“Voices of ordinary citizens”: ban damunhwa and its neoliberal affect of anti-immigration in South Korea

This article looks at the rapid emergence of ban damunhwa (“anti-multiculture”) or the sentiment of anti-immigration in South Korea. Ban damunhwa discourse centers on a variety of issues such as the state's multicultural policy, crimes by foreigners, and problems of the so-called illegal sojourners, and has been most active and visible on the Internet, especially since the mid-2000s. This article focuses on the way ban damunhwa defines the state's multicultural policy as what gives special preferences to migrants, which, in turn, is said to destroy the livelihoods of South Korean citizens. Represented as the “voices of ordinary citizens,” ban damunhwa narratives appeal to a neoliberal idea of fairness and equity, under which migrants emerge as demonic free-riders. Ban damunhwa discourse not only serves as a symptom of a neoliberal ethic but also mirrors the dilemma of the people who struggle within a system of precarity and yet reproduce its main ideologies.