Since July 2009 the first ever case of gendered-racial discrimination has been debated publicly in media and legal/politcal circles in South Korea, it is a welcome phenamenon to see that there are more spontaneous actions to tackle these low profile yet volatile issue in East Asia even after the migration phenonmenon in Asia hit its peak in the recent decade.
It starts with an incident which happened in this July, not long after the second Racism and Hegemony Workshop held June. Bonojit Hussain, a researcher of SungKongHoe University who is affiliated and works for ARENA, with his Korean female friend bumped into an unexpected situation wherein they were abused with various kinds of racial slur by a Korean man while riding on a local bus on the way to the Bucheon city, which is the satellite city near Seoul. The case, later, has been formally been brought to the court and National Human Rights Commission in South Korea.
From then on, diverse kinds of civil groups in Korea, mainly migrant workers, marraige migrants, refugee groups, feminist groups along with ARENA, and other concerned groups and individuals regardless of nationality, actively came together to launch the 'Joint Committee Against Gender-Racial Discrmination'(in Korean: 성.인종차별대책위원회) in July, 27th,2009.
A series of activities aim at tackling on diverse aspects about gender-racial discrimination has been carried out. The web publicity below is about the upcoming event of an open workshop which came after a ground-breaking series of Press conferences and public forum.
In this event, we would like to focus on the urgent need of elaborating the need for public education about racism in East Asian context. It composites by three section: First, how and what is racism? Secondly, why gender dimension has long been neglected in the discourse of racism in Asian context? How and why is gender should be put as the focus along with the developement of practices of anti-racism? Thirdly, what should be taken into consideration while launching the legislation on anti-racial discrimination?
