Incomplete or Extraordinary Koreans?

Abstract This study explores the South Korean military's ambivalent embrace of “multicultural soldiers,” defined as enlistees with one parent born in a foreign country. Drawing on critical analysis of conscription policy and media reports released between 2000 and 2022, the authors identify a mechanism that posits multicultural soldiers in one of two ways, either as “incomplete Koreans” who may lack patriotic spirit and may feel compelled to hide their family backgrounds or as “extraordinary Koreans” who possess a patriotic spirit and multicultural talents that will benefit the military. While this mechanism is shaped and practiced as a duality, the two seemingly contrasting views are in fact based on a common premise that fundamentally associates the multicultural soldiers with a foreignness that others and excludes them from the family of “pure-blooded” Koreans. Unpacking the military policies’ convoluted effects, the article demonstrates how a normative authentic Koreanness is reimagined and reconstructed in ways that racialize multicultural soldiers.