I would not recommend doing this because the time benefit and the chance of something going extemely wrong is high.   It was emotionally manipulative enough and adding in the extra dimension of misunderstanding due to language barriers would probably means such an exercise could have extreme unintended consequences.

We did this experiment in my school in South Africa when I was in grade 7. It was used as a way to introduce a discussion about Apartheid and it was very useful to that end. But I will tell you that if you don't alternate between who gets advantages and who doesn't then it is precisely zero fun for the kids with the disadvantage. Just something to think about.

Unless you have an extremely close working relationship with your co-teacher and his/her English is good enough that there are zero miscommunications between the two of you, you yourself are fluent in Korean, and/or your students are proficient enough in English and intelligent enough that they can have meaningful discussions about this afterwards,  I don't see any way in which this doesn't go horribly wrong. I understand you wanting to do something worthwhile and teach the kids something meaningful, but I'd say just put this in the bad idea file and leave it alone.

Yeeeeaaah this seems like a bad idea. It seems way too complicated for elementary ESL UNLESS you *really* simplify it. Maybe you could give everyone in the class either a white wristband or a black wristband, then have them each draw a picture or write some sentences or whatever. Tell the kids wearing the white wrist-band that you want them to bring you their pictures, and then hang them on the wall and say what nice pictures they are. Don't say anything about the pictures from the kids with the black wristbands. If they ask you, don't be mean, just say something like "No, I'm not going to put your picture on the wall because you have a black bracelet".

If the kids don't immediately throw a fit, take a bathroom break or do a different activity for a little while to let them think about how weird it is. After the break, ask the kids if they know why you chose only pictures from kids with white bracelets, and ask the kids with the black bracelets how it made them feel. Then talk about how racism is random like that, how back in the day it was drinking fountains and what not, and some places are still like that. If your kids know/like Michael Jackson, you could talk about how MTV wouldn't show his videos because he was black (just like you wouldn't put the pictures on the wall, get it? get it??), but then he made the most popular video of all time so everyone realized how stupid that was and now MTV plays music from all races and of course there are many black artists who are very popular. You could show them Thriller or parts of it for fun if you think they would be interested (a lot of my High school girls like MJ). Then put the pictures from the kids with black wristbands on the wall too and say something like "That's better, right?"

AnyWHO, maybe something REALLY simple and GENTLE would work? I don't know, it might still be risky.

I don't know. I disagree that  a lesson like this is an inherently awful idea. Perhaps Korea "isn't ready" for this kind of thing, but I don't feel like it isn't worth a try. I think we all know that Korea isn't exactly the most progressive in terms of... anything. 

My thoughts are:

- Make sure your co t is totally on board and understands and agrees with the message that you're trying to share and is willing to moderate discussion with the class
- Perhaps segue into the lesson by drawing out discriminatory reactions from the kids (how often do we hear/see them laughing at black people or calling Japanese monkeys?), and then going from there?
- If nothing else, have your co t translate the movie and play it with subtitles and then discuss.

Good luck, I think it's worthwhile.

My opinion is that unless you have a strong background in anti-oppression training and a major issue with racism at your school I would strongly suggest not doing this.  The "experiment" "teaching activity" whatever you want to call it was done in a different context than exists in Korea.  These kids are very very aware of race and racism (because the experiment wasn't really about race it was about oppression and bigotry) where as in Korea for elementary kids race is more abstract (as someone said it's more about Korean/Foreigner).

I would suggest doing a topic on the awesomeness of difference.  Talk about the fact that there are different people in the world with different skin colour and that it's a good thing.  You can talk a bit about why you shouldn't be mean to people with different skin colour, etc but I would not make that the focus.

The only group I would ever attempt this with are advanced adult students or advanced high school students. I can't imagine elementary school students getting much, if anything, out of this video. The kids in the vid are a little hard to understand.