English and Neoliberalism in South Korea

This chapter provides an in-depth picture of the book’s ethnographic context, presenting a historical account of neoliberalism in South Korea and the role the English fever played within it. Through its review of Korea’s neoliberalization process that began in the 1990s, the chapter focuses on several actors that were critical in this process, including the United States, major Korean conglomerates known as jaebeol, and the state. The chapter then reviews key phenomena that constituted the Korean English fever, clarifying why they should be seen as a manifestation of neoliberalism. Finally, the chapter explains how a range of intense feelings and affects pervaded Koreans’ experience of English throughout the country’s modern history, using it to argue that aspects of subjectivity that characterize the Korean English fever should be understood in terms of the specific historical and political economic conditions of Korean society, rather than a Korean cultural essence.

Language Learning as Technology of the Self

This chapter explores how the act of English language learning came to be framed as a moral project during the Korean English fever, focusing on the role that such aspects of morality played in rationalizing the social inequalities reproduced and exacerbated through the neoliberal promotion of English. Its analysis focuses on representation of successful learners of English in the conservative press, which frequently published stories of elite English language learners throughout the English fever. The chapter shows how these stories consistently downplayed the privileged provenance of the successful learners, and instead highlighted the extraordinary effort they put into learning English, presenting them as moral figures—ideal neoliberal subjects who immerse themselves in careful and ethical management of oneself. It is through such representations that English language learning came to reframed as a Foucauldian technology of the self, and a moral responsibility for neoliberal self-development.

Language as Pure Potential

This chapter outlines how a desire for English provides a particular articulation to neoliberal ideologies of language, serving as a foundation for the Korean English fever. Considering desire not as a primal urge that naturally emerges from our inner psyche but as a socially constituted force, this chapter considers how English was conceptualized as an object of desire through the English fever, and what implications this had for Koreans’ affective positioning in relation to English. It explains how the ideology of language as pure potential—a view of language as a completely neutral tool for conveying messages in an unadulterated way, a pure medium of potentiality that enables a speaker to achieve anything she wishes to—facilitates this process, allowing the desire for English to be mobilized for the neoliberal logic of human capital development in the context of globalization.

English fever and coffee: Transient cosmopolitanism and the rising cost of distinction

This article examines the intersection of English and coffee in Seoul, South Korea, in order to document how distinction (ala Bourdieu, 1984/2008) functions under the prevailing conditions of neoliberalism. A mere two decades after Starbucks first opened in Korea, high-end specialty coffee shops proliferate. Drawing on photographs of the exteriors, interiors, and menus from 89 coffee shops in the trendy Seongsu-dong neighborhood in Seoul, we examine how coffee shops deploy English (in addition to or instead of Korean) in their signage, and how this deployment differs by type of coffee shop. We argue that English and coffee interact in a complex process of dual distinction. The coffee shops brand themselves as cosmopolitan and simultaneously offer the customers the distinction of demonstrating themselves knowledgeable about/proficient in both coffee and English. We explain this dual distinction in terms of the extreme competitiveness occasioned by neoliberalism in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. We conclude by suggesting the notion of “transient cosmopolitanism” as a way to understand specialty coffee shops, which we argue are crucial sites for understanding the contemporary subjectivities occasioned by the dominance of neoliberalism.

English fever and American dreams

The current paper examines how English has evolved to become valued language capital in South Korea (henceforth ‘Korea’). Since the late 20th century, Korea has experienced the phenomenon of ‘English fever’, which refers to the frenetic and at times over-zealous pursuit of English-language proficiency across Korean society (J. S. Y. Park, 2009). Researchers have examined ‘English fever’ through various prisms, including education (Park & Abelmann, 2004; J. K. Park, 2009), neoliberalism (Piller & Cho, 2013; Cho, 2015; Lee, 2016), and local socio-politics (Shim & Park, 2008). Rarely has the phenomenon been approached from a historical point of view. Considering the fact that a historical examination of language can provide critical insights into the local processes through which distinctive ideologies of language have been shaped and popularized (Cho, 2017), this paper traces the historical evolution of English in Korean society by focusing on three key periods, i.e. Japanese colonization (1910–1945); the post-independence period and modernization (1945–1980); and military dictatorship and globalization (1980-present). Drawing on the theoretical framework of global centre-periphery divisions embedded in Orientalism (Said, 1979), the analysis focuses specifically on the influence of the United States on the rise of English in Korea. In doing so, I show that ‘English fever’ is not a recent phenomenon but has its roots in historicity through which the seeds for the ongoing phenomenon of ‘English fever’ were planted in Korean society.

"English Fever" in China Has Reached a Watershed

The recent Gaokao language subject reform in China-lowering the score of English, raising the score of Chinese-has aroused extensive debate in public. The time consuming, low efficiency, and test-oriented English learning and the overlooking of Chinese learning, the increasing importance of Chinese language are the main reasons to start the reform. The reform to some extent implies that "English fever" has reached a watershed in China.