The Korea Local Administration Review

This study purports to measure the extent to which ‘multiculture acceptance’varies by different groups of local residents. Following relevant literaturereview, an empirical analysis is made on data collected in 2009 from 200samples from the district where immigrant density is the highest in Daegu,Korea. Emerging as a new field of research, measures of the acceptance isproposed, and emphasis is put on public sentiments on ‘skewed interest’ inparticular countries vis-a-vis overall interest in foreign culture. Averagescores on the two interest levels are used to make four different groups, and adummy regression model was tested on the acceptance with the groups andindividual socioeconomic variables. Statistically significant differences are foundamong the groups, and the largest gap exists between the ‘multiculture-friendly’and ‘latently discriminative’ groups. Not only the acceptance but characteristicsof each group should be considered in future policy making.
□ Keywords: multiculture, country-specific acceptance, locality, resident aliens