Feminists, the young, and Islamophobes have allied against desperate Yemenis.
The Yemeni refugees who entered South Korea earlier this year should have been a nonstory. Only 561 escapees from the ongoing Saudi-led war in Yemen made it to Korea’s Jeju Province, where 552 applied for asylum, a pittance compared to, say, Germany, which handled approximately 890,000 asylum-seekers in 2015. The Yemeni refugees were confined to the island of Jeju, hardly in a position to interact with the South Korean population at large, much less compete for a job or pose a threat in any way.
Yet the South Korean public reacted to these handful of refugees with hysteria. The petition to liberal President Moon Jae-in demanding the government not accept the refugees garnered more than 700,000 signatures—the highest number since the Blue House opened its online petition system in August 2017. The response to the petition highlights the problems that South Korea’s liberal government is facing as it copes with the legacy of a poisonous conservatism, and with the demands of a public that has become acutely sensitive to race.
The Moon administration responded swiftly: Although Jeju is a tropical island province that allows visa-free entry for visitors from most countries in order to promote tourism, on June 1, the government added Yemen to the small list of countries (including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kosovo) excluded from the policy, effectively prohibiting more Yemeni refugees from reaching the country to claim refugee status. The government also prohibited the asylum-seekers from leaving the island and entering the mainland Korean Peninsula.
The response to the Blue House petition, given by Justice Minister Park Sang-ki and the Blue House’s new media secretary, Chung Hye-seung, on Aug. 1, did reaffirm South Korea’s international obligations toward refugees. In the video response, Chung reminded the viewers that the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, the constitutional precursor to the current South Korean government, was a government-in-exile established by Korean refugees in Shanghai who had escaped Japanese colonial rule. Park affirmed that the Yemeni refugees entered South Korea legally. He stated that, contrary to the petition’s extreme demands, South Korea has no intention of withdrawing from the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the international treaty that sets forth basic international obligation toward refugees, nor would it abolish Jeju’s visa-free policy. Park also proposed establishing a special tribunal for refugees, staffed with area and language experts, as per United Nations recommendations.
Yet Park’s response also included concessions to the xenophobic hysteria. He said there would be efforts to root out “fake refugees” by, for example, testing them for drugs and screening them for a criminal record—echoing two persistent stereotypes of foreigners in South Korea. He also announced additional penalties for “refugee brokers who promote illegalities.” And the Ministry of Justice also doubled the number of countries excluded from the visa-free entry policy, adding 12 additional countries including Egypt, Pakistan, and Somalia. While Park stressed that refugees have legal rights, he also emphasized that refugees who “contravene the social order” could be deported.
It is easy to be disappointed at this response coming from a liberal administration, one that was born out of the heroic monthslong protests that resulted in the impeachment and removal of the deeply corrupt and authoritarian President Park Geun-hye. Yet polling reveals the dispiriting reason why the Moon administration is at least partially pandering to anti-refugee sentiments: The issue potentially poses the greatest threat to the administration’s stability yet, as it strikes at the foundation of its support, namely young voters, women, and the middle class.
