Contested Identity and Prejudice Against Co-Ethnic Refugees: Evidence From South Korea

Although North Korean refugees are co-ethnics and receive extensive government support, many reports have alleged that they are discriminated against in South Korea. We theorize that this outcome is due to the contested status of North Korean refugees’ co-ethnic identity. We test this with embedded list experiments on an approximately nationally representative sample of South Koreans (n = 1418). We find that (1) South Koreans hold prejudice against North Korean refugees primarily because they believe supporting these refugees would waste government resources; (2) liberals are more likely to disagree with this belief while conservatives are ambivalent, and (3) income predicts this belief better than partisanship or ideology. Scholars have focused on native-refugee conflict cases where ethnic identity is a faultline. However, the South Korean case shows that co-ethnic refugees could be unwelcomed in a host society if political and economic factors make their co-ethnic status contested.