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Reconciling progressivism and xenophobia through scapegoating: anti-multiculturalism in South Korea’s online forums

ABSTRACT South Korea’s anti-multiculturalism discourse – the rejection of migrants and of a multicultural future for South Korea – made inroads in progressive popular online forums in the 2010s. Through an analysis of two such forums, this paper shows how online discussions have made the explicit rejection of multiethnic coexistence palatable to a broad group of predominantly male liberal users through a process of “scapegoating” dark-skinned foreign workers and the children of multicultural families for precarity caused by state-driven neoliberalism. The users’ collective discussions do contain some critiques of the neoliberal coalition of corporations, government, and media that have deployed multicultural policies. However, the popular political dynamics of online space enable users to focus on racial Others, who are more available as scapegoats in gendered, racialized, and classed ways – presenting dark-skinned migrants as accomplices and beneficiaries of the elite coalition allegedly taking rights from South Korean male citizens. These collective discussions justify xenophobia in the name of a progressive critique and preemptively stall discussion about a possible multicultural future for South Korea.