Recently in Korea, international marriage has increased and children from multinational families have increased. Therefore, there is a need for education for these children. This paper examines Korean-Japanese multinational children, how heritage Japanese education is carried out outside of their family and its outcomes and problems. The ultimate purpose of this paper is to offer itself as a case study for a direction of the Japanese heritage education in future.
The private sector Hana Multicultural Center, "Darin", runs a heritage and cultural activity program, which is called "Project on Training Multicultural Instructors for Children". We considered this center to be a practice place for our study. Starting from 2015, we cared for Korean-Japanese multicultural children, and participated in activities in the Center for four terms, which was two years. For the content of its activities, we adopted many cultural topics and focused on experiences, but most of all, encouraged the children to have contact with Japanese as much as possible in order to improve their Japanese language skills.
Based on interviews conducted during the four terms and a survey following the activities, the content of the activities and aspects and opinions of heritage Japanese were summarized. Three main outcomes that were produced from these summaries were then analyzed. As a result, three points, that is, the effectiveness of experiential activity, and the effectiveness of heritage Japanese education emphasizing content and contribution to the children’s identity formation, were observed. However, there is still a need for more study with respect to how to respond to children’s diversity, development of bilingual methods of reading and writing, and providing greater opportunities for holistic heritage language education for children.