Last year, I watched a Chinese New Year Parade in Baguio City, and almost everyone marching down Session Road was Korean. I recently visited Cebu, and everywhere you looked, were gigantic Korean tour groups. There are Koreatowns sprouting all over our country. A new wave of immigration, visitations, and investments has begun. Are Filipinos prepared? Are we too welcoming or this early on, already too hostile?

Last Friday, Lee Eun Hee, a South Korean computer programmer and first-time tourist in the Philippines, earned a distinction. She was the one-millionth passenger to arrive at the Clark airport. That is, since Oct. 30, 2003, when a Korean airline launched the Inchon-Clark route.

A musical band serenaded her, a free round-trip ticket to South Korea and free accommodations at a local hotel were awarded to her. And her arrival came at the heels of a topic increasingly on everyone’s lips. The topic is the growing number of South Koreans in our country.

They made a big deal about the millionth arrival at the Clark airport, because ever since the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, the Clark and Subic areas have been looking for new ways to build up their economy.

Ironically, just a couple of weeks back, someone told me that they encountered a surprise when they climbed Mount Pinatubo. At the volcano crater’s edge, there’s a spa — run by Koreans. There, they bury you up to your beck in warm volcanic sands. I was even told that in the crater lake, there are paddle boats — run by Koreans.

Now besides that story, no one else has been able to confirm the existence of this spa. But what we do know for certain, is that another famous Philippine volcano has attracted South Korean attention. A public debate broke out in the papers over whether the South Koreans be allowed to build a spa in the crater of Taal Volcano.

At a time when our country’s supposed to be welcoming investments from overseas with open arms, South Korean investments have become controversial. You have to wonder if we’re serious about opening up to the world economy or not.

One thing is sure, though. We can’t ignore the South Koreans because they’re paying a lot of attention to us. Whether this is a virtuous, or vicious cycle, I leave it up to you.

A remarkable series of articles in the Philippine Daily Inquirer says it all. The series began with a piece by Margie Quimpo-Espino titled, “Koreans ‘invade’ the Philippines”.

It tells us that 378,602 Korean tourists came to the Philippines in 2003, and that the number went up to 572,133 in 2006, a 51-percent rise. The article also tells us that the Bureau of Immigration couldn’t furnish the Inquirer with figures on how many Koreans were granted alien certificates of registration in the country.

And the article went on to say, that the growing number of South Koreans has already led to social tensions. For example, a broker said that many house owners in Manila are wary about renting their abodes to Koreans.

Now you might ask, with so many Filipinos eager to leave our country, why is one nationality eager to live, work, study, and relax over here?

The article says there are varying reasons why there is an increasing number of Koreans in the country. Some want to learn to speak English and doing it in the Philippines is cheaper; for others, studying college here makes financial sense; still more enjoy the lower cost of living and the luxuries such as servants, that they could never afford at home. Seoul, after all, is one of the most expensive cities in the world.

What I’ve also heard is, studying and living here enables young Koreans to avoid the obligation of rendering military service.

The next piece in the series is by the paper’s Mindanao Bureau, titled “Korean businesses are bullish in Davao”. A Korean company’s chief operating officer, Justin Choi, is quoted in the article. It gives us an insight into the investments strategies of the Koreans.

He said, “We’ve gone to Baguio, Cebu and Boracay but decided that Davao City is best for development... There is still much untapped potential in Davao... The city is the second biggest in Asia, it belongs to Mindanao which has good resources and good weather (no hurricanes here), its international airport was constructed by a Korean company, it has a lot of good factors to attract foreign retirees, low prices with high potential for economic growth and plenty of chances to develop a very big project.”

If Koreans come here to learn English, the article also points out there’s another group going into language studies. Since Korea increases its job quota for Filipinos to 12,000 this year, learning centers offering Korean language courses to Korean-bound overseas Filipino workers are also popping up.

And here’s another article in the series, by, Vincent Cabreza and Gobleth Moulic of the Inquirer’s Northern Luzon Bureau, titled “Who’s afraid of Korean businesses in Baguio?” The article tells us that Baguio claims it is second to Metro Manila as the preferred destination of Koreans in the country.

The average number of Korean tourists who visit the city, according to the article, lies somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 each week during the peak travel season. Meanwhile, the city’s grade schools and universities have at least 2,000 Koreans. And as a whole, Koreans dominate the 67,000 foreigners who have made Baguio their second home.

And finally, an article that gets to the heart of the matter. It was by Jolene Bulambot and Irene Sino Cruz of the Inquirer’s Visayas Bureau, and its title was, “Only Korean businesses earn from Korean tourists”.

At present, according to the article, Korean businessmen owned at least 200 business establishments located in the different cities in Cebu ranging from tour agencies, restaurants, Korean-English schools, bars, nightclubs, flying school and convenient stores.

There are 52 to 60 Korean-English schools in Cebu, 17 travel agencies and several restaurants, beach resorts, dive shops, bars and convenient stores owned by Korean nationals. This makes for a growing Korean community. There are at least 13,000 Koreans residing in Cebu, mostly students and tourists.

Every week, we have at least 500 Koreans visiting Cebu, and the numbers add up. For the first three months of this year, more than 60,000 Koreans have already visited Cebu followed by 13,000 from the United States. They arrive on the 16 direct flights to South Korea from Cebu flown weekly by four different airlines.

Now all of these facts are remarkable, but I’d like to suggest something even more remarkable. And that is, that too many of these figures are imprecise, and so, we’re doing a lot of guesstimating, instead of really, clearly, reckoning what the impact of the Korean presence is.

Here we are, in some cases bothered by Koreans, like our countrymen in Baguio who say, Koreans are noisy. In other cases, we’re resentful of Koreans, like the tour operators in Cebu, who complain the Koreans only give their business to fellow Koreans. Or we’re mistrustful of the Koreans, like the brokers who won’t rent out properties to them in Manila. The end result is we’re in danger of becoming xenophobic and racist, of doing to Koreans what was once done to us: putting up signs like “No Koreans Allowed.”

But I’d like to suggest to you, that whether its news reports, or statements from government officials, the only thing I think we can say for sure, is how uncertain we are about the nature of the growing Korean presence in our midst.

We can’t say how many, exactly are here; we can’t determine what sort of backgrounds they have — are they good, hard-working people, or the social misfits and who knows, swindlers and racketeers of South Korean society? Who are these Koreans, what sort, and what kind of money they’re bringing over, should matter very much to us. There are some investments and investors we should welcome with open arms; others, whom we should keep at arm’s length.

The proper determination precedes the appropriate strategy; and we need facts, hard facts, and not guesstimates.