You cant just easily immigrate to CJK countries.You will not become a part of the society.That's just impossible.Not even those of us that married koreans,speak the language and know the customs are that accepted in the society.We are tolerated and easily live and work there but you will never become korean or japanese or chinese.

You will always be the "foreigner".

To give you another perspective, I would say that many East Asians living in the West don't feel like they actually belong there either. I moved to west coast America when I was a child. I still remember vividly the first thing I heard and understood in class. It was another kid telling me that I'm a "stupid Asian." The barrier is there. We feel it. And let's not pretend Europe is better about this.

There are Japanese-only establishments in Japan. Ever seen those in the west?

I was hoping people would find it in themselves to try to rid the world of these invisible barriers instead of pointing out how "they do it worse than we do."

I don't know man, I beg to differ. I am a non-ethnic, naturalized Korean who immigrated to Korea fairly young. I am fully assimilated (note that I am not saying integrated, but assimilated; this is critical) and part of society, I feel I have an equal opportunity at doing anything a "native" Korean would do. I could run for politics if I wanted to (which I am considering), my relationship with people are as normal as they could be. I don't feel "tolerated" nor "accepted", nor have I ever felt the need to. People basically treat me the same as they would treat any other Korean.

Sure, there is some minor "friction" because of my different ethnicity (basically I look white), such as random people first assuming that I am a foreigner, which is completely understandable for historical reasons. I do that myself, whenever I see a white or black person, my first reflex isn't to assume that they are Korean too, there is a 99% chance that they are foreigners. But all it takes is a 10mn conversation for them to know that I am "one of them". I sometimes get puzzled looks from people who have never met someone like me, but that's mainly because most of the population don't even know you _could_ naturalize and become Korean. At the airport, the staff speaks in English to me at first, but as soon as they see my passport they profusely apologize and switch back to "Korean" mode. That's about it.

I do however understand and sympathize with the fact that many foreigners, even long-term residents, might feel the way you described. I am just disputing your claim that it's "impossible" to become Korean.

I personally think because Korean society functions in a very binary way: either you accept everything and take it in as a whole and then can become a member of society, or you just do a few things (such as marrying a Korean person, speaking Korean to a certain level, etc.) and you don't. There are valid reasons to act like that, there is this instinct of jealously preserving Korean culture out of fear that it will be taken over by other giants: China, Japan, the US, etc. And Koreans would rather keep the bad aspects of their culture than risk losing it all. It's just part of the deal, and I think many foreigners have a hard time understanding/accepting this fact.

Your life sounds really interesting. If you've written more about it somewhere, I'd love to read it.

China is slightly more culturally inclusive having less homogeneity but the immigration laws are basically "Don't come (unless you're ethnically Chinese)", not that there are any real demand..

That's normal. If you move to Poland from wherever, don't expect you'll ever become Polish. Not really. Even if you are slavic as f. You have a better chance if you speak flawless Polish with flawless neutral polish accent (and look slavic as f). But as long as people know you came from other country and didn't have any polish ancestors you'd still be foreigner. But we will respect you for doing well to blend in.

Only America is a country where you can call yourself American after living there for few years.

Difference on appearance will always be there unless the gene is mixed till the degree you can't tell the race. As in exact opposite position of yours, I think it's just a thing that can't be addressed in our life time, though I might be wrong.

Studies mostly show that, in the long run, family-based immigration policies lead to more economic growth than the "best and brightest". Basically, forming immigrant communities is useful—they provide support to new entrants, and lead to better outcomes for everyone. Importing a few educated doctors, rather than families or broader populations, leads to less long-term benefit.

Interesting. Would love a source.

try this one out:

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Integration-Parado...

This is hopefully just a temporary solution though. What happens when these places get rich enough that their birth rates also drop?

To butcher an unrelated saying: "We can't all get immigrants from each other".

Perhaps we need to find another way to fuel the economy than the never ending pyramid scheme called population growth. At 8 billion (causing massive environmental damage) a drop in population would certainly not be a bad thing.

My hot take is that we need to find a new system that doesn't depend on perpetual economic growth. With both China and India rapidly developing (that's what, 3 billion people with money to spend), climate change will only accelerate until and unless we find an alternate model.

Iran scheduled to peak in 2060: https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/iran-population