Transnational South Korea as a site for a sociolinguistics of globalization: Markets, timescales,...

Journal of Sociolinguistics 16/2, 2012: 147–164

Transnational South Korea as a site fora sociolinguistics of globalization:

Markets, timescales, neoliberalism1

Joseph Sung-Yul Park and Adrienne LoNational University of Singapore and University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign

This special issue seeks a new direction for the sociolinguistics of globalizationin the process of transnationalism, using as a case study new modes ofKorean migration that are changing the face of Korean transnationalism,including short-term early study abroad and return migration. Through adiscussion of the historical and sociolinguistic context of South Korea, thispaper demonstrates how transnational Korea is a relevant site for refining,reframing, and reconsidering the current sociolinguistics of globalization.We identify two important interventions into the theoretical considerationsof language and globalization brought forward by the Korean case: (1) aheightened attention to multiple timescales and markets; and (2) a moreserious engagement with and critique of neoliberalism.

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KEYWORDS: Globalization, transnationalism, multilingualism,neoliberalism, English, Korea

1. THE SOCIOLINGUISTICS OF GLOBALIZATION AND THE CHANGINGFACE OF KOREAN TRANSNATIONALISM

The profound transformations introduced through globalization havedramatically reshaped the scope and direction of sociolinguistic researchduring the first decade of the 21st century. However, if the phenomenon ofglobalization is not a fixed entity, but a continuously evolving process in itself,

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always revealing new dimensions of our social experience with which issues oflanguage are intertwined, then we must seek new directions and connectionsfor sociolinguistic investigations that can adequately account for the realities ofglobalization. This special issue identifies new directions for a sociolinguistics ofglobalization in the space and experiences of transnationalism, and presents thechanging face of South Korean transnationalism as a case study to illustrate this.Why look at the highly specific cultural and social context of Korea for lessonsabout the transformative power of the new cultural, economic, and politicalorder that defines our world? In this paper, we outline our response to thisquestion, arguing that transnationalism in contemporary Korean society servesas a powerful site for refining, reframing, and reconsidering issues that have beencentral in launching the sociolinguistics of globalization over the past decade.

For the better part of the 20th century, Korea was primarily a country ofoutmigration, as residents were forcibly relocated, fled from the devastationsof colonialism, war, and dictatorship, or sought a better life overseas. Overseven million members of the Korean diaspora now live in countries like theformer Soviet Union, Japan, China, and the United States (while the populationof South Korea itself is 50 million). As South Korea’s economy has grown,immigration into the country has also surged. Over the past two decades thenumber of foreign migrants has grown significantly, with the largest increasescoming from lower-skilled migrants, including marriage migrants, from withinAsia. ‘Return’ migration, from descendants of earlier waves of migration, is alsogrowing. Yet Koreans continue to leave the country in record numbers to studyand work abroad. In particular, the rapid globalization of Korean society hasgiven birth to new modes of migration that have brought about a significanttransformation in the ways in which Koreans imagine their position in theworld.2

One prominent trend, which is discussed in detail by the contributions byKang, Shin, and Song in this issue, is the educational migration of pre-universitystudents, called jogi yuhak3 (‘early study abroad’) (see also Lee and Koo 2006;Lo et al. under review; Park and Bae 2009; Song 2010). While study abroadwas typically associated with post-secondary education, since the 2000s it hasbecome increasingly common for the Korean middle class to send their pre-university children abroad. Jogi yuhak is built upon families’ belief that valuedlinguistic and cultural capital is not readily available in the confines of SouthKorea and must be obtained abroad. This trend has been the subject of heateddiscussion in Korea (Kang and Abelmann 2011). While educational migrationhas traditionally been oriented towards English-speaking countries, destinationswithin the Asia-Pacific region, such as China, Singapore, and the Philippines arethe fastest growing sectors (J. Kim 2010). The significance of jogi yuhak liesnot just in its rapid growth – the number of such students jumped more than10 times from 2,259 in 1995 to 29,511 in 2006, though the numbers havesomewhat declined to 27,349 in 2008 and to 18,118 in 20094 (KEDI 2010) –but in the disruptions from the modernist social order of Korea that it represents.

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Jogi yuhak is typically a flexible, short-term strategy that often relies on a split-family arrangement in which the father stays behind in Korea to support themother and children living abroad (commonly called gileogi gajok ‘wild goosefamily’), subordinating the traditional nuclear family structure to educationalinvestment (Lee and Koo 2006). The heavy emphasis on language learning (ofEnglish or other dominant languages) as an important goal of jogi yuhak appearsto imply a valorization of a multilingual, cosmopolitan identity less bound tothe monolingual culture of Korea. This form of educational migration is, thus,a direct response to the intense competition in Korean society that has definedthe job market and educational field since the 1990s – a middle-class strategyfor class mobility and maintenance that flexibly responds to the demands of themarket. More fundamentally, jogi yuhak is grounded in an unwavering faith inthe promise of modernity, as migrants leave the ‘small country’ of South Koreafor the wider world and find themselves navigating the temporal and spatialruptures that such migration entails (Besnier 2011). In this way, jogi yuhak issymptomatic of the recent globalization and neoliberalization of Korean society,and reflects and intensifies anxieties about the shifting relationship betweenlanguage, class, and national identity.

New modes of migration such as jogi yuhak have led to debates about how tounderstand the historically multiple subject positions that diverse experiencesof migration represent, how to deal with the newly emerging multiculturalismof Korean society, and ultimately, what it means to be Korean in the age ofglobalization. As we can see, language is central to these debates, as both anicon of Korean citizenship (Korean) and as vital ‘global’ capital (English, andincreasingly, Mandarin Chinese). Indeed, language is considered by many tobe a driving force in modes of migration that characterize the changing face ofKorean transnationalism. Acquisition of valued linguistic capital is the crowningachievement for an early study abroad student; it is also behind the state’s effortsto recruit teachers from developed countries to serve as ‘native speaker’ Englishteachers (Jeon 2009; Jeon and Lee 2006; Shin 2006). These teachers includeethnic Koreans who are themselves migrants or the descendants of migrants(Cho this issue; Jeon this issue), raising questions about the identity and positionof these overseas Koreans within the national imagination (Lo and Kim thisissue). These new modes of Korean migration contribute to the sociolinguisticsof globalization through the questions they raise about how migration, linguisticcapital, social class, and sociocultural identity intersect in the lives of mobileagents in the global world.

While Coupland has noted that sociolinguistics has been ‘late getting to theparty’ of globalization research (2003a: 465), sociolinguistic studies of the pastdecade have identified several important points of contribution to the study ofglobalization. As globalization inevitably leads to increased contact, interaction,or mixing among different language varieties across geographical and socialspace, a significant rethinking of multilingualism and its consequences foridentity has emerged as a central concern for post-national sociolinguistics


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(Pujolar 2007). Problematization of the ‘one language – one culture – onenation’ paradigm of the nation-state led to a recognition that the heteroglossiaof bilingualism is in fact an inherent condition of all language use (Bakhtin1981; Woolard 1998) and that multilingualism is not simply a juxtaposition ofmany monolingualisms (Heller 2007). Accordingly, greater attention was paidto the hybridity of linguistic practices among transnational populations, whosemultilingualism was reframed as a set of cultural practices in which speakersengage the symbolic differences of the global and the local to transcend theglobal/local boundary itself (Blommaert 2005, 2007, 2010; Jacquemet 2005;Pennycook 2003, 2007; Rampton 1995, 2006).

At the same time, there has been a growing focus on how multilingual practicesare shaped and transformed by material conditions of the global economy.The most influential studies have been those of commodification of languageand identity (Cameron 2000, 2002, 2005; Fairclough 2002; Gee, Hull andLankshear 1996; Heller 2003, 2007, 2011; Holborow 2007; Tan and Rubdy2008; Urciuoli 2008). Under neoliberalism, language and communication areno longer seen as fundamentally linked with identity, and instead increasinglyviewed as a detachable, malleable, and marketable resource or skill (Cameron2005; Heller 2003), problematizing traditional notions of authenticity (Bucholtz2003; Coupland 2003b) and ownership of languages. Sociolinguistic studies ofglobalization have also drawn our attention to how relations of power mediate theexperiences of marginalized and disenfranchized transmigrants (typically labeled‘immigrants,’ ‘refugees,’ or ‘migrant workers’ by the host communities), whomust struggle under the dominant regimes and markets of language that workto devalue the linguistic capital and identities they bring with them (Baynhamand De Fina 2005; Block 2006; Blommaert, Collins and Slembrouck 2005a,2005b; Maryns 2005).

The changing face of Korean transnationalism is at the intersection of thesecentral issues identified by the current sociolinguistics of globalization. On theone hand, Koreans have a deeply held belief in the centrality of the language-ethnicity-territory nexus. The new trends of short-term and return migrationintroduce tensions into this image of Korea as a monolingual, ethnically andculturally homogeneous nation (Park 2008). On the other hand, globalizationhas intensified Korea’s incorporation into the neoliberal economy. It has spreadaccompanying ideas of neoliberal personhood, while spurring migration amongthe privileged. For example, the national pursuit of English is largely orchestratedby the state, which sees it as a project of human capital development that willensure its survival in the global world (Jeon this issue). This means that post-national processes of global multilingualism may actually become importantstrategies for reworking the hegemony and unity of the nation-state, as wellas a central link in the structures of neoliberal competition and class-basedinequalities that dominate Korean society (Shin this issue; Song this issue).Transnational Korea, thus, highlights the complexity of the question of identity,as hybrid identities in the interstices between new ideologies of language



and personhood associated with neoliberalism and older ones founded uponessentialist ideas of authenticity are strategically pursued and commodified as aresponse to global transformations.

What are the implications for a sociolinguistic theory of globalization, whenpursuit of linguistic competence becomes a key consideration in individualachievement, language policy, and national imagination? The contributionsto this special issue address this question by placing at the center of analysisthe process of transnationalism: how past and future trajectories of people’smovements across borders mediate cultural experience and interpretive practice(Appadurai 1996; Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton Blanc 1994; see alsoBesnier 2004; Jacquemet 2005). By emphasizing how the lives of migrantpeople are invariably interlinked with material and historical conditions atdistant places, the articles here take seriously the call to place historicity at thecenter of sociolinguistic investigation (Blommaert 2005, 2010). By drawing ourattention to domestic material processes that constrain mobility as well as to localideological regimes that valorize particular kinds of competence, the papers heretrace how material conditions of the local significantly influence the meaning ofglobal multilingualism. Contemporary Korea’s focus on acquisition of the globallanguage of English reminds sociolinguists that global multilingualism is notsimply a cultural effect of globalization, but a key force that drives globalization,pushing us to accord a much more central position to language in our explorationof the global world.

A transnational perspective is not just necessary because we happen tobe looking at mobile, migrant populations; it is relevant, we argue, to anyconsideration of sociolinguistic issues in an increasingly globalizing world.Language is an important key through which humans interpret and mediatetheir experiences, and thus, in an ever more interconnected world, people becomecompelled to engage in complex negotiations of the meaning of language to makesense of societal transformations and shifting senses of identity. This makes amore deeply historical and critical perspective on language in society a criticalconcern for our understanding of globalization.

The contributions to this special issue articulate this point based on multipleperspectives and diverse sites, including:

• return migration to Korea by English teachers (Cho, Jeon);• transnational Korean families in Singapore (Kang);• wealthy high school students in Toronto (Shin);• graduate students with young children in the American Midwest (Song); and• South Korean media representations of transnational migration (Lo and

Kim).

The contributors have first-hand experience with these issues, as they themselvesare transnational subjects, researchers for whom crossing national bordersforms a basis of their academic and personal life. Though they do not explicitlydiscuss this issue due to limited space, their own awareness of their positionality


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influences their encounters in the field as well as their analyses. In this sense, thestudies in this special issue invite sociolinguists to consider how deeply integratedwith our daily lives are the transformations brought about by globalization, andhow, as researchers of language and society, we are in a unique position tocomment on its profound effects.

In the sections below, we provide a more detailed, thematic introductionto the sociolinguistic context of Korea relevant to transnationalism, andsummarize some of the main insights that arise from these studies of elitemultilingualism. Specifically, we identify two specific interventions into thetheoretical considerations of language and globalization brought forward bythe Korean case: (1) the importance of attending to multiple timescales andmarkets; and (2) a more serious engagement with and critique of neoliberalismas a future direction for a sociolinguistics of globalization.

2. MULTIPLE SCALES IN TIME AND SPACE

Timescales

The issue of timescales (Blommaert, Collins and Slembrouck 2005a; Collins,Slembrouck and Baynham 2009) is central to the Korean globalization project.In fact, Korean transmigrants often explicitly debate issues of temporality incalibrating their migration options. For example, jogi yuhak is characterized bya careful consideration of the optimal time in a child’s life to go abroad andto return. By calculating when and how to re-enter South Korean schooling,whether it is important to establish Korean or English literacy first, or whetherstudy abroad at too young an age is not as valuable as later exposure, parentsbring to bear ideologies about language learning and life trajectory. Indeed,‘short term’ migration can often end up becoming a decade long sojourn awayfrom ‘home’ as study abroad stretches into the university years and beyond.Migrants’ language learning strategies are finely tuned to children’s imaginededucational trajectories: initial stays in ‘small countries’ like Singapore or NewZealand are seen as stepping stones to education in ‘large countries’ like Canadaor the U.S. (Kang this issue; Shin this issue), and early time in the U.S. is seenas groundwork for future study abroad at the university or postgraduate level(Song this issue).

On a much broader level, Korea’s modern history serves as another relevanttimescale. Gendered and classed forms of migration have played a centralrole in South Korea’s rapid urbanization and modernization (Lee 2010) andKoreans’ views of their overseas compatriots have always been contradictory.On the one hand, overseas Koreans were often celebrated as patriots serving thenational interest abroad. The Provisional Government of Korea which foughtfor independence from Japanese rule was established in Shanghai in 1919 bynationalists in exile, and Koreans who lived in the U.S., such as An Chang Ho, SeoJaepil, and Syngman Rhee, played major roles in the development of the modern



Korean state. During the time when Korea was colonized by Japan (1910–1945),Koreans who were educated in Tokyo became professionals, intellectuals, andactivists back in Korea (Robinson 2007). Remittances sent by nurses and mineworkers who settled in Germany during the 1960s and 70s made importantcontributions to Korea’s industrialization. On the other hand, more negativeviews coexist. Korean women who emigrated to the U.S. in the company ofAmerican GIs were shunned as yanggalbo ‘Yankee whores’ (Lee 2010). Mixedrace children fathered by U.S. military personnel stationed in Korea and themassive number of adoptees (nearly 200,000 children) sent abroad in the wake ofthe devastating Korean War (1950–1953) were also seen as shameful remindersof Korea’s impoverished past (E. Kim 2010; Lee 2010). Still other migrants wereseen as traitors who selfishly abandoned their home for hopes of a better life inthe West (Kim 2008).

The source of this tension lies in the complex role outmigration played in thetimes of imperialism and colonialism, and also during the nation’s rapid, harshmodernization – in other words, in cultural memory of the past. This scale ofhistory is also mediated by language in an important way. The conflicted viewof Korean transnationalism is in part grounded by deeply held beliefs aboutthe unity of the historical Korean nation, indexed by its ethnic and linguistichomogeneity. Global multilingualism that emerges in transnational space, then,comes to be seen as questionable under this essentialist view of Korean identity.But it is important to remember that such images of homogeneity and unity area modern discursive construct. Throughout pre-modern history, Koreans werealready ‘participants in a great cosmopolitan civilization centered in China’(Seth 2006: 224). Linguistic ideologies that frame the Korean language as anintegral part of national identity were in fact reactions to the late-19th and early-20th-century global maneuvers of China, Russia, the U.S., and Japan whichdescended upon Korea due to its geopolitically crucial location (Schmid 2002).For example, the Korean writing system, Hangeul, while venerated today as akey symbol of national pride, was denigrated for many centuries as a vulgaror women’s script by the literati; it was only in the late 1890s and 1900s,with the influence of nationalist ideas and establishment of modern educationalinstitutions, that the script was elevated to a symbol of authentic and indigenousidentity (King 2004, 2007).

In this sense, essentialist views of Korean language, culture, and identity,which restrict possible subjectivities claimable by transmigrant Koreans, createa historical problem that must be understood in relation to Korea’s ongoingengagement with the world. The more micro-level timescales of an individual’smigration trajectories and language acquisition strategies are not independentfrom such broader timescales, and the studies in this special issue show thatKoreans do orient to these multiple timescales simultaneously through theirdiscourse. Song, for example, discusses how Korean graduate student familiesraising their children in the U.S. negotiate between ideologies of national identity,class, and language acquisition, each representing discourse linked with different


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timescales, and how in that process, their strategies for linguistic investment alsoshift over time. Lo and Kim discuss more explicitly the historical situatedness ofdifferent stereotypes of the Korean American gyopo (overseas Korean) in Koreanmedia, and explain how the changing conditions of Korean migration led to adevaluation of the linguistic and cultural capital attributed to the gyopo figure.Jeon’s study illustrates how the state must also negotiate between multipletimescales in its attempts to recruit overseas Koreans to teach English in ruralKorean towns, as such transmigrant Koreans are framed simultaneously astimelessly tied to the ‘homeland’ by blood and as having lost their Koreanness(and ability to speak Korean) because of the time they spent abroad. However,the cases analyzed in these studies also explore how multiple timescales worknot only as a constraint on how transmigrants may position themselves, butalso as a strategic resource for them to span multiple identities and attribute newmeaning to language.

Multiple markets

The notion of scales also extends across space, both in a geographical and socialsense. The Bourdieuan linguistic market is not spatially abstract, and all of thepapers also examine how migrants, in their global pathways and local contexts,must orient to multiple markets. This is what Blommaert (2007) has termed‘polycentricity,’ or how multiple centering forces (which may be based at distantgeographical locations) are simultaneously at work within an interaction. Whilepolycentricity may bring opportunities for the transmigrant who can skillfullyexploit their mobility between markets, it may also serve as a source of tension andcontradiction. The underlying motivations for jogi yuhak are a good illustrationof this contradiction. Early study abroad is commonly presented as an escapefrom the constricting system of Korean education, which subjects childrento an endless series of examinations while crushing their individuality; studyabroad is supposed to enable such children to develop to their full potential,fulfilling the creativity and individuality that would otherwise be suppressed(Park and Abelmann 2004). These students’ cosmopolitanism and transformedselves are indexed by their ‘native-like’ competence in English, acquired throughimmersion at a young age in an English-speaking society. But jogi yuhak is alsoan extension of the local system of competition that it purports to overcome; thecultural and symbolic capital that the student achieves through study abroadis meant to enable her to get ahead in the competition back in Korea, therebyallowing the student and her family to maintain and advance their class position(Park and Bae 2009). Ultimately, English is useful as a sign that will foreverdistinguish the student as a person who transcended the bounds of Koreansociety, thus winning her a privileged place exactly within the structure ofcompetition that prompted her to venture beyond the bounds of Korea in thefirst place. The complex motivation which fuels ever greater numbers of Koreanstudents to pursue education outside of the country, then, highlights the irony



that educational strategies that are most saliently global may in fact be deeplygrounded in and shaped by local markets.

New modes of Korean transnationalism, which can be characterized byan extremely strong awareness of the differential value of linguistic capitalacross markets, are thus particularly useful sites for examining the effects ofpolycentricity. While many studies have noted the ways in which migrantpopulations may be subjected to regimes of language that do not recognize thevalue of their linguistic capital (Baynham and De Fina 2005; Blommaert, Collinsand Slembrouck 2005a), what the Korean case highlights is that such differencesin regimes may be actively exploited in some contexts, especially by the relativelyprivileged groups who seek elite multilingualism through transnationalism.While this allows us to turn our attention to the agentive role that transmigrantsplay in traversing boundaries of linguistic markets, it also helps us focus on howsuch transnational strategies are rooted in and contribute to relations of classand social power.

Several of the papers in this issue note that elite migrants do not alwaysturn out to be winners. Male Korean-American English teachers in Seoul,for instance, may appear to be living a glamorous life of endless parties andadventures, as the emasculation and job stagnation they experienced in theU.S. are replaced by lucrative positions as English teachers in South Korea.However, Cho’s study reveals that they are in fact ‘stuck in Seoul,’ as the lackof convertibility of this newfound capital makes them reluctant to go home andstart over in the competitive American job market. In other cases, wealthy short-term migrants find that their elite transnational cosmopolitanism may not berecognized by others. The teenagers in Toronto studied by Shin, for example,invest in forms of capital that have high value in the South Korean market(such as Korean slang and texting) as a reaction to the ways in which theywere not appreciated as global cosmopolitans by local White Canadians. Butbecause such forms are recognizable as carrying high value only within theworld of transnational South Korea itself, this strategy of claiming a privilegedposition ultimately fails in the local context of Canada. Migrants’ attempts atindexing transnational elite status through return travel and communication aretherefore constrained by local ideologies of race and personhood. Nonetheless,in certain sites, orientation to multiple markets may function as a successfulstrategy to reproduce and rationalize one’s privileged position. In Kang’s study,jogi yuhak students in Singapore take pride in the fact that they can competentlyswitch between globally recognized forms of English and local forms of Singlish;it is such flexibility that allows them to claim a position as an elite breedof cosmopolitan, an ‘Asian global.’ Cases like this show that transmigrantsconstantly work across linguistic markets located on different scales ofgeographical and social space. The studies in this issue show that analysisof the effects and limitations of such strategies can reveal important insightsabout how Bourdieuan linguistic markets operate under the new conditions ofglobalization.


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3. LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY UNDER NEOLIBERALISM

English and neoliberal personhood

Defined as ‘a theory of political economic practices that proposes that humanwell-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurialfreedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strongprivate property rights, free markets, and free trade’ (Harvey 2005: 2),neoliberalism is undoubtedly one of the most salient characteristics of ourglobal world, and sociolinguistics has commented on this ideology primarilythrough a discussion of the commodification of language and communication –how language is increasingly seen as a marketable skill that is detachable frommore deeply rooted identities (Cameron 2000, 2002, 2005; Fairclough 2002;Gee, Hull and Lankshear 1996; Heller 2003, 2007, 2011; Holborow 2007;Tan and Rubdy 2008; Urciuoli 2008). The Korean situation enables us to offera more multifaceted analysis of the link between language and neoliberalism,particularly because the new modes of Korean transnationalism are inseparablefrom the ongoing neoliberalization of Korean society since the mid 1990s(Song 2009); the explosion of short-term educational migration is driven byincreasingly harsh competition in the South Korean job market, and the doorfor return migration was opened by the government’s exploitation of globalKoreans for domestic human capital development. By examining how thesetrends are mediated through language, the contributions to this special issuerefine our understanding of the ways in which language figures within projectsof neoliberalism.

For example, all of the papers in this issue discuss the role of the linguisticcapital of English in new Korean transnationalism. The enormous emphasisplaced on English in South Korea is of course linked to the outsized role that theU.S. has played in its modern history, from the partitioning of the peninsula in1948 to the process of post-war nation building that followed the Korean War(1950–1953) (Brazinsky 2007). As the country’s biggest trading partner andmilitary ally, the influence of the U.S. has been unshakable. Thus, while mostKoreans remained largely monolingual in Korean, English has been a languageof importance since the postwar period, with command of the language serving asa sign of status and prestige. But during the 1990s, Korea entered an even moreheated pursuit of English, often called ‘English fever’ (yeongeo yeolpung): Korea’smajor corporations place great importance on English in employment andpromotion; Korean universities are introducing more classes taught in English;and regional governments have created ‘English villages,’ establishments whichsimulate an English-speaking society to facilitate language learning (see Park2009 for details). This heated pursuit of English is not a mere local reflection ofthe worldwide currency of English. Instead, it is closely linked to the neoliberalsocial order that has been restructuring Korean society since the Asian financialcrisis of 1997 and subsequent IMF intervention (Song 2009). During this period,



English came to be seen as one of the most important ‘soft skills’ that index one’salignment with the neoliberal job market, where endless competition and self-improvement are celebrated as opportunities for maximizing the value of humancapital (Park 2010).

As it happens, the position of English in globalization has not been oneof the main topics of mainstream sociolinguistic research on language andglobalization; instead, it was mostly considered under the field of appliedlinguistics (however defined) and World Englishes. But the Korean situationshows us that a focus on English can have significant implications for theoreticalconcerns of a sociolinguistics of globalization. For instance, English plays akey role in reshaping our understanding of the relationship between languageand identity through the way it mediates images of neoliberal personhood(Abelmann, Park and Kim 2009; Comaroff and Comaroff 2000; Walkerdine2006), as well as in defining the political consequences of such transformations.The successful jogi yuhak student, for example, is commonly depicted in the mediaas a hard-working student of proper discipline and character, beaming withthe cosmopolitan ambition of serving humanity through her creative potentialand elite position (Kang and Abelmann 2011). Under such popular discourse,early study abroad becomes a glorious arena through which the studentcan transform into a competitive spirit who takes it upon herself to succeedthrough endless self-improvement and self-management rather than relyingon state support or structures of solidarity (Urciuoli 2008). English is deeplyimplicated in the construction of this idealized person-type, for its acquisitionserves as an internalized, undeniable index of the transnational experiencethrough which the student’s neoliberal spirit is forged, particularly becauseit is commonly believed in Korea that good competence in English, especiallymastery of ‘native’ pronunciation, is impossible to acquire without livingoverseas.

That English in neoliberalism is celebrated not just because of its functionalvalue but because of the underlying figure of personhood it indexes can beevidenced from the fact that English language skills alone are rarely consideredto be sufficient in marking the speaker as a valued individual in the globaleconomy. The returnee English teachers studied by Jeon and Cho find that theyare treated as dilettantes and suspect characters, while the Korean Americangyopo discussed by Lo and Kim are ridiculed in the media, in spite of theirEnglish skills. As the papers by Kang and Song demonstrate, both studentsin Singapore and those in the U.S. are not satisfied with merely becoming fluentin global forms of English, but attempt to acquire other forms of linguistic andsocial capital, including Chinese and local varieties of English. For the study-abroad students Shin followed, power to engage in conspicuous consumptiondistinguished them from local Canadians or Korean Canadians, whom they sawas backwards and provincial despite their competence in English. These examplesall show that English by itself does not make its speaker an ideal neoliberal


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subject; it is the constant self-development and self-fulfillment, as evidencedthrough the effort to acquire the language, in conjunction with other signs, thatallows one to achieve the status of a worthy individual under neoliberalism.Together, the contributions to this special issue suggest that a closer analysis offigures of personhood (Agha 2007) can be a fruitful direction for a sociolinguisticinvestigation of the role language plays in the reproduction of neoliberalism.

Critiques of neoliberalism

The diverse experiences and trajectories represented through Korea’s newtransnationalism also offer a more sustained critique of neoliberalism. It isclear that neoliberalism, instead of offering everyone true freedom to realizetheir full potential regardless of social background, works to mask structuralinequalities underlying the transformed job market. Faithful devotion to theideals of neoliberal personhood does not necessarily bring success; a third-tier university student who manages a perfect score on standardized Englishtests and is able to speak English fluently is still not likely to succeed inthe Korean job market (Abelmann, Park and Kim 2009). Yet, valorizing theliberal human spirit provides an illusion that somehow one may be able toovercome the structural barriers of class and social position through endless self-development and creative self-branding. Contradictions that surround the newmodes of Korean transnationalism allow us to examine this mystifying quality ofneoliberalism in more detail, and to clarify how a sociolinguistic viewpoint mayuniquely contribute to broader debates about neoliberalism.

For example, a perspective that recognizes the multiplicity of languageideologies (Kroskrity 2004) helps us understand better the contradictionsunderlying neoliberal views of language and identity. While work on thecommodification of language appears to suggest that such ideologies supplantolder ideologies which assume a more inherent link between language andidentity, the Korean case illustrates how essentialist ideologies of languageremain active under neoliberalism. For instance, the enterprise of early studyabroad appears to be built on the idea that the English language is an acquirablecommodity, something that one can gain by strategically deploying the materialresources at one’s disposal to move to a particular geographical location;however, the belief that study abroad must be done early in life so that a native-like accent may be successfully etched into one’s habitus seems to reflect a viewof language as not so flexibly detachable from the individual.

This theme is explored in detail by several studies in this special issuewhich discuss the persistent effect of ethnic identity. Return migration intoKorea is shaped by constant tension between discourses of language as identityand discourses of language as commodity. For example, the 1999 OverseasKorean Act, which extended most rights of Korean nationals to overseasKoreans, specifically privileged certain members of the Korean diaspora (i.e.



Korean Americans over Korean Chinese) for the symbolic and economic capitalthat they could bring to help spur national development (Park and Chang2005); in this case, the material value of language carries more importancethan ethnic heritage. However, once on Korean soil, Korean Americans oftenfind that racial ideologies render their linguistic competency as less valuable.Jeon’s paper, for example, shows how the bilingual competence of KoreanAmerican English teachers tends to be seen as a liability in the classroom,as they are often encouraged to suppress their ‘Koreanness’ to approximatethe language behavior of monolingual foreigners. Cho’s paper discusses howKorean Americans are both privileged with high-paying teaching jobs in theprivate market, but also disadvantaged by the idea that their English wasstill not as good as that of a (White) ‘native speaker.’ Lo and Kim’s paperillustrates how the English language competence of the Korean Americanspeaker is not valued as highly as the competence of elite Korean multilingualswho are imagined as fluent in both Korean and important world languages.These examples show that, under neoliberalism, essentialist ideologies that linklanguage and ethnicity not only persist, but are applied in highly specific waysthat constrain the benefits that speakers may reap by positioning themselvesas Korean. Korean transnationalism, then, offers a powerful example of howneoliberalism creates the conditions under which certain kinds of capitalcome to have great value while simultaneously making that value alwaysunattainable.

Of course, it is ultimately the valorization of unconstrained neoliberalcompetition that makes neoliberal ‘success’ unattainable, even for the relativelyprivileged middle class. Since capital is only valuable by virtue of its rarity,newly acquired elite bilingualism becomes less valuable as growing numbersof families invest in English education. English education does not guaranteejob stability, as the endless competition of the neoliberal job market does notstop with the completion of one cycle of having lived abroad. This is preciselyan issue that the graduate student parents in Song’s study struggle with. Ashighly educated elites studying at a U.S. university, but with less economicpower than other jogi yuhak parents, they are concerned with their children’sprospects of making a good living in Korean society – an anxiety they deal withby engaging in literacy practices that will distinguish them from other studyabroad families and emphasize their cultural capital as intellectuals. But weknow that their children will have to live in a much harsher world than theirparents did, for such is the changing condition of the job market in Korea andaround the world. For this reason, a simple dichotomy of victims vs. profiteersof globalization becomes problematic, as conditions of neoliberalism run muchdeeper into people’s ways of life. The studies in this special issue argue for a morenuanced view of the relationship between language, class, and social power, andchallenge sociolinguistic research to aim for a deeper critique of the ideologicalunderpinnings of neoliberalism.


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4. CONCLUSION

In sum, the articles in this special issue demonstrate in many ways how newmodes of Korean transnationalism illuminate important new directions for asociolinguistics of globalization. The shifting ethnoscape and linguascape ofKoreans in the world increasingly problematize the distinction between diasporaand homeland and the romantic ties that used to link them together. The questionof who counts as ‘Korean’ increasingly needs to be considered in the context ofthe tensions and contradictions surrounding language and ethnicity across theporous boundary of the nation state, and certainly cannot be grounded in imagesof purity and local fixity. At the same time, it is also closely bound to issues ofclass and power, and the dynamics of the global economy that transform theway of our existence in the modern world. In this sense, the Korean situationshows us, in more than one way, that transnationalism is not a shedding of thelocal, but a more intense engagement with the local.

Ultimately what mediates the process of identity construction for thesetransmigrants are the contesting language ideologies that link specific forms oflanguage to social meaning (Kroskrity 2004; Schieffelin, Woolard and Kroskrity1998; Silverstein 2003). The papers in this special issue identify how differentideologies of language emerging in the discursive practice of transnationalKoreans contribute to the relational construction of their identities (Bucholtzand Hall 2005), and how this process takes place against the backdrop ofthe constraints of the new economy and class relations. The new economy,global mobility, and the transformation of the nation-state introduce newlanguage ideologies, as well as bringing together ideologies that are rooted indifferent geographical and social domains through the transnational movementof speakers. But this does not mean older ideologies disappear; they remain inreformulated and reimagined form, steadily interacting with newer modes ofviewing the relationship between language and identity. Transnational Korea isa fascinating case study for investigating this process, for it is a context whereextreme valorization of the neoliberal personhood coexists with persistent beliefin the centrality of the language-ethnicity-territory nexus. The new modes ofKorean transnationalism interact with these ideologies in complex and diverseways, highlighting the multiplicity and polycentricity inherent in the process ofglobalization.

NOTES

1. Several of the papers in this special issue were presented at the 2009 meeting of theAmerican Association for Applied Linguistics in Denver, Colorado. We thank DavidBlock for his insightful commentary on that session, Ross King for his commentson this introduction, and the detailed comments on the papers provided by ananonymous reviewer for the journal. All remaining errors are ours alone.



2. Migration of North Koreans, particularly the recent flow of refugees into China andSouth Korea, is another phenomenon worth discussing, but sociolinguistic studiesof those migrants have been lacking, and in this paper we confine our discussion tomigration and transnationalism as it relates to South Korea.

3. Korean is romanized according to the Revised Romanization system.4. Official statistics on jogi yuhak undercount the number of participating families,

since, by definition, they exclude children who are accompanying their parents whoare working or studying abroad or those who have permanent immigration status.Such families are often motivated by the same desires as official jogi yuhak families,and participants often move between different categories of migration (see Song thisissue).

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Address correspondence to:

Joseph Sung-Yul ParkDepartment of English Language and Literature

National University of SingaporeBlk AS5, 7 Arts Link

Singapore 117570

[email protected]


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