There has been a considerable amount of debates on whether the paradigm shift from multiculturalism to interculturalism is legitimate. While the two terms are sometimes interchangeably used, many scholars have articulated the differences between the two approaches. Arguably, interculturalism, as compared to multiculturalism, pursues further integration via constant mutual interactions between different groups even to the point where the boundaries of the groups become significantly blurred.

However, there is a serious blind spot in the ongoing debate. The debate between the two paradigms only revolves around North American and some European countries. This paper intends to highlight the following two points: First, the legitimacy of a paradigm cannot be rightly judged when we only focus on a portion of the world; there is a need to examine underrepresented parts of the world as well. Second, the problem of multiculturalism versus interculturalism should be understood in the light of a specific social context of a nation. It is a problem of "better fit" rather than an absolute superiority of one paradigm over the other.

With this in mind, the current study brings in the case of South Korean multiculturalism, which has clearly been underrepresented in the discourse. South Korea, in which multiculturalism emerged in a relatively recent period owing to the accelerated globalization and increasing immigration, provides a new way of looking at the multiculturalism versus interculturalism debate. The author suggests that interculturalism is a more suiting approach to the South Korean context, while leaving the room for future studies to address an actual application of interculturalism in South Korea. Definitions of multiculturalism and interculturalism, multiculturalism in South Korea, and the potentiality of interculturalism as an alternative to multiculturalism in South Korea are discussed.

Education knows no boundaries but hot button topics, like comic books, demonstrate school, teacher and parent limitations. Japanese comic books (manga) are a litmus test of pedagogical tolerance. Because they play an important role in the lives of most Taiwanese teenagers, I give them pride of place in this dissertation. To understand Japanese comic books and their influence, I use Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy to combine perspectives from cultural studies, comparative education, and educational sociology. With the cooperation of the administration, faculty and students of a Taiwanese junior high school, I used surveys, a textual analysis of five student-selected titles and interviews with students and educators. I discovered that Japanese manga contain complex and sometimes contradictory ideologies of ethnicity, gender, class, and violence. From an ethnic perspective, although students may glean cultural content from manga heroes and their retinues, people of color and non-Japanese Asians are either caricatures or non-existent; although Taiwanese teenager readers seem unaware of this. From a gender standpoint, neither the female characters’ provocative representation nor the male characters’ slavering responses to it raise students’ and teachers’ concerns.

Depictions of social and economic class are sometimes distinct in Japanese comic books. However, the dominant ideology of their creators is middle-class. Students are mostly oblivious to such distinctions, but may notice that ancient caste precepts survive. Although most manga focus on violent combat, students have no problem with excessive gore. By a process I call “fantasized death,” violence is not only neutralized but transformed into aesthetic and spiritual challenges that encourage readers.

Taiwanese students love Japanese comic books. However, from a post-colonialist perspective, the growing hybridity of Taiwanese and Japanese cultural images may create challenges for the future of a discernible Taiwanese phenotype. I suggest that critical pedagogy may provide an antidote to this unfortunate fusion, which is currently unrecognized by the adolescent comic book consumers who are its harbingers or by the majority of their preceptors.