The purpose of this study is to examine how multi-cultural communities in South Korea form and develop. Through this examination, the present study identifies how the multi-cultural communities can activate in their locals as well as how the communities affect social integration between the natives and immigrants. A qualitative case study targeting multi-cultural community groups was implemented for this purpose. The in-depth interviews and focus group interviews (FGI) with six groups having multi-cultural parents communities among beneficiaries of ‘the village community project’, which Seoul city has been implementing since 2013, were conducted from April in 2015 to September in 2016.
The analysis results were as follows. First, things to affect community formation and maintenance were spontaneity in terms of motivation, autonomy in the process of participation and performance, competence in terms of performance, and relationship based on common issue of parenting. Second, personal needs during community formation were revealed as information for parenting, education for language and culture, and experiences, empathy and supports based on commons as parents. Third, there were differences about cultural adoption between natives and immigrants. The natives seemed to take a position of cultural assimilation with preservative needs to help the immigrants adapt to existing natives’ environment, while the immigrants took it of interculturalism to suggest that cultural differences, harmony and balance should be respected.
The characteristics during multi-cultural parent community development are as follows. First, it is regarding internal communication structure and mutual relation. The natives took it for granted to communicate in Korean language and thought there was no problem for the immigrants to communicate in Korean. On the other hand, the immigrants often pretended to understand communication with the natives even though they didn’t. It was because they were very careful of communication in Korean. Second, although positive cognition changes of multi-cultural acceptability were revealed after community participations, this cognition tended to focus on intimate mutual relationship rather than understanding or respecting different culture. Also, prejudices or negative cognition based on countries of origin, especially the South-East Asia, were revealed. Third, there were groups which experienced community spirit improvement and conflict at the same time. It was because they did not previously communicated enough each other regarding what the purpose of community to be and who to play which role. Fourth, this study identified that owing to multi-cultural parent community, various relationship with many different groups in locals formed and various network activities were enlarged gradually. Lastly, it is noticeable that existing native-oriented communities could develop as multi-cultural communities including immigrants. Personal needs to be mutual interests arise mainly from spontaneity that was motivation during community formation. The spontaneity was being developed gradually as intimate relationship through exchange and communication during community development. That is, flexible exchange without burden each other may be the driving force to strengthen and keep cohesion. Therefore, various community activities should be developed for social integration between natives and immigrants. The environment to accept and understand each other linguistically, socially and culturally should be built up by attracting participation and exchange.