English and Neoliberalism in South Korea

Abstract

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.