Light and shade of multicultural education in South Korea: Analysis through Bourdieu’s concept of capital

Purpose: This paper aims to attend to the issues that remain veiled and excluded in the name of multiculture. Design/methodology/approach: This paper problematizes South Korean multicultural education policies through Bourdieu’s concept of capital as a theoretical frame. Findings: First, the paper discusses that material wealth is unequally distributed to most of the multicultural families, resulting in their lack of economic capital. Second, it notes that students from multicultural families are deprived of cultural capital, as they are racialized in Korean society. As a strategy used to distinguish and exclude a so-called different minority from the unnamed majority, race enables the possession of cultural capital. Third, insufficient social capital identified with resources emerging from social networks positions students from multicultural families as a perpetual minority. As the accumulation of various forms of capital secures power and privilege (Bourdieu, 1986), multicultural education in its current state would continuously reproduce the existing power dynamics where students from multicultural families are subordinate. Research limitations/implications: Given this, policies for multicultural education in South Korea should cover a wide range of issues, including race, class and network and be redesigned to resolve realistic problems that have been hidden under the name of celebration of culture. Originality/value: The Korean multicultural education policy has not been analyzed through Bourdieu’s concept of capital. Using a different theoretical viewpoint would be valuable to figure out the problems underlying the policy.