For Koreans, even some decades ago, the concepts such as multi-cultural society, multi-cultural families were somewhat strange and new to them. This Korean situation, certainly, has given immigrated multi-cultural wives much agonies and sufferings. M...
For Koreans, even some decades ago, the concepts such as multi-cultural society, multi-cultural families were somewhat strange and new to them. This Korean situation, certainly, has given immigrated multi-cultural wives much agonies and sufferings. Most Koreans at last recognize that Korea, like other developed countries, is becoming a multi-cultural nation.
These days the number of multi-cultural families has continuously been rising. Students who have multi-cultural family backgrounds, also, increase in numbers at elementary, middle, and high schools, in Korea. So many wives who married Koreans have not adjusted to Korean culture and their children are falling off at schools. To cope with this situation, Korean Government prepared so many multi-cultural family education programs. These programs have two goals, to give the newly married foreign wives and their children opportunities to adjust themselves with Korean society and to integrate them into their homes, communities, and finally Korean society. If Korean people attain these two goals in near future, not only the multi-cultural wives and their children will be happy, but also the Korean society will be robust and integrated as a whole. But if Korea fails to attain them, there will appear many problems and chaos.
I, at this situation, am not sure whether the Korean government’s multi-cultural family education programs (MCFEP) are adequately attaining their goals step by step or not. There is a need to certify or test if the MCFEP actually contributes to increase multi-cultural family’s life satisfaction and social integration.
This study’s research questions are as follows.
Question one: Does MCFEP raise the multi-cultural family’s life satisfaction?
Questiontwo:Does MCFEP raise the multi-cultural family’s social integration?
Question three: Does MCFEP raise the multi-cultural family's hope?
Question four: Does life satisfaction raise the multi-cultural family's hope?
Question five: Does the life satisfaction raise social integration?
Question six: Does the hope raise integration?
To deal with these research questions, we have to review four constructs, Korean government’s multi-cultural family education program, life satisfaction, hope, and social integration.
For supporting multi-cultural family education, Korean Assembly enacted Multi-cultural family supporting act in 2008. As Korea has been industrialized and urbanized, young men who do not live in metropolitan cities have little chances to marry. Many young men in rural area have married foreign women from South East Asian countries such as Philippines, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Cambodia, Indonesia, and so on. Their children go to schools. Now most of them go to elementary school, and some of them go to middle school and high school. These immigrant wives and their children do not adjust to Korean situation and culture. Foreign wives have been bringing their own value, attitude, norms and way of life into Korea. Maybe we, including immigrant wives, have to study, accept, and recognize many new or strange cultures, knowledge, values, and diverse experiences. We must respect individuals with their culture and values
Multi-cultural Family Support Centers in 234 Basic Area Unit of Local Governments in Korea are offering now more than 100 kinds of education programs. The most famous seventeen programs are multi-cultural family integration program, job helping education program, Korean, individual and family consulting program, other children in multi-cultural home program, international language program, juvenile comedy program, day care center, after school education support program, mother care program, translation service program, language genius program, multi-cultural family self-help meeting, multi-cultural family festival, family documentary film, Korean food making, and traditional culture experience program. Every support center has its own peculiar programs to the region or season.
If these programs are good and helpful, then they will raise immigrant wives’ life satisfaction and will contribute to integrate them into Korean society.
An on line dictionary, Wikipidia, defines social integration as is “the movement of minority groups such as ethnic minorities, refugees and underprivileged sections of a society into the mainstream of societies. Social integration requires proficiency in an accepted common language of the society, acceptance of the laws of the society, and adoption of a common set of values of the society. It does not require assimilation and it does not require persons to give up all of their culture. But it may require forgoing some aspects of their culture which are inconsistent with the laws and values of the new society. In tolerant and open societies, members of minority groups can often use social integration to gain full access to the opportunities, rights and services available to the members of the mainstream of society.”
Traditionally Koreans were proud of that there was only one nation in Korean. Korean government gave up this tradition and has admitted multi-cultural family as it is even though ex post facto. Social integration of immigrated multi-cultural family wives and their children has now become Korea’s important goal. To administer this goal the Multi-cultural Family Support Law and the Multi-cultural Family Support Centers in every 234 Basic Area Unit of Local Government have been made nation widely.
I suppose that multi-cultural family education programs would raise the Korean society’s social integration. If the education programs fail to integrate multi-cultural families into Korean society, many chaos and social conflicts would arise.
Life satisfaction is “the way a person perceives how his or her life has been and how they feel about where it is going in the future. It is a measure of well-being and may be assessed in terms of mood, satisfaction with relations with others and
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