The Journal of Social Studies Education in Asia, Vol.12, pp.41-56, 2023

〈ARTICLES〉
An Analysis of Korean Prejudice Against Southeast Asia Using Big
Data: From the Perspective of the Social Studies Education
Jisu PARK

Kent State University, Ohio, USA
Corresponding author: Jisu Park (dyb86@naver.com)

Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced measures such as border closures and travel restrictions that havenever been experienced before. People around the world have started projecting their anxieties, fears, andfeelings of hatred onto specific groups rather than seeking solutions to the problem. This has resulted in acts ofhatred and discriminatory behavior towards Asians and others. So, what about South Korean society? Is it
effectively fulfilling its role in promoting global citizenship through social and educational means? In this study,
big data on Southeast Asia has been collected and analyzed for about two years since January 2020, when the
COVID-19 outbreak started spreading across the globe, to find out the perception of Korean society on Southeast
Asia. According to the big data analysis results that come from socialization created by the news and the media,
which is the leading cause of prejudice against Southeast Asia in Korean society. In particular, the passive
attitude of academia, which should present the correct standards and directions, was made worse, as seen insocial studies textbooks. As a result, intensive efforts of social studies education to critically view the media areessential in order to correct the prejudice that causes negative emotions toward Southeast Asia in Korean society
in the short-term plan. In the long-term plan, it is necessary to reorganize the national-level curriculum andreview the textbook contents through verification by regional research experts.
Keywords: Big data analysis, Southeast Asia, Prejudice, Social studies education

Introduction
Southeast Asia is an important emerging economic partner for South Korea. According to the 2020 Ministry of
the Interior and Safety survey of 1,695,643 foreign residents who have not acquired nationality, excluding
Korean-Chinese (541,337) and Chinese (207,764), ordered by Vietnam (199,950) in second place, Thailand(165,511) in third, United States (59,646) in fourth, and Uzbekistan (58,646) in fifth (58,000), the Philippines insixth (43,455), and Cambodia (40,000) in seventh, occupying overwhelmingly from Southeast Asia among
foreign residents who settled in Korea. In addition, the number of Koreans who visited Southeast Asia in 2019,
before the COVID-19 pandemic, exceeded 10 million a year, which is more than the summation number of
Koreans who visited China and Japan during the same period. Besides, with the New Southern Policy actively
promoted by the Korean government since 2017, Southeast Asia’s position in the economic and cultural stage,

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including Korea’s diplomatic location, has increased significantly (Kim, 2017; Choe, 2021).
However, unlike these changes, prejudice and racism against Southeast Asia and other third worlds still
remain in Korean society. In particular, discrimination against Southeast Asian countries and races is based on
the headline of a newspaper article titled (Lee & Kim, 2021), “White-mixed race shown on entertainment, andSoutheast Asian shown on documentary … Multicultural second generation bruised by discrimination.”, asshown, Korean media and broadcasters are never free from the controversy over discrimination against migrants
from Southeast Asia and the third world. According to the Citizens’ Coalition for Democratic Press, it was foundthat migrants or foreigners were featured in programs for three months, from June to August 2019, instigatingprejudice and racist views against specific countries (Citizens Coalition for Democratic Media, 2019). For
example, “Yo! Welcome to Korea!”, a TV program that shows foreigners traveling to Korea for the first time andexperiencing various cultures, there were no foreigners from Southeast Asia, and 53 European and North
American people appeared only.
On the contrary, 11 of the 12 main characters in “Finding My Daddy”, which deals with the life of afather away from his family and working in Korea, were from a Southeast Asian region (one from Ugandan). In
early 2021, a self-produced poster promoting the documentary program was criticized for being racist causes byshowing illustrations of humanity evolving into the order of black, yellow, and white races. In a multicultural
program produced by the Education Broadcasting System aimed at a harmonious multicultural society, the issue
of prejudice against Southeast Asian women was highlighted again, with Korean performers handing sexual
jokes to local women in Southeast Asia.
According to Statistics Korea’s population and housing census, the number of foreigners residing in
Korea is estimated at 2.2 million as of 2020. The number of foreign residents, 930,000 in 2010, has more thandoubled, accounting for 4.1 percent of the total population in Korea. If the foreign resident ratio compares to theentire population exceeds 5 percent, the OECD classifies them as multicultural and multiracial countries.
According to the report, Korean society can already be called a country close to multiculturalism, opting out ofa single ethnic community, so proper social categorization of foreigners should be achieved. Social categorization
uses to recognize and distinguish others, and it stems from beliefs and emotions that humans influence behavior.
Among them, race plays a vital role in determining one’s identity and experiencing the world and sometimes
becomes a factor in forming prejudice (Eberhardt, 2019). According to the results of the “2021 National
multicultural acceptability Survey” conducted by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family on a total of
10,000 teenagers and adults, Korea’s multicultural acceptance index was remarkably low at 52.27 out of 100 asof 2021, which is even indicated getting more down than before. According to a report by the National Human
Rights Commission of Korea conducted on 310 migrants in 2019, the main cause was the migrants were not
Koreans (59.7%). In addition, respondents had experienced discrimination by country of origin (56.8%),
ethnicity (47.7%), and race (44.7%). In the same year, there was an incident in which famous politicians
repeatedly made diplomatic disrespects, such as disparaging workers from Southeast Asia and making blunt
remarks containing ignorance and prejudice against them. In 2021, according to the results of the image survey
on ASEAN at ASEAN-KOREA CENTRE held a meeting with 1,000 young Koreans, they recalled negative
images such as developing countries (122), the heat (99), and poverty (57).
It means that stereotypes and prejudices against migrants in Korean society are closely related togeographical variables such as the country or reason of origin. In other words, Social studies education, pursuing

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to foster global citizenship beyond race, ethnicity, and national boundaries, is not playing a sufficient role in theissue of prejudice against Southeast Asia. Even just before the Korea-ASEAN Special Summit in November
2019, a Cambodian flag error was found in the government-designated textbook of elementary schools in Korea,
prompting strong protests from the Cambodian Embassy. As a response, the Ministry of Education ordered torevise textbooks urgently. Although the Ministry of Education immediately responded to the issue of theCambodian flag error, it is urgent to take countermeasures to prevent such a problem. In general, textbooks are
only one of the various teaching materials that implement the curriculum, but the authority of officially certified
textbooks in Korean society is quite powerful. When looking at the history of the Korean social studies
curriculum, the ruler always revised the social studies curriculum and textbooks as the regime changed, and the
Korean social studies textbooks’ contents still become ‘hot potatoes’ that all politicians react sensitively,
regardless of the ruling and opposition parties. Korean social studies textbooks, produced under the governmentdesignated and authorized system, have a more particular meaning in that a government-certified ‘political,
economic, socio-cultural knowledge’ beyond merely a function of delivering information about other countries.
Therefore, considering the specific importance of social studies textbooks in Korea, prejudice against Southeast
Asian-related content is not a minor issue. Suppose students’ prejudice against Southeast Asia becomes stronger
caused by social studies education. In that case, it does not meet educational goals and can cause severe futureinternational relations problems. In social studies education, which targets various countries and regions aroundthe world for major learning, diversity, dynamism, and development, should be highlighted from a balanced
perspective and should pay attention not to take otherizing the people living there.
Then, what is the fundamental cause of prejudice against Southeast Asia in Korean society? Why does
discrimination against Southeast Asia persist instead of disappearing despite the Korean government’s continued
spending budget and implementation policies on multicultural education? What role should social studies
education play for us to become multiculturalists and global citizens in a true sense? In this study, to find answers
to these questions, online media, such as SNS and internet by selecting as a target, which mainly accesses
information and content about Southeast Asian countries, big data related to Southeast Asia was collected forabout 2 years from January 2020, when COVID-19 appeared in earnest. Next, by analyzing big data related toSoutheast Asia, this study examines the causes of prejudice issues from the perspectives of society and education.
Finally, based on the results of the analysis, explored the tasks of social studies education to solve fundamentally.

Theoretical Background
Analysis of Social Phenomena Using Big Data
In the field of big data, information was extracted and analyzed from unstructured data collected through Internet
portal sites to investigate people’s perceptions of social phenomena, and this process can be divided into threemain categories (Song & Song, 2013). First, Text Mining is extracting helpful information using natural language
processing technology from unstructured texts written in human languages or finding hidden information in big
data by identifying connectivity, clustering, or summarizing. Second, Opinion Mining is to analyze users’
opinions by applying natural language processing technology and emotional analysis technology to the big datatext as a target. It is also called buzz analysis in marketing. Third, Network Analytics is to analyze the network
connection structure and strength, identifying the propagation path of the message and affected target people.

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The procedures and methods for big data analysis are shown in Figure 1.
First, the subject and scope of the collection target are set for documents related to the topic using
analysis modelling. Then big data is collected using a collection robot such as a web crawler on the target
channel (news, blog, cafe, SNS, etc.). In this case, it designates stop words to prevent errors in the collection andappoints keyword groups related to Southeast Asia (cause, type, region, method, etc.).

Figure 1. Procedure According to the Big Data Analysis Way (Analysis Case of Southeast Asian Big Data)
Second, the collected unstructured big data is analyzed using keyword and emotional analysis. It isdifficult for researchers to analyze unstructured raw data, such as collection cases related to Southeast Asia,
without specific processing. Accordingly, the procedure must classify and purify the collected unstructured big
data through text mining, opinion mining, and network analysis.
Third, unstructured big data should be converted into structured ones. Looking at the analysis cases of
documents when analyzing topics related to Southeast Asia, documents related to Southeast Asia should be
coded with ID, and all keywords and methods in the article also should be coded.
Fourth, to bring meaningful results from big data analysis, it is necessary to integrate structured big datawith offline data to analyze its merged social phenomena. At this step, Korea’s curriculum and the word
dictionary of the Sejong Plan, which can analyze and calculate text with a scale of 60 million words, were used
as offline data.
Fifth, the analysis of structured big data linked to social studies curriculum data can be performed withvarious analysis methods that can discover new social phenomena through the causal relationship between
keywords or the classification process.
Southeast Asia in Korean Social Studies Education
Textbooks have an enormous influence on Korean social studies education. Textbook censorship has beenstrengthened since 1947, when the government designated and approved textbooks. Especially in the case ofelementary schools, it was influenced directly by the state due to a government-designated textbook system
exclusively issued by the government until 2022. In the case of middle schools, after the 7th curriculum, the44

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textbook system was shifted to a way produced by various publishers and approved by the government.
However, since it is necessary to write based on detailed achievement standards and textbook writing tips, it isn’teasy to find a big difference in the composition and content of textbooks depending on the publishers (Park,
2010). According to Kim’s study (2010a), Southeast Asia was continuously ignored in Korean social studies
textbooks with strong Western centrism. Even multicultural education has been found many contaminatedcontents by orientalism. This study analyzed Korean multicultural education, raised the issue of Westerncentrism, and proposed a strategy to re-examine Southeast Asia as a so-called ‘advanced multicultural region’.
Overseas studies have encouraged post-colonialist education, arguing that Western academia and education
have continued to imbue and strengthen Western centrism in a way that contrasts it to a civilized and developingWest and an uncivilized and underdeveloped East. Merryfield (2001) also suggested the need for work tocritically dismantle school education, which had strengthened Western-centrism, and reconstruct it from a
postcolonial perspective.
According to a study by Kim (2021), who analyzed the trend of quantitative changes in the proportionof Southeast Asia in social studies textbooks of Korean elementary and middle schools, the weight of Southeast
Asia was indicated to be significantly higher than in other periods as 10.3% of elementary schools and 17.2% of
middle school in the late 1940s, right after liberation. So, it can be said that the Korean elderly who attended
Korean elementary and middle schools in the 1940s and mid of 1950s have learned the most about Southeast
Asia.
If looking closely at the contents of each period, first of all, the syllabus period middle school social
studies textbook described Southeast Asia’s humanities and natural environment elements in a balanced mannerand systematically explained each region. Although it also contained an imperialist perspective while theencyclopedic description, it presented Various reading materials that helped the overall understanding ofSoutheast Asia, such as photographs and maps. It is presumed that the reason was that Japan valued Southeast
Asia in textbooks and abundant materials related to it, as it was expanding its power in Southeast Asia bypromoting the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere at the time. Since then, a proportion of Southeast Asia in
the world geography area of middle school social studies textbooks in the first curriculum period occupied about
5%, even though slightly different weights depending on the textbook’s author. However, in the completely
revised second curriculum in 1963, shortly after beginning the military regime of Park, while morality and ethics
contents increased rapidly and anti-communist education was strengthened, the proportion of Southeast Asia in
middle school social studies textbooks plunged to 1.9%. Since then, the proportion of Southeast Asia in middle
school social studies textbooks has hovered around 1-3% between the third and fifth curriculum periods. The
2.9% proportion of Southeast Asia in middle school textbooks during the third curriculum period gradually
increased to 3.8% in the fourth curriculum period. Still, it fell to 2.5% in the fifth curriculum period again. As
economic cooperation with Southeast Asia became more important in social studies textbooks during the sixth
curriculum period, the proportion of Southeast Asia increased to 4.1%. Hence, the proportion of Southeast Asia
approached the level of the first curriculum period. However, as the general discussion of the 7th curriculum
period and the Ministry of Education began to put pressure on the reducing the curriculum and the number ofhours, the social studies textbook of entire content was reduced, and the proportion of Southeast Asia in the
middle school social studies textbook also decreased to 2.7%. This trend was kept affected, so it declined to
2.0% in the 2007 revised curriculum and fell to 1.2% in the 2009 revised curriculum. In the current 2015 revised45

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curriculum, the proportion of Southeast Asian countries rose slightly to 2.1% due to the increased content related
to multicultural education.
Such a decrease in the proportion of Southeast Asia in textbooks can be easily found in elementary
school social studies textbooks. In 2007, 2009, and 2015 revised curricula, when the importance of Southeast
Asia was highlighted in earnest, Southeast Asia accounted for only about 1% of elementary school social studies
textbooks. In particular, there was nonexistent content related to Southeast Asia in social studies textbooks basedon the 2007 revised curriculum. Only Inquiry-based Social Studies, an auxiliary textbook, included some of thecontents of Southeast Asia. When the revised curriculum and textbooks were developed in 2007, the number ofmarried immigrant women from Southeast Asia increased rapidly, and multicultural education was emphasizedin Korean society. However, there was no Southeast Asian content in elementary school social studies textbooks.
This situation clearly shows how far Korea’s social studies education is separated from reality and has turned ablind eye to national and social needs.

Methodology
Research Subjects and Scope
In this study, to analyze the prejudice that Koreans have against Southeast Asia since the COVID-19 outbreakstarted spreading across the globe, a comprehensive survey was conducted on online documents such as
domestic online news sites, blogs, cafes, bulletin boards, and SNS. Furthermore, this analysis is defined as Big
data for text-based web documents that could be collected through a total of 181 online sites of academic
information, 171 online news sites, two blogs (Naver, Daum), two cafes (Naver, Daum), one SNS (Facebook),
and five bulletin boards (Naver Knowledge-iN, Nate Knowledge, Nate Pan). Text data collection related toSoutheast Asia was conducted monthly from January 1, 2020, to May 31, 2022, without considering days,
weekends, and holidays in the corresponding channels. Then, this study selected 711,878 (46.5%) discourses
directly related to the subject out of 1,531,259 text documents collected, such as ‘Southeast Asia, ASEAN’. Web
Crawler of Textom, an online platform, was used for big data collecting, and Text Mining and Factor Analysis wereused to classify topics. In addition, the collected big data cannot recognize personal information, which guarantees
the anonymity and confidentiality of the subject. This content can be summarized as shown in Table 1.
Table 1. An Overview of Data Collection

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Data Analysis Method
In this study, the decision-making tree analysis method was used to construct the most efficient predictive modelfor the causes of prejudice in Southeast Asia. This method automatically calculates a model that most effectively
explains the dependent variable in a vast amount of data. Thereby quickly identify the causes of different
prejudices about Southeast Asia. Analytical algorithms for the decision-making tree formation used CHAID
with the highest prediction rate among Classification and Regression Tree (CART), Chi-squared AutomaticInteraction Detection (CHAID), and Quick Unbiased Efficient Statistical Tree (QUEST) models. (Lin & Fan,
2019). CHAID automatically searches for all possible interaction effects and uses the chi-square (χ2) test as aseparate criterion for discrete dependent variables (Kass, 1980). In this analysis, the stopping rule was set to 100
in the minimum number of the upper node cases, 50 in the minimum number of the lower node cases, and threelevels in the tree depth. The training and test data ratio was set to 70:30 for validity evaluation by data division.
Furthermore, SPSS 22.0 was used for technical analysis, multiple response analysis, and decision tree analysis,
and NetMiner 4.0 was used for network analysis.

Research Result
Status of Documents Related to Southeast Asia
Looking at the current status of all documents referring to topics related to Southeast Asia, the description on
SNS indicated the highest. In addition, the current status of cafes, blogs, bulletin boards, and news were similar,
excluding SNS that as previously mentioned, and academic information. What should be noted is that
communication increased rapidly when issues related to Southeast Asia occurred. In particular, the proportionof negative cases was high, including the controversy over the celebrities’ prejudice against Southeast Asia.
Looking at Table 2, buzz (74.9%) shows negative emotions related to Southeast Asia, indicatedremarkably high compared to buzz (15.5%), which shows positive emotions. The subjects of interest in Southeast
Asia were travel (58.6%), food (12.3%), culture (11.2%), economy (10.7%), and education (7.2%). Moreover,
the types of prejudice in Southeast Asia were ordered economic level (32.8%), Climate (30.5%), Environment(14.7%), Appearance (13.9%), and Attitude (8.0%). Interest in Southeast Asian countries was shown in order
Viet Nam (26.0%), Singapore (13.5%), Thailand (12.2%), Philippines (11.4%), Indonesia (10.7%), Malaysia(6.8%), Myanmar (6.2%), Cambodia (5.0%), Lao PDR (4.2%), and Brunei Darussalam (4.0%).
Subsequently, according to the results of the cross-analysis of multiple responses to topics of interest ineach Southeast Asian country, each issue has differences among countries as in Table 3. In particular, it was
confirmed that most Southeast Asian countries have relatively high interest in food in Viet Name (42.9%) andCambodia (51.7%), and in travel for Singapore (46.9%), Thailand (48.9%), Philippines (41.8%), Indonesia(90.2%), and Lao PDR (46.9%), whereas a relatively shown lack of interest in culture, economy, and education.
Network Analysis Related to Southeast Asia
Network Analysis is a method that quantitatively analyzes the topological structure and diffusion/evolution
process by modelling the relationship between individuals and groups as nodes and links. In this study, the main
attributes (emotions, types) arising from the buzz that refer to keywords related to Southeast Asia on SNS,Internet portal sites (blogs, cafes, bulletin boards), news, and academic information sites were made nodes, andthe link structure between nodes was analyzed.

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Table 2. Current Status of Buzz Related to Prejudice in Southeast Asia

Figure 2 shows the analysis results on characterizing the cohesion structure of emotions toward
Southeast Asia mentioned in the collected big data. As a result of grouping the distributed Southeast Asianemotions into closely related nodes group, it can be seen that they are concentrated in three nodes: ‘understanding,poverty, and help.’
Degree refers to the number of neighboring nodes connected to a particular node. In-degree refers to thedegree of the external node from the internal node, and out-degree refers to the degree of the internal node fromthe external node. Closeness centrality refers to the high centrality of nodes with short distances from othernodes on average. Nodes with high closeness centrality most stochastically can be affected by other nodes
mutually. Figure 3 is a schematic diagram of the external proximity centrality between collection channels on
topics of interest or types of bias in Southeast Asia. According to this diagram, SNS, blogs, cafes, and bulletinboards are closely linked to ‘appearance’, ‘attitude’, ‘climate’, ‘environment’, and ‘economic level’ link to theNews. In addition, academic information was found to be closely linked to the ‘economic level’. On the other
hand, it was found that the influence of each factor on different types of prejudice was relatively weak.

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Table 3. Status of Interest Topics by Southeast Asian Countries

N(%)

Figure 2. Analysis of Southeast Asian emotion cohesion

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Figure 3. External proximity centrality between types of Southeast Asian bias and collection channels
Southeast Asia-related Emotion Prediction Model
This study conducted data mining analysis on bias types and collection channels to predict negative emotional
factors that cause prejudice in Southeast Asia. The effect of bias types on Southeast Asia-related emotion
prediction models is shown in Figure 4. The square at the top of the tree structure as the root node indicates thefrequency of the dependent variables with no applied predictors (negative, positive, or neutral). In the root node,
negative emotions related to Southeast Asia were 74.9% (154,807 cases), positive were 15.5% (32,089 cases),and neutral were 9.6% (19,773 cases). The highest-ranking factor at the bottom of the root node was the bias
type, with the strongest influence on predicting negative emotions related to Southeast Asia, and the ‘economic
level’ had the greatest influence. When the ‘economic level’ was high, negative emotions related to Southeast
Asia decreased from 74.9% to 52.6%, positive emotions decreased from 15.5% to 3.0%, whereas neutral
emotions about Southeast Asia increased significantly from 9.6% to 44.4%. When the ‘economic level’ and‘attitude’ were high, negative emotions related to Southeast Asia significantly increased from 52.6% to 98.7%,
whereas neutral emotions decreased substantially from 44.4% to 1.3%.
The effect of the collection channel on the negative emotion prediction model related to Southeast Asia
is shown in Figure 5. The collection channel that has the most significant influence on the formation of negative
emotions associated with Southeast Asia was indicating ‘academic information.’ When ‘academic information’was high, negative and positive emotions related to Southeast Asia significantly decreased from 74.9% to 9.3%
and 15.5% to 0.4%, respectively. In contrast, neutral emotions increased dramatically from the previous 9.6% to90.4%. When ‘academic information’ and ‘cafe’ were high, negative feelings related to Southeast Asia increased
from the last 9.3% to 13.4%, whereas neutral feelings decreased from the previous 90.4% to 85.6%.

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Figure 4. A predictive model of negative emotions
according to the types of prejudice related to Southeast Asia

Problems of Korean Social Studies Education Shown in the Big Data Analysis
Social Studies Textbooks That Deepen Racism Prejudice
According to the results of big data analysis, the types of prejudice Koreans have against Southeast Asia aremainly about the appearance and attitude of racism factors. According to the ASEAN-KOREA CENTRE’s
image survey of 1,000 young Koreans in 2021, resulting the study on ‘ASEAN’ recalled the kinds of appearance,such as ‘black skin’, ‘dark skin’, ‘yellow skin’, and ‘small skin’, as well as attitudes like ‘kind’, ‘poor’, ‘friendly’,and ‘good-natured’. Racism is constructed within a specific discourse system that combines various images andinformation presented by the press and media. In other words, it produces concepts of race or ethnicity in the
media that influence people’s perceptions; fundamentally, it stems from prejudice against the economic level,climate, and environment. In particular, Korean academia, which should hold in check the press and media, as
well as present the right direction, has a strong Western-centrism (Kang, 2004), and Southeast Asia in social
studies textbooks based on the current curriculum reproduces the images by the media and presented as an
example tropical climate region from a deterministic environmental perspective. Accordingly, Southeast Asia in
the textbook is introduced mainly to underdeveloped remote areas and travel destinations along with residents’
lives, traditional culture, festivals, and religious events, and does not describe people, which intensifies racism

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Figure 5. A prediction model of negative emotions
according to collection channels related to Southeast Asia
by the press and media. Since even in the world geography of high schools, which divides the world into SouthSaharan Africa and Central-Southern America, Southeast Asia with Southern Asia is confined to Monsoon
Asia’s framework, it only describes the humanities and natural environments with standardized as a run-down
low developed area.
Lack of Expertise of Social Studies Teachers on World Geography
According to the results of big data analysis, the main mechanism of prejudice against Southeast Asia in the
media, and it is transmitted indirectly through economic level, climate, and environment. In addition, it was
found that the media have a great influence on the formation of negative feelings toward Southeast Asia, and aremainly related to economic levels, environment, and climate factors. The position of the media in the culturalexperience is high, and its influence has increased even more since the COVID-19 outbreak. Teachers andstudents become interested in places or regions they have not been to directly through media including TV, andthey often refer to TV travel programs in the process of actually planning travel. The current national-level social
studies curriculum also encourages learners to select their interesting topics freely, and explore and investigate

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various countries or regions through the media. Kim (2018) sought a way to introduce TV travel programs basedin Laos, a Southeast Asian country that has not been well covered in social studies textbooks, to overcome thelimitations of existing textbooks and facilitate world geography learning. The study insisted that TV travel
programs made in Laos, a rainforest climate region belonging to Monsoon Asia, help learn global geography.
However, Laos is a country that has more alpine climates than rainforest climates. In addition, when students
learn about Laos based on TV travel programs focus on shown that high-altitude houses, minority lives,
traditional culture, and tourism products, it may lead to stereotypes and prejudices against Southeast Asia.
Eventually, if teachers introduce a TV program circus that shows Southeast Asia from an orientalism perspective
to world geography classes and teaches them lightly due to their low expertise in world geography education orlack of ability to practice geographical reflection, prejudice against Southeast Asia may rather worsen (Kim,
2005; Kim, 2007).
Lack of Regional Research Experts
Korean academia does not reflect the rapidly changing reality of Southeast Asia. Big data analysis shows thatthe formation of neutral feelings toward Southeast Asia has the most significant influence by academia, whereas
the negative emotion formation was enormous influence by the media compared to the academia. Southeast
Asian countries such as Thailand and the Philippines in the 1940s and 1950s were perceived as economicallydeveloped and abundant for Koreans. However, the rapid growth of the Korean economy in the 1970s and 80s
led to a change in perception. Especially in the 1990s, as overseas travel became free, tourists from Southeast
Asia became increased dramatically. However, prejudice against Southeast Asia has been strengthened throughoutdated social studies textbooks amid poor regional research on Southeast Asia (Kim, 2021). Overall, Southeast
Asia is recognized as an underdeveloped region with stagnant development in Korean social studies curriculum
and textbooks. Compared to Europe, which studies regions centered on pure studies such as anthropology,
geography, and linguistics, the U.S, heavily influenced by politics, rises as the interdisciplinary wall, and theposition of regional experts in Southeast Asia has been reduced (Lewis & Wigen, 1997). Moreover, the traditionof regional research in the U.S., divided into macro-political science and micro-anthropology, has also affected
South Korea’s Southeast Asian research academia. Unlike traditional regional studies that integrated humanities
and natural phenomena through field surveys, scholars in the United States and Korea use overseas regions as
examples to prove theoretical hypotheses. To make matters worse, the social studies education community,
which adheres to the traditional content composition based on the Environmental Expansion Act and is trappedin the teaching and learning model, has neglected textbooks full of outdated knowledge and prejudice, rather
than reflecting the dynamic changes in the third world (Kim, 2005). As a result, social and multicultural textbooks
lacking educational content and reflection on the region continue making side effects that exacerbate prejudiceagainst Southeast Asia in Korean society (Kim, 2007; 2010a; 2010b; 2010c).

Conclusion
This study used big data analysis to find out the problem of prejudice against Southeast Asia, which wassuperficially revealed in Korean society following the COVID-19 pandemic, The interpretation of the cause of
the prejudice problem in Korean society was approached from the perspective of social studies education, andtasks to solve it were explored.

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Accordingly, the results of analyzing prejudice in Korea by collecting related documents mentioned in
the online channel for about two years from January 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak started spreading
across the globe, to May 2022, are summarized as follows. First, the types of prejudice against Southeast Asia
that Koreans have are mainly about racist factors, such as appearance and attitude. It was confirmed that
discrimination against attitudes appears in connection to economic levels, such as ‘laziness’, ‘poverty’. It was
analyzed to be a primary reason due to the Korean academia, which is passive about regional research andeducation in Southeast Asia, and the press and media circus that deliver information about Southeast Asia.
Second, the critical mechanism of prejudice against Southeast Asia that occurs in Korea is most significantly
influenced by the press and media and fixed the distorted identity of Southeast Asia through the economic level,climate, and environment. The press and media are the mechanisms that highly influence Koreans’ perceptionof Southeast Asia, which is responsible for the formation of prejudice. Since these press and media value
people’s interests, it has been shown to deliver biased images and information about Southeast Asia from an
orientalist perspective on travel. Third, Korean academia is not passive or properly reflecting the rapidlychanging reality of Southeast Asia. Today, Southeast Asia is rapidly growing in various fields, such as culture
and education, as well as the economy. Moreover, opportunities for exchange between countries are increasing.
However, unlike this reality, Korean academia is relatively passive in its research on Southeast Asia. Accordingly,
it has shown that prejudice against the economic level remained and did not reflect the rapidly changing reality.
In order to solve this problem fundamentally, it is necessary to pay attention to academia, especially insocial studies education that emphasizes global citizenship. Since social studies is a subject that overcomesprejudice against a country or region different from society, looking at it from various scales and understanding
it in three dimensions, the following tasks should be performed. First, it is necessary to re-examine Southeast
Asia as a connecting center between the East and the West, away from Western-centrism. Southeast Asia’sdynamic cultural characteristics come from its position connecting the West and the East. If re-examining it
through the locational advantages of Southeast Asia, It will be possible to effectively explain the contents thatwere difficult to properly deal with in the existing social studies subject of Western-centrism. Second, writing
textbooks and cultivating human resources for regional research and multicultural education in Southeast Asia
should be necessary. The role of social studies education is critical to have a neutral perspective on the image andinformation of Korean people’s prejudice against Southeast Asia and the interest produced by the press andmedia. In particular, Considering the authority of textbooks in Korean society, social studies textbooks shouldhave a three-dimensional view of Southeast Asia and be able to explain various characteristics in an integrated
manner. In addition, sufficient research data and human resources to obtain multiple perspectives should be
supported. Third, education content should be reformed through the participation of overseas regional researchexperts. It is necessary to break away from the existing perspective for developing noveltious and interestingeducational materials on Southeast Asia that have been neglected by social studies. Accordingly, various
opinions should be collected from all regional research experts domestically and abroad. Such an attempt will
be an opportunity to reflect the latest trends and research results in actual Southeast Asia, not in the press andmedia.
Recently, the tourist approach and superficial multicultural education prevalent in the Korean education
field are, unfortunately, putting a burden on multicultural families and students, contrary to their original purpose(Woo et al., 2018; Kim, 2010). In addition, the educational method of introducing Southeast Asian culture

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superficially by uncritically accepting content contaminated with orientalism may hinder the progress toward a
genuinely multicultural society (Kim, 2010b). In particular, social studies textbooks that do not adequatelyreflect the rapidly changing realities of Southeast Asian countries are at risk of reinforcing prejudice and distorted
images of Southeast Asia. So far, the Korean government has spent considerable money on multicultural
education and policies. However, in contrast, there is still a discriminatory view of migrants from Southeast Asiaand multicultural students in actual school life. Recently, the so-called ‘multicultural stigma’ has emerged. Inorder to overcome the deep-rooted prejudice against Southeast Asia that prevails in Korean society and torecognize the rapidly changing reality properly, it is urgent to innovate the social studies curriculum at thenational level drastically.
This study has a limitation: it did not closely examine specific descriptions related to this caused bycollecting and analyzing big data in Southeast Asia through online channels and quantitatively analyzed them
only for elementary and middle school social studies textbooks. Therefore, it needs to be conducted additional
researches, such as a study that analyzes prejudice against countries or regions other than Southeast Asia,
research that comprehensively reflects on the contents of other textbooks beyond social studies education, and astudy that finds errors in the contents and terms of social studies textbooks, including suggesting concrete
improvement measures. Furthermore, after analyzing distorted images and information about Southeast Asia
reproduced through the press and media, the synergy effect will be able to enhance by preparing detailed
countermeasures for mitigating or overcoming them and strengthening public relations.

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