The Development of Korea's Immigration Policies: Security, Accumulation, Fairness, and Institutional Legitimacy

This article attempts to trace and critically review the development of immigration policies in Korea since the early 1990s. International migration as a global and universal phenomenon has challenged nation states, and theories of immigration policy seek to identify and explain factors affecting the choices made by states in this regard. However, two dominant theories, the political-economy and neo-institutionalist approaches, both of which emphasize economic interests and liberal principles, respectively, fail to provide a satisfactory explanation of the complex process of immigration policymaking when it comes to other factors including security and ethno-cultural diversity. Therefore, this article adopts the theory of the functional imperatives of the state, as suggested by Christina Boswell, focusing on security, accumulation, fairness, and institutional legitimacy in order to examine the complexity of immigration policymaking. Adopting Boswell's theoretical framework, this article explores what functions of the state-embedded immigration policies have been emphasized by each administration since the early 1990s. This article also seeks to examine whether there have been changes in the immigration policy under the current Lee Myung-bak administration and, if so, in what areas the current goverment's policy is distinguished from the policies of the two previous administrations.