Research topic: Muslims in Korea
Common stereotypes & prejudices of the subculture:
-
The Koran states that they
should use violence to spread Islam and it is the will of Allah.
- They are not open toward other religion. Some Muslims are hostile to other religions, which leads to social problems such as crimes.
-
Women are oppressed in the Islam
society.
- Most Muslims in Korea would be from Arab countries.
- Muslims would find it difficult living as Muslims in Korea
- They live ascetic, strict lives including not eating pork and alcohol, and praying 5 times a day wherever they are when the time is right for praying.
Research plans:
- -We are planning to interview 2~3 Muslims ( one graduate student, two undergraduate students/ two males, one female)
- -Also planning to visit Muslim mosque and try Halal food in Itaewon
Preliminary research
Video 1
charlycheer - Being Muslim in Korea
Summary : In this video, a youtuber interviews a Muslim women who lives in Korea. The interveiwer asks her about her experience as a Muslim in Korea. For example, how she is treated in Korea, how different her life in Korea is from that in her hometown, etc. This video is maybe the best example for us to look up.
(From this blog post, you can find the transcript of this video and some more QNAs)
Article 1
Life is Very Hard for Korean Muslims (Korea Times, 2007/8/10) (<-- Link)
Summary: This article talks about the difficulties Muslims face in the Korean society. In this article, Muslims in Korea also mention about what kind of prejudices they face, their reality in Korea, and their wish for openness to Islam in Korean society.
Life is Very Hard for Korean Muslims (Korea Times, 2007/8/10) (<-- Link)
Summary: This article talks about the difficulties Muslims face in the Korean society. In this article, Muslims in Korea also mention about what kind of prejudices they face, their reality in Korea, and their wish for openness to Islam in Korean society.
See Koslims in Korea from page 49 to 52
Summary: This part of the paper explains about misconceptions of Muslims in Korea by Korean people and the Korean media. It refutes some prejudices by informing the reality, and lists some obstacles Korean Muslims face.
Summary: This part of the paper explains about misconceptions of Muslims in Korea by Korean people and the Korean media. It refutes some prejudices by informing the reality, and lists some obstacles Korean Muslims face.
Summary: Here is a personal story of a Korean Muslim who have converted from Christianity. He explains when he was disappointed by the Christian society in Korea and couldn't find find truth in it, he found out Islam as a truthful alternative.
Summary: This article is about the relation between Islam and Korea from the past to present. It seems that Korea and Islam have nothing in common. However they have shared economies, cultures and ideas in the history.
After reading the paper "Inter-cultural Dynamics in the Muslim Neighborhood of Seoul", I became completely shocked to learn that some European countries are openly discriminating against Muslims, such as in terms of their attire. How can it possibly be that wearing a hijab is forbidden in public offices and educational institutions in France??? That is so absurd! And this comes from a more open-minded continent than Asia. Although I have not professionally looked if Korea has the same policy I am pretty sure that not even this country would announce such prohibition. I sure hope not...
답글삭제Comment by Elena Kim.
삭제[Daeyoung Yun]
답글삭제I can't expect that food restriction is a big thing for them. Yeah but after some thinking, I realize that Korea is Really big meat oriented country...! And also I saw the blog post very interestingly, it's such an instructive for me to know differences between Christianity and lslam... But also, I'm worrying about that some of our peers who's Christian might be in a bad temper after seeing this... I think there should be pros and cons in both religion, or may be it's not a field of right or wrong.
[HaYeon Kim]
답글삭제I was very surprised when I realized the existence of Korean Muslims through reading article #1. I think I used to have a stereotype that there are no Korean Muslims, but I haven't notice this stereotype at all. Before realizing it, I thought most of the stereotypes and challenges as Muslims living in Korea are related to not only their religion but also being expats. However, now I start to think Korean Muslims are likely to have more difficulties due to their religion because most of Koreans are ignorant about the existence of Korean Muslims and tend to regard their religion more strange I guess. Since we Koreans tend to have tolerance for difference when it comes to foreigners, people might be tolerate when someone doesn't want to drink alcohol because of he/her religion. But for Koreans, it would be really hard not to drink alcohol or keeping Islamic rules because people would think that's a lame excuse. I think Koreans have to accept we are now really on the road to religious diversity and try to know more about Islamic culture.
I do not know much about Muslims and their cultures. Therefore, watching Charly's video (again!) was very helpful for me to understand the differences, especially about difficulties in Korea. In fact, Korea seems to be not such a harsh place for them. However, of course, there still exist some differences. And, as it also mentioned in post#3 2nd video, it includes 'food' culture. I haven thought that Koreans' strong homogeneity would be strange for foreigners, but I haven't related that to our 'team building' culture. Then, now I realized that such homogeneous culture also appears on our school life, or company life, in that we love to drink and eat food together. Another thing that I realized was that, as there are not many religious people in Korea, I haven't thought of place for 'prayer' that is necessary for not only Muslims, but also other religious people. So, the interviewee's point about that was refreshing to me.
답글삭제I can safely say that out of the 6 topics that our groups are representing, this topic is the one that I know the least of. This does not, however, mean that I had the most stereotypes because I just did not know anything about muslim to even have any stereotype. The only thing that I knew about Islam was that they lead the most brutal terrorist organizations. That alone however did not paint a complete picture for me, and I always felt quite curious about Islam and its culture. From your first post, I was amazed and enlightened because I got to know so much about Islam. Especially the facebook article that your group posted has definately given me a positive view about Islam and now I am starting to show respect to Islam as a religion. I believe I can learn so much from your other posts as well as your presentation, which I am very much looking forward too.
답글삭제From "Islam, Itaewon, Muslims, and Koslims: Inter-cultural Dynamics in theMuslim Neighborhood of Seoul.", I think I saw an opinion that there are problems that school provide pork as meal and they cannot assure that meat has appropriate process of Muslim religion. I think it is a kind of unreasonable require. There are few muslim students in school and it is not irrational or unreasonable to provide pork as meal in sight of average people who don't have religion. They just have to accept it.
답글삭제I am Myeongjin Seo.
삭제.
답글삭제I learned a lot of Muslim by your articles. On the article number 2, Muslim was known as the first time by silk road commercials. And also from the Ssanghwajeom. Korea and Muslim have not have trouble yet.
답글삭제By the way, I think the video is not a good example of Muslim in Korea. Because the interviewee lived internationally, she has learned diversity and overcome difficulties many years ago. So, I think the interviewee is not a good representation of Muslim in Korea.
Hyunjun Jeon
삭제Hyunjun Jeon
삭제I learned a lot of Muslim by your articles. On the article number 2, Muslim was known as the first time by silk road commercials. And also from the Ssanghwajeom. Korea and Muslim have not have trouble yet.
답글삭제By the way, I think the video is not a good example of Muslim in Korea. Because the interviewee lived internationally, she has learned diversity and overcome difficulties many years ago. So, I think the interviewee is not a good representation of Muslim in Korea.
.
답글삭제i didn't know such various problems existed for Korean muslims. I guessed that they would have a hard time maybe in social dining because a lot of eat pork and drink alcohol. But I was shocked by the girl in the video talking about going in to the fitting room to pray, and the article in the similar context having hard time praying. Also, the fact that some ignorant people connect Islam to terrorism was shocking. From figuring out that since I didn't have any awareness of what problems that Islams might have, maybe the Korean society in general is quite seriously ignorant toward the subculture. I hope I could learn more about it in you research and presentation. Thanx!
답글삭제[JIEUN]
답글삭제At first, i am really curious about who charly is! How did three groups post Charly's video in blog?! And i liked the last article, "Islam in korea, past and present" People in korea tend to regard Islam as a strange and new religion. But it is not! From this article, we can know the history of relation between Islam and Korea. And i was really impressed by the incidents after Korean war - troops from Turkey, construction cite! This change of perspective can give people who are afraid of islam(because of ISIS) different view!
The most interesting point I found reading article was there are Korean Muslims 'Koslims' who follow most routines as Muslims in Southeast or Middle East do. I have not even realized that some Koreans could be Muslims because of their will. As articles or paper pointed out, I was one of common Koreans having stereotypes on Muslims, even though I have a Muslim friend from Malaysia in my SNU sign language clube! The more cool point was that I can empathize with Muslims and I had that kinda experience a few months before. It was about our "dietary". We always have same difficulty ordering food in club meeting. Most Muslims living in Korea choose to be pesco-vegetarians like the one on Charly's interview due to the limation of halal-food. It was quite easier because they do not have to consider whether this meat was produced by the way of halal but most Koreans' dietary loving meat makes hard to choose what to eat. I had same experiences she said, ordering "tuna Kimbap" but there was ham so after that I always told ajummas to get rid of hams. If the suggestion Korean Muslims did - offer halal foods in public school or other places - , it would be the best but I think it is impossible because of the negative images (I see most articles are written quite before IS is made up, and I think IS deteriorates "worse" images) and the small number of Muslims. Fortunately, there are some vegan/halal restaurants in Seoul, so they can solve this problem anyway. I think finding where to pray is the biggest problem. In my case, I do not have difficulty understanding their dietary problem or hijab problem (these are all I've already seen because of my Muslim friend) but I've not thought that they should(?) pray to Mecca even though they are far away from there, in Seoul. It's true that it is hard for them to pray anywhere regardless of other people's fascinating view. It would be better if workplaces think of them and offer time and places they can pray 5 times a day, because as in news articles, not only expats but also Koreans can be Muslims!
답글삭제I didn't realize that muslims in South Korea were so stressful of their diets. Maybe it was my hidden bias that Korean cuisine was very 'natural' to me. And now I came to understand why there were halal restaurants and shops around the mosque in Itaewon. When I first learned of Itaewon in my Political Geography class, I just superficially learned that halal shops and restaurants were just around the mosque, a result of derived landscape from a religious facility. I didn't understand the landscape from my heart. And the articles and papers really helped the geographical phenomenon.
답글삭제The second article reminds of a book named son of human by Lee Moon-Yul. There is a main character Ahas. He search for 'right' religion for him for his entire life. And finally find one religion. However he choose that not because that one is perfect, rather he realized every religion cannot be perfect. I agree with Ahas. There is no perfection, but in this article author treat musilm as cure for everything, even for political issues. I think he acts unrational at some point, so it was hard for me to sympathize.
답글삭제