Mediating globalization: An ethnography of the “English problem” through North Koreans’ English learning with South Korean evangelicals

This ethnography examines the place of English in South Korea through the experience of North Korean migrants in South Korean evangelical institutions. The central thesis is that English in South Korea is both i) a terrain where the tensions in/ of the globalizing (divided) nation-state play out, and ii) a means of mediating those tensions. A central characteristic about the place of English in the South Korean state is the contradiction between the rise of an English testing system for social selection and the limited use of English for everyday communication. This shows the tensions of the neoliberal state, which include notably the tensions between i) globalization and Korean nationalism, and between ii) social stratification and democracy. The English testing system, at the same time, neutralizes these tensions by achieving to a certain extent the competing interests on both sides of the tensions. Evangelicals’ educational institutions for North Korean students are mediating spaces for the North Korean young adults who are directly impacted by the state tensions. They do so by allowing the students to be i) both Korean (national) and English-speaking/ learning (global), and ii) both “North Koreans” (other) and fellow Koreans (us). The evangelicals’ English teaching practices work to mediate their own tension between “helping and evangelizing” (Varghese Johnston, 2007), because English learning is valuable for both neoliberal and evangelical self-development and thus meets the interests of both the evangelicals and the North Koreans. For the North Korean migrants in South Korea, they face the tension between being a South Korean (by citizenship) and not being a South Korean (by cultural habitus). That is, they are given, on one hand, political significance and social advantages through nationalistic/ evangelical institutions (e.g., English support programs particularly for North Koreans), but, on the other hand, they experience barriers in the neoliberal competition (e.g. English testing system). English, however, served as resource for constructing a “third-place” identity for some North Koreans who become fluent English speakers. They had been, in their migration process, less socialized into nationalistic ideology which makes English unspeakable for Koreans.Ph.D