Introduction

Since most Koreans came to America in search of success, their strong interest in upward mobility often has determined the attitudes and behavior of other ethnic peoples toward Koreans and has influenced heavily inter-ethnic relationship s between Koreans and non-Koreans. My presentation will interpret inter-ethnic relationships through a historical analysis of Korean attitudes towards upward mobility. 

Historically, Korean attitudes on upward mobility can be traced back to the Chosôn period when meritocratic ideals, embodied in the Confucian civil service examination, competed with a rigid class structure. Since common people (Kor.: sang-in ), in practice, found it difficult to become aristocrats (Kor.: yang-ban), they resorted to passing as yang-ban or hiding their past and creating a geneological record (Kor.: chok-po) to demonstrate their aristocratic heritage. The ideological commitment to passing survived the Japanese occupation and continues into the present. Although most Koreans know they are not yang-ban, the "yang-ban game" in which they proclaim their "pure" lineage and pretend to behave like yang-ban can be seen in everyday life. This yang-ban game creates their interpretation of other ethnic peoples and affects Korean-American interaction with other ethnic groups. . 

In addition to the yang-ban game, ethnic categories politically created in America demand interpretation, because ethnic categories give Americans a shared view on their society and produce ideologies which rule inter-ethnic relations in general. Rather than discussing inter-ethnic relations which touch on Latinos' and Blacks' interaction and relationship with Koreans, I will focus on an historical analysis of the ethos which constitutes Korean-American thinking about other ethnicities in America. 
 

1. Meanings of the Genealogical Records or Chok-po from the Chosôn Dynasty to the Present

Towards the end of the dynasty, some rich merchants bought genealogies from aristocrats and thereby became "aristocrats." Purchases of genealogical records from aristocrats by the rich subordinate class has been interpreted as: (1) a symptom of dynastic decline, and/or (2) evidence of an emerging bourgeois class. By buying genealogical records, rich merchants passed from being a subordinate class to being members of the dominant class. What we should note is that these people did not attack the ideological base of the dynasty, they exploited it. Although the actual power structure of the dynasty was changing, the ideology or the mental structure, which supported the dynasty, was not changing. 

The Japanese state annexed and occupied Korea in 1910, controlling Korea not for the development of Korea but for Japan's national interest. That national interest dictated that Japan try to Japanize the Korean people: forcing them to use Japanese surnames, forbidding them from speaking the Korean language in schools established by Japan's government, and so on. The Japanization of Korean people meant not only a Japanized way of life but also the Japanization of political, economic, and educational systems. Japan disdained and despised the Korean people and their former dynastic order. But the occupiers did not know very much about Korea, and we can speculate whether its policies were successful or not. The Japanese were not aware of how Koreans interpreted the newly established Japanese educational system. Although, generally speaking, Korean interpretations were based on their tradition, the Japanese did not understand that tradition, particularly as it touched on power relationships derived from Confucian ideology. 

The Japanese established common elementary schools for Korean children, through which the colonial administrators thought it should be possible to assimilate Koreans into becoming Japanese. These schools gave Koreans opportunities to raise their status. The same strategy was used by the Meiji government (1868-1911) in the homelands to create good subjects of the Japanese Emperor (Tenn). Although most people who lived in the islands, with the exception of the dominant samurai class, did not have a Japanese national identity before the Meiji era, but certainly by the end of the Meiji, mass education was strikingly successful in creating a Japanese citizenry. A new strategy for Japanese nation-building after the Meiji era was to offer to the Japanese dominant class the expectation of becoming successful in the colonies, particularly in Korea. 

While the Japanese authorities saw education as introducing meritocratic principles to create a homogenous mass obedient to Imperial authority, most Koreans who found success through the Japanese educational system sought after the trappings of traditional high status, wanting basically to become traditional Korean aristocrats or yang-ban. Since it was ideally impossible for non-yang-ban to become yang-ban, these successful people manufactured genealogical records which showed their "pure" lines. On the other hand, from the Japanese perspective, it was possible for everybody to become a member of the upper class even if he or she was from the lower classes. Those who succeeded in going from a lower class to an upper class acquired great pride, because they had overcome all obstacles and had succeeded in spite of their background. These people were absorbed into the national structure as respectable subjects of the Japanese Tenno. Nevertheless, most colonial Koreans did not go through this process. 

Although Korean genealogical records had been originally held only by the yang-ban class, many fake records were created during the 1930's. Most genealogies in Korea today can be traced back to this period. Since Korea was annexed outright as a colony and occupied from 1910 to 1945, it suffered and experienced much Japanese influence. Although creating fake genealogies or buying genealogies were by-products of the Japanese presence, ironically the colonial authority neither expected nor foresaw this result. Here we have evidence that the Japanese could not control traditional Korean Confucian ideology. Even if some in the colonial government understood what was happening they did not seek to abolish Korean class structure since they could use it for their own purposes. Thus, although some of the yang-ban were assimilated into the Japanese national culture, the subordinate classes were substantially and ideologically dominated by the traditional class structure, rather than achieving a degree of liberation, as was the case in Japan. It was natural that those Koreans who had been of the subordinate class but received their new status through Japan's educational system should forge genealogies, because they were still ideologically dominated by Confucianism. 

Korea was liberated in 1945 but suffered the division of the peninsula and the Korean War, basically an outgrowth of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Although the colonial class structure remained intact immediately after 1945, the Korean War killed many people, and substantially destroyed the social order and the class structure. Nevertheless, the distorted ideology of an aristocratic class structure has remained in the Korean consciousness until now. Many Koreans in Korea today regard themselves as yang-ban and publicly refer to their "pure" lines. Although most Koreans are aware of their background, the yang-ban game is constantly performed in everyday life. 

Since real yang-ban people were educated as aristocrats, their morals, ethics, way of life, attitudes, etiquette, mannerisms, and so on were their "cultural capital." It was almost impossible for the non-yang-ban class to imitate yang-ban culture. But now in Korea, people can become yang-ban in that money gives them a chance to buy a genealogy. Many meritocrats are not originally yang-ban but have purchased genealogies in order to become "yang-ban." A number of pre-war yang-ban lost their economic and political power, were replaced by meritocrats after the Korean War, and so their "cultural capital" has become meaningless. 

Since neo-yang-ban buy genealogies in order to legitimate their status, Korean aristocratic ethics have become distorted in that they no longer require domination by elites (yang-ban) who possess a particular "cultural capital." Passing from sang-in (commoners) status to yang-ban status therefore became even easier. 
 

2. Everyday Life in Korea Town, Los Angeles

1. A single person, usually male, who can not speak English well comes to Korea Town and takes up life living in a boarding house. 
2. After this person gets a job, he or she works legally or illegally.
3. Unless he or she has his or her legal status in the United States, this person struggles to get a green card.
4. After this person receives a green card and saves enough money to call his or her family from Korea, the family members come and they all live together in an apartment or share a house with other Korean families in the Korea Town. 
5. When the family leader has saved money sufficient for the survival of the family and has learned to speak English well, the family moves out of the town and seeks housing in a suburban area that had been originally dominated by older Asian immigrants or the white middle class.

Koreans living in the suburbs tend to avoid Koreans in Korea Town, since from the suburban perspective, townspeople are not the same people; they are lower class. The reason for this stems from the fact that there are other ethnic peoples in Korea Town who are regarded as low class from a yang-ban perspective, peoples such as Latinos and Blacks. Those who achieve a better status or who become "yang-ban" can disdain the lower classes, the "sang-in." Thus, aristocratic yang-ban ideology has developed social strata among Korean immigrants in the United States. This ideology pushes Koreans out of Korea Town to the suburbs. 

The yang-ban game, of course, strongly influences: (1) Korean inter-ethnic relations, and (2) Korean generational conflict between the first and second generations. The life world and even ordinary communication with others is limited for Korean immigrants who can not speak English well. For example, a Korean clerk working in a Korean liquor store has relations with: (1) the Korean owner of that shop, (2) Korean, Latino (occasionally), Black (rarely) co-workers, and (3) Latino and Black customers. Their inter-cultural communication is limited partly because they can not speak English or Spanish well, but mainly because they are imbedded in the power relationships at work among different ethnic peoples. 

Korean liquor store owners tend to hire Korean workers and not hire other ethnic peoples. Even when they hire Latinos, these Latinos are not usually treated equally with Korean workers. Latinos who work under a Korean boss memorize a few Korean words such as bballi (quickly)! and kae-sekki (son-of-a-bitch)! Since Latino illegal residents are cheap laborers, they are hired by Korean owners. Korean owners basically avoid Blacks who can receive more money than Latinos. Thus discriminatory hiring practices stem not only from Korean racism based on the yang-ban ideology but also from a clear economic interest. Although there are middle-class Latino and Black people, the narrow perspective derived from the yang-ban game regards all Latinos and Blacks as lower class. Lower class people have to be disdained for the continued existence of a Korean establishment that is middle or upper class. This ideology and the power relationships between Korean employers and Latino employees, support each other and produce ethnic conflict. 

Since the job market open to new immigrants like Koreans is limited, they have to utilize ethnic resources to survive in the United States. Putting the entire family to work, Korean private banking or the kye, and so on are all used for this purpose. Koreans, confined to a small world where they can survive, are forced to participate in macro power relationships between middlemen and capitalists, as the theorists of middleman minorities have described, and also in micro power relationships between Korean employers and Latino employees. Although most Koreans do not know what North American society is and how Latinos are struggling to survive, they have no other choice than to become a middleman minority in macro level power relationships. on the micro level of power relationships, Koreans interpret all Latinos as dogs or kae-sekki, an interpretation based in the yang-ban ideology of their limited social world. The inter-ethnic conflict between Koreans and Latinos is thereby enhanced. 

While Koreans hire cheap, illegal Latino residents, this causes inter-ethnic conflict between Latinos and Blacks, because Black people lose job opportunities. Generally speaking, inter-ethnic conflicts among the lower classes grow worse and worse, because each ethnic member mobilizes ethnic resources to survive. Korean liquor store owners exploit Black people, and Latinos take over their jobs. Latinos are looked upon by Korean employers with disdain as cheap laborers; Latinos look upon Black people as competitors who threaten their working life. From the Korean perspective, both Blacks and Latinos are dogs, but Latinos can be used as cheap laborers, whereas Blacks present Koreans with more expensive labor. Since most Koreans interpret the se matters subjectively it is hard for them to establish inter-ethnic communication with others. 

Problems with inter-ethnic communication are compounded by a serious generation gap among Koreans centered on conflict between the first and second generations. While first generation immigrants realize their limits and expect their children to succeed through the American educational system, their children are socialized in American schools and internalize an American ideology. Cultural differences between Korea and the United States confront children who are living in a Korean home and an American school with their first real taste of conflict. The differences between Korean yang-ban ideology and the American ideology of ethnic categories creates a serious Korean generational conflict. This will be discussed further in the next section. 
 

3. Meaningful Relationships between the Yang-ban Game and American Ethnic Categories

In the past, the dominant people, i.e. "white" people, could unify their identity in terms that excluded "non-whites" or "Blacks." The concept of "Black" has been used to establish a "white" dominant class. Some might argue that skin color is biologically determined and therefore racial categories are based on biology. But the concept of "race" is a social product. In the United States, those who have one percentage point of Black blood have been thought of as "Black." Thus the number of mulattoes who pass from "Black" to "white" has been increasing. In reality, since miscegenation has been continuing in the United States, it is almost impossible to identify any race as "pure." In addition to this, we now know from Gestalt psychology and structural anthropology that the human perception of any color is determined by the relationships among different colors. The color "white" can not exist nor can it have any meaning by itself. 

Figure 1 shows the changes in ethnic categories in the United States. Although these changes are partly dependent on changes in population size, the categories themselves are determined arbitrarily by the power relations mentioned above. For example, Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Indians, Philipinos, and others are categorized as "Asian." There is no meaningful cultural unity of the concept of Asia in this context. As Edward Said has argued, the concept of "Asia" was invented by occidentals. People categorized as minorities: Asians, Pacific Islanders, Latinos, Blacks, and so on can never become the majority. If there is a re-categorization of people, only then can minority members be viewed as the majority. 

This ideological ethnic categorization indoctrinates all children in American schools. Ethnic categories become "natural" to them. Children, in their early public socialization, use these categories to begin differentiating people. Whether or not the dominant people consciously or unconsciously establish ethnic categories, this categorization yields its own power relationships. No one can avoid entering into the ideology or discourse of these power relationships, because everyone has to go to school in order to become successful in the United States. All people have to participate in the majority-minority game involving arbitrarily created ethnic categories, although the categorization system itself is meaningless for the establishment of egalitarian communication among people. 

Turning back to the socialization process of Korean children in the United States, Korean children have a double life-world: their Korean homes and their American schools. Korean parents in Korea Town are struggling to survive and do not have enough time to take care of their children. Although parents came to America for their own or their children's success, many children are expected to become "yang-ban" and are pushed to study hard by their parents. Korean parents in most cases do not know what the American educational system is and how their children are educated. Their interest is dominated by the "yang-ban" game ideology. From the subjective perspective of this ideology, Blacks are black, Latinos are Mexican, and only Whites are American. The Korean assimilation target is toward the white middle class in order to attain a good status. Although Koreans disdain Japanese as wae-nom (Jap bastards), Chinese as tto-nom (Chink bastards), and Whites as yang-nom (yank bastards), Koreans know the dominant class is the white class and the status of the white middle class is higher than that of Koreans. Although well educated Koreans in the first generation of immigrants have different opinions about their subjective interpretation of human categories in America, the number of these people is small. Although these well educated Koreans who live in the suburbs sometimes give advice to Koreans in Korea Town, basically the suburbanites refuse to communicate with the urbanites. It is said metaphorically among Koreans that yang-ban do not have to communicate with sang-in (commoners). A social stratification between urban Koreans and suburban Koreans causes a communication rupture between them. Koreans in town can not learn about the United States from those in the suburbs. To escape from the low class area or Korea Town is dependent on money (first generation), and education (second generation). 

Since Korean children educated in American schools are forced to absorb American ideology, they naturally accept American ethnic categories. Children are categorized as "Koreans," "East Asians," "Asians," “coloreds," and so on. Most children during their school days experience that the "American dream," the vision that everybody is equally treated, is false. Some Korean college students realize American realities and struggle to gain Korean, East Asian, Asian, or colored identities in order to associate with other people said to be like them. Korean parents usually do not know the identity formation process of their own children. For example, Japanese-Americans are East Asians and share an Asian identity with second generation Koreans. By contrast, the parents of the second generation Koreans view Japanese-Americans as not American but as Japanese, not as friends of Koreans, but as the "enemy." Most other foreign people, as well as Korean "sang-in" (commoners), are thought of as peopling a class lower than the "yang-ban" class. This sort of epistemological gap between the first and second generations produces serious conflict between generations. Korean activists point out that this gap is an obstacle to a Korean social movement against discrimination. 
 

4. The Invisible Power of American Ethnic Categories

Second generation Koreans have to participate in the American ethnic category game of majority-minority while they are struggling to achieve a higher status: middle class or upper class. Even after Koreans become middle class and internalizate middle class culture, they will still be categorized as "Asians" and regarded by the white middle class as different people. Whether these Koreans are culturally identical with the white middle class or not is less important than that they will be and are differently treated, because they are "Koreans" or "Asians." Their identity is predetermined by these ethnic categories. 

White people are dominant in middle class society. The non-white middle class people are "racially" or "culturally" different whether there are substantial differences or not, and these "differences" are used for the justification of power relationships between white and non-white. While the power relationships create differences, white people and non-white people, as well, "naturally" think that "races" and "cultures" are stable and given. The pratique (Bourdieu) of creating differences is based on the habitus (Bourdieu) of the white middle class. The habitus of the white middle class dominates discourse in middle class society, e.g., "We enjoy learning about other cultures but don't want to change our way of life." In the end, it will be impossible to understand other cultures unless we reflect on ourselves and abandon our routinized practices (pratique) derived from power relationships. At this point, it is useful to interpret ethnic conflict in middle class society from the analytical perspective of invisible power relationships between "whites" and "non-whites." 
 

Conclusion

The following is derived from an English summary of my article (in print), entitled "The Ideal of Inter-Cultural Education in Japan." Although this is partly dependent on the Japanese context, I believe it might have universal methdological implications. 

In Japan, most Japanese and Koreans have not differenciated ethnic education from national education. Minzoku-kyoiku or ethnic and national education has long been available for those who have North or South Korean nationality. These national schools, established by either North or South Korean residents in Japan, have actually created ethnic boundaries, closing off these smaller societies from the larger, national society within which they exist. As a natural consequence, naturalized Koreans have been regarded by both Japanese and Korean nationals as ethnically and nationally "Japanese." 

However, the ideology that national citizens are mono-ethnic conceals the multi-ethnic reality in Japan and prevents inter-ethnic communication among people. There are Ainu, Okinawan, Koreans, Japanese, mix blood people and others in Japan. It is necessary to establish a new paradigm in order to interpret this reality. Although generally speaking ethnic categories all over the world are ideologically created and used for the legitimacy of specific nations and their given dominant peoples, these categories should be deconstructed in order to establish communicative interaction among all people in Japanese society. One approach to the ideal of inter-cultural education in Japan can be partly derived from structuralist and post-structuralist ideas. These ideas can be integrated in terms of Miyazawa Kenji's thought. Miyazawa developed the idea of "trans-boundary-violation," which makes meaningless the discriminatory boundaries created politically among people. 

Miyazawa's thought suggests that, although structuralists proclaim the relationship between culture and nature, and the death of the meaning of the human subject in relational structures, human being have their own relational stance toward nature (kamae in Japanese). Furthermore, nature is constituted by the ambiguous world of continuity and discontinuity exemplified by each and every existence. According to this idea, all people live in an ambiguous, continuous and discontinuous mobius strip, a shifting rainbow of distinctions. This reality can be expressed by the Japanese word, "kei." Since all people in the world are racially and culturally mixed, there is no distinct boundary among them and this creolization has recently developed rapidly. Miyazawa's thought can contribute to the development of a new paradigm for the interpretation of this reality. 

Since people have the right to choose their own kei, their choice is dependent on their kei identity but by choosing, they don't deny their continuity with other people. Practical plans towards a new system of kei education in Japan include: 
 

1. the establishment of nation-wide and local conferences composed of Japanese-kei, Korean-kei, Ainu-kei, Okinawa-kei and others;
2. the establishment of a new system of teacher education based on the field work methods of cultural anthropology;
3. the creation of a new communication channel between kei schools of people in Japan and North and South Korean national schools in Japan.

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