immigration’ as the migration of peoplebetween countries has become a common trend and generalized in the global villageunder the influence of globalization and liberalization. Korea is no exception to suchphenomenon; as the number of foreigners in Korea has sharply increased over the lastfew years, there exist a number of difficulties in their settlement process, such as thestruggle to adjust their lifestyles to that of the community’s. In addition, there stillexists some discrimination from native Koreans towards foreigners.On the other hand, there are some problems in the state policies and localautonomous bodies that hinder the support for the settlement of multi-culturalcommunities. That is, the central office is crowded with too many departments thathave similar authorities over policies to support multi-culture family and foreigners,resulting in the inefficient use of administrative and budgetary resources, which alsoleads to problems such as the inability for local autonomous bodies to promote anyeffective policies to further assist multi-culture families. Although a variety offoreigners, such as married immigrants, foreign worker, North Korean defectors, etc.,might have already been residing in the community for years and formed its ownmulti-cultural society in the process, there still exists no comprehensive and systematicpolicy customized to satisfy the needs of the minorities that specifically caters to thecharacteristic of the community. In addition, there exist many problems such asinefficient use of administrative resources due to political issues that separatesupporting departments for migrants, leading to a lack of budget, lack of publicservant professionalism, and development and support of related programs that is of noreal assistance to the foreigners, etc.Through a variety of examination methods, with the consideration that there existsome problems within Korea’s multi-culture policy, this study is aimed to identifyproblems that take place during the foreigner-settlement process as well as theproblems within policies from both the state and local autonomous bodies that supportimmigrants.This study is intended to contribute to the development of an effectivemulti-cultural policy, and to assist immigrants to settle in their respective communitiesby suggesting how to improve on the acclimatization issues.