Editorial: A tale of two multicultural limbos: Damunhwa in South Korea and Zainichi Koreans in Japan

In this issue, the four articles display both bright and dark sides of two societies (South Korea and Japan) that are moving towards multiculturalism. South Korea has encountered a new diversity shaped by a dramatic growth of immigrants over the last 20 years. According to the Ministry of Education in South Korea, as of 2016, there were 116,000 children aged 0–6 years and 99,186 K-12 school age children from interracial/ethnic marriage couples or foreign residents. Although these children represent a small minority of South Korea’s 51 million population, an upward trend in growth is clear. During the period between 2011 and 2016 alone, there was a twofold increase in such populations, whereas, the overall number of school age children in South Korea nationwide has continuously decreased over the last decade. In this changing environment, Korean civil society and the government have captured the rise of the new diversity by the term damunhwa (which literally means ‘multi-culture’ or ‘many cultures’). The first three articles shed light on some of the key features of multiculturalism and related educational policies and practices in South Korea.