Chapter 7 - COVID-19 and the Construction of Wuli (We) : Marriage-Migrant Women and Care Discourses in South Kor

Summary

Abstract

The authors discuss from a critical perspective how bilingual and bicultural capacities of marginalised women in minority groups in South Korea give them agency in contributing to public health initiatives. It is argued that the women's contribution amidst the nation's struggles with COVID-19 has impacted upon the discourse of identity politics.

Keywords: Marriage-migrants, construction of wuli (we), media discourses, bilingual workers, care discourses, identity politics

Introduction

South Korea (hereafter “Korea”) was one of the first countries affected by COVID-19, reporting its first case on January 20, 2020, when a thermal scanner detected fever in an arrival from China at Incheon International Airport. By September 7, 2021, 220,563,227 cases and 4,565,483 deaths had been reported worldwide (World Health Organization, 2021). In response to the rapid rise in cases early in the pandemic, the Korean government took decisive action by establishing and maintaining approximately six hundred screening and testing centres and adopting strict quarantine policies and a rigorous contact-tracing programme, which tracks infected individuals’ previous movements and identifies paths of COVID-19 transmission. Through these strategies, Korea has been able to slow the spread of the virus and keep mortality relatively low.

As a way to increase the efficiency of these measures and practices, the government has actively communicated COVID-19-related information to its citizens, including information on new cases, their sources, and the travel history of confirmed cases. Acknowledging that Korea has become a multicultural and multilingual society, the government has been attempting to provide public health resources in different languages on posters or interpreting and translation services to reach the country's immigrants and foreign workers. In late March 2020, the Government of South Korea launched English and Chinese versions of its official COVID-19 website. However, over a year later, the website had yet to be translated into any other language. Many non-Korean-speaking residents have been unable to access the latest and most accurate information on the pandemic, a challenge also faced by many other linguistic minorities worldwide (Jang and Choi, 2020; Piller, Zhang, and Li, 2020).