“I have these Korean clothes,but I don’t know how to explain them”:

The Precarious Balance ofthe National and the International

at the Korean Minjok Leadership Academy

An Essay Presented

by

Abraham Joseph Ross Riesman

to

The Committee on Degrees in Social Studies

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for a degree with honors

of Bachelor of Arts

Harvard College

March 2008

Table of Contents

Introduction p. 3

Chapter One: “A Battlefield Without Borders” p. 10

Chapter Two: “Traditional Learning” and Its Discontents p. 55

Chapter Three: International Sources of National Feeling p. 78

Conclusions: Globalization and National Identity on Trial p. 107

Appendix I: Notes on Methodology p. 117

Appendix II: Relevant Photographs p. 121

Works Consulted p. 126

Introduction

On November 30th, 2007, the Korean Minjok Leadership Academy had a

coming-out party, of sorts, and it happened on the pages of the Wall Street

Journal, in an article auspiciously titled “How to Get Into Harvard.” The paper

had conducted a study of the freshman classes at eight “top colleges” in the

United States and compiled a list of the students’ high school alma maters. From

that data, they ranked the schools that were sending the highest percentages of

their graduating classes to those “top colleges.”1 They listed 40 high schools, all

of which were located in the US—except for two. Both of these exceptions were

located halfway around the world from Harvard, in South Korea. About a month

later, the Journal ran a correction, saying their data had been “incomplete,” and in

their “re-calculated” list, only one Korean school remained, sticking out

conspicuously amidst all the American prep schools—the Korean Minjok

Leadership Academy.2

The article had almost no qualitative information about the institution:

“School in South Korea’s Gangwon-do province requires students to speak only

English for many classes” was all the writers had to say about it.3 There was no

1 Ellen Gamerman, et. al. “How to Get Into Harvard,” Wall Street Journal 30 November 2007, Weekend Section, p. W1.2 Ellen Gamerman, et. al. “How the Schools Stack Up: Revised,” Wall Street Journal Online 28 December, 2007. http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-COLLEGE0711-sort.html (accessed 11 January 2008).3 “How to Get Into Harvard”. For the sake of honest quoting, we have opted to replicate the spelling from the article, which is in the Revised Romanization form of transliteration from Korean to the Latin alphabet. However, in all future transliterations that are not quotations from existing printed work, we will be using the McCune-Reischauer form. For example, if we had written this Journal

3

examination of the origins or policies of this anomalous school that had beaten

out such eminent academies as Princeton High School and Regis High School.

Nor was there any explanation as to what the Korean word, “Minjok,” meant. Or,

for that matter, why South Korea—instead of, say, India—was sending so many

students to America’s best colleges. But I knew how to fill in those informational

gaps, and the moment was exciting for me—it was as if the American mass media

had just validated a year of my academic life.

I first learned of the school—also known as “KMLA”—in 2006, while

doing an interview-based research project on the so-called “Harvard Wave” in

South Korea. Starting sometime around 2004, there had been a boom in the

Korean pop-culture market for Harvard-related products: The top-rated TV show

in late 2004 was a soap opera entitled Love Story at Harvard, and more

importantly for my research, Korean students admitted into Harvard were

becoming national celebrities.4 I interviewed students my age who had their life

stories published in books marketed as how-to guides on getting into Harvard,

with titles like Everyone Can Do It.5 What initially astonished me was the

disparity between the fame these students had at home and their relative

invisibility on campus. What astonished me even more were the unpublished

statistics I uncovered: There were more Korean nationals studying abroad at

article, we would have written “Kangwŏn,” not “Gangwon.”4 Nina M Catalano, "Harvard TV Show Popular in Korea." The Harvard Crimson 13 December 2004. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=505050 (accessed 15 October 2006).5 Park Chung-ah, "Harvard Gets High Marks in Pop Culture." The Korea Times 7 December 2004. http://times.hankooki.com. (accessed 16 October 2006). Unfortunately, the webpage for this comprehensive article has since been taken down.

4

Harvard College than Chinese nationals, Indian nationals, or any group other than

Canadians and British. Among non-English-speaking countries, Korea was the #1

supplier of study-abroad students to the College. Perhaps more importantly, that

statistical trend was a recent and dramatic one—as of 2000, there had been 4

Koreans at the College; in 2006, there were 27.6 After more digging, I found that

the phenomenon was global: In the space of a decade, South Korea had gone from

being a non-entity in study-abroad education to being the world’s single biggest

per-capita exporter of study abroad students to the United States.7 As I gathered

this quantitative data, I also learned from my interviewees—Korean nationals

studying at the College—that there were whole schools in South Korea whose

major goal was to send students abroad.

One such school, which three of them had attended, was the Korean

Minjok Leadership Academy. It seemed like an ethnographic goldmine at a first

glance. Virtually nothing was—or is, for that matter—written about KMLA in

Korean or American scholarship. Nevertheless, I investigated the high school and

its popularity through Korean periodicals, KMLA’s website, and the school’s

Wikipedia page. KMLA was built largely on two pillars, it seemed—intense

Korean pride and intense dedication to sending students abroad. The contradictions

made my head spin: The students wore traditional Korean clothes (hanbok), but

6 “Multi-Annual Statistics by School, 1992-2006,” Harvard University. Cambridge, MA: Harvard International Office, 2007. Obtained by special permission from the Harvard International Office, these statistics are available only by request and for academic purposes.7 “Country Background: Korea.” Institute of International Education. Open Doors Project, 2006. http://opendoors.iienetwork.org/?p=89245 (accessed 30 November 2006). The 2007 edition of this report has shown the number of Korean students studying abroad to have grown.

5

they were forced to speak only in English during their classes. They awoke at dawn

to perform silent archery, but they spent class time studying for the American

Advanced Placement Tests. The school’s name had “minjok” in it—a word, as we

shall see, with deep historical, ethnic, and nationalistic connotations—but it was at

the vanguard of sending students to the United States. My interest was thoroughly

piqued, and I obtained a research grant to go to Korea and explore the following

question: How does the Korean Minjok Leadership Academy balance nationalism

with internationalism?

With that query in mind, I went to Korea in the summer of 2007 for three

months of study and research. Through 43 interviews with students and faculty,

gathering documents at the school, and living at KMLA for observation, I collected

information to answer my question about nationalism and internationalism.8 I soon

learned that those two terms were too politically charged to aptly describe the

school, and the following question became my focus: In what ways have KMLA

and its students balanced their aims for international standards of success with

their sense of national identity?

The question has a great deal of theoretical and practical importance, on

three levels. On a very basic level, any study about Korean nationals studying

abroad is significant: They represent the third largest study-abroad population in the

US, and as previously noted, Korea produces more study-abroad students, per

capita, than any other country—a statistic that was far from true ten years ago, and

that only shows signs of rising. At this basic level, a study of KMLA itself is also

8 For a more detailed account of the methodology that went into this project, see Appendix I.

6

vital, since no one has examined it yet, despite its popularity and pole position in

the Korean educational exodus.9 On a slightly larger level, notions of identity

among Korean students is vital to the growing literature on Korean nationalism. As

we shall see in the following chapter, Korean nationalism stands at an historical

crossroads at the beginning of the 21st century, with increased engagement in the

world at large coming at the same time as a resurgence of Korea-centric rhetoric.

From that angle, a school that aims to promote Korean national pride and

international success provides an ideal lens for examining the paradoxes of present-

day Korean ideology. But at the largest level, this question allows for a specific

case study in one of the most dynamic, vital, and vagary-prone scholarly questions

in post-Cold War social science: How do the forces of globalization and national

identity interact in the modern world? In order to shed light on that larger question,

however, we must first focus on our case study.

This thesis suggests that KMLA’s institutional balance has been tipped in

favor of international factors, but that a different personal balance among its

students has emerged in spite—or even because—of that fact. Our argument is as

follows: KMLA’s institutional push for international competitiveness has

9 Curiously, although there has been recent research on Korean education, there has been no examination of the recent, rapid, and globally relevant rise of Korean study-abroad students. Seth is the leading English-language authority on Korean education, but he only briefly mentions studying abroad in the conclusion to 2002’s Education Fever, saying the “search for a competitive edge and the inadequacies of the educational system resulted in a huge exodus of students” by 1998. He attributes it to “the search for educational opportunity—and at a lower cost,” but offers no qualitative data to back up that assertion. Similarly, Korean education expert Ka Ho Mok has vaguely noted the existence of “international student exchange programs” in government plans of recent years, but does not examine the matter further. Michael J. Seth, Education Fever (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), 256; Ka Ho Mok, Education Reform and Education Policy in East Asia (New York City: Routledge, 2006), 179.

7

significantly watered down its institutional push for national pride and identity;

but paradoxically, the school’s students are still developing that national pride

and identity, often as a result of their international aspirations.

We will organize this paper into three chapters. In the first, “A Battlefield

Without Borders,” we will examine the history and present state of KMLA, in the

context of contemporary issues of international identity, as well as Korea-specific

dilemmas of globalization and nationalism. Here, we claim that the history of

KMLA is one of decreasing institutional focus on overt attempts at instilling

national pride and identity in students, largely due to the rigors of the international

educational economy into which the school placed itself. In the second,

“‘Traditional Learning’ and Its Discontents,” we will examine student responses

to the question of whether or not their time at KMLA influenced their sense of

Korean pride or identity. Here, we claim that the vast majority of our student

interviewees are unmoved by the school’s overt attempts to teach such national-

oriented concepts—attempts collectively called “traditional learning”—although

some non-“traditional learning” factors of KMLA life increase their sense of

Korean pride and/or identity. In the third, “International Sources of National

Feeling,” we build on the implications of the previous chapter, by analyzing the

fact that an overwhelming majority of students say their sense of Korean pride

and/or identity is at the forefront of their minds. Here, we claim that at least two

of their recurring strains of thought about being Korean stem largely—and

somewhat paradoxically—from their aspirations of living and succeeding abroad.

In the conclusion, we will tie together our findings with the findings of other

8

authors in various disciplines related to this study—authors we will also mention

within the body of the essay.10 In doing so, we will also address the implications

our research has for a greater understanding of globalization and national identity.

10 We have opted to forego a traditional “literature review” chapter at the beginning of this thesis for two reasons: (1) There is no easily-defined body of literature into which this thesis fits, thus making such a chapter unwieldy, and (2) because it would be so unwieldy, it would disrupt the narrative flow of our argument. Nevertheless, we will firmly address certain fields of study and authors in the first chapter and in the conclusion.

9

Chapter One:

“A Battlefield Without Borders”

Introduction

There’s a building on the campus of the Korean Minjok Leadership

Academy that looks, from a distance, like most of the buildings on campus. It has

the same sloping, uniquely Korean style of roof. It has the same blue-and-white

color scheme. The thick greenery of the school’s isolated location surrounds it.

But there’s a difference between this building and the others—this one is

abandoned. Tucked away on a hill, with vines creeping onto it and all useful

school equipment emptied out of it, this building used to be the girls’ dormitory.

In addition to housing students, it also seems to have been intended as an area of

physical exercise—behind it is a rotting, drained-out swimming pool. Three years

into KMLA’s existence, the female population of the school became too large for

the dorm, and the girls were moved to the main dormitory building. But the

building has existed in a state of limbo ever since then—not demolished, but not

being used.

“Unfortunately, that pool may be an example for the school: To maintain

it is too much of a cost.” says one teacher, who has been with the school almost

since its beginning. “The founder had a vision, but how to implement it in an

economic way was difficult.” The teacher is not without hope for the building, nor

for what it represents to him. “That old girls’ dormitory, it will perhaps be used

10

again,” he says.

That teacher uses an apt metaphor to describe the challenges that KMLA

has faced since its founder, a milk entrepreneur named Ch’oe Myŏngchae, created

it in the mid-1990’s. Like many buildings on campus, the girls’ dormitory

demonstrates a balance between traditional Korean architecture and modern glass

and plastic. So, too, has the school been a unique attempt to strike a balance—one

between distinctly Korean notions of identity and pride on the one hand, and

aspirations for international success and recognition on the other. But the girls’

dormitory was abandoned. So, too, have many aspects of KMLA’s ideological

mission been abandoned since its doors first opened in 1996.

In this chapter, we will tell the story of KMLA through the analytical lens

of its attempts to balance national and international concepts. Of course, that lens

will obscure a great deal of the school’s history, but this paper is not an attempt to

tell the authoritative story of KMLA. Instead, we will use this space to make a

specific argument: Although Ch’oe created the school as an attempt to respond to

the combating historical forces of nationalism and globalization, and although

many of the school’s so-called “traditional learning” aspects remain, international

aspirations have watered down almost all Korean-centric ideology and practices.

Put simply: Throughout the history of KMLA, there has been decreasing

institutional focus on overt attempts at instilling national pride and identity in

students, largely due to the rigors of the international educational economy into

which the school placed itself.

We will analyze the school’s history in three parts. First, we will briefly

11

touch upon the larger dilemmas of global identity that Ch’oe faced in the mid-

1990’s and that KMLA continues to face today. Second, we will examine the

ideological balancing act upon which he founded KMLA. Finally, we will

examine how various forces tipped that balance in favor of international goals

over the course of the school’s history from 1996 to 2007, and what the balance is

today.

Part 1: Crossroads

Ch’oe Myŏngchae is not an academic. He made his fortune through a milk

company called “P’asŭt’oerŭ Uyu”—“Pasteur Milk” in English. Nevertheless, in

his autobiography, he offers up a vision of the future shared by theoreticians and

authors throughout the world. “In the future, there aren’t going to be any borders

across countries, but the world is going to be a huge mass of land with no

borders,” he writes. “It’s going to be a battlefield without borders.”11 From this

standpoint, he makes the assertion that the best survival strategy in that

“battlefield” is to resist assimilation into a composite, global identity, while

accepting the need to participate in a global order. “First and foremost, our minjok

has to be well-off and never again be oppressed by other countries or be at the

mercy of other countries,” he writes. “That is the only way to be a responsible

member of the world community.”12

That word, “minjok” (민족), is impossible to translate into English. But in

11 Ch’oe Myŏngchae, 20 Nyŏn Hu Nŏhŭidŭli Malhara (Seoul: Ach’im Nara, 2004), 171.12 Ibid.

12

order to understand Korea, and especially to understand the Korean Minjok

Leadership Academy, we must offer up some connotations, at least. It is often

simply translated as “nation,” and indeed it bears connotational similarities to

terms like the German “Volk,” but it has its own history—it was not merely a

Korean translation of a Western European term. Its linguistic origins are murky,

but it came into modern parlance in the context of Korean nationalism during the

turn of the 20th century. Anti-Japanese activist Sin Ch’aeho was one of the first

popularizers of the term in political discourse. For example, he published a Korea-

centric (as opposed to Sino-centric or Japan-centric) history of Korea called

Chosŏn Sanggosa under Japanese colonial rule, and the book was filled with

references to the minjok. There, he defined it as “an organic body formed out of

the spirit of a people” and said it was “descended through a single pure blood

line,” which began with the mythical founder of Korea, Tangun.13 This focus on

minjok as tied up with history, family, and direct lineage was also closely related

to a belief that it was part of some kind of Social Darwinian order. He wrote that

history was an “indispensable instrument… in instilling minjok ideas and

implanting minjok awareness in our young people so that they can compete on

equal terms with other nations in the struggle for survival, where only the winners

are allowed to exist and the losers perish.”14 The term, as that passage suggests,

has a public aspect—it is not confined to personal feelings or familial relations,

but rather expands to mass mobilization and public awareness. Just as

13 Sin Ch’aeho, Tanjae Sin Ch’aeho chŏnjip (Collected Works of Sin Ch’aeho) (Seoul: Tanjae Sin Ch’aeho sŏnsaeng kinyŏm saŏphoe, 1982), 160-61; quoted in Shin Gi-wook, Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2006), 38.14 Op. cit. Sin; quoted in Shin, 36.

13

importantly, that emphasis on Tangun was linked to Mt. Paektu, the mountain in

northern Korea from which the mythical king was said to have descended. Thus,

land was a key element in Sin’s seminal work, and in the thought that stemmed

from it through subsequent decades.

Of course, he was not the only one to use it. Anti-Japanese militants used

the term during the colonial years. North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, wrote

extensively about minjok tongnip (“independence of the minjok”).15 The student

activists who worked to overthrow the South Korean military dictatorship used it

in their writings.16 At Seoul’s Korean War Museum, a sign over a diorama of a

battle declares the war to be “The Tragedy of the Minjok.” These examples are, of

course, only a small sample of situations in which the term has been deployed

historically. And, in a way, they only tell half the story: We need to know how the

term is thought of today. In my interviews, I would ask students to play a game of

word association—I would say “minjok,” and I asked them to say the first English

words that came to mind when they heard me say it. “Nation,” “Korea,” “history,”

“family,” and “blood” were the 5 most common words given by the interviewees,

which should give some sense of what it means to the population under

examination in this study. So, in sum, there is no way to conclusively define

“minjok,” unfortunately. However, we can provisionally think of it as a word with

connotations of ethnic unity, specific Korean-ness, geographically centered

Korean-ness, Western notions of nationalism, Korean history, and familial bonds.

15 Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History, 2nd ed. (New York City: W. W. Norton, 2005), 413. Another note about Romanization of Korean names: We will leave modern politicians’ names in Revised Romanization form, as is the custom in Korean studies.16 Shin, 171.

14

At the time when Ch’oe put the word into the title of his new school,

notions of Korean identity and the place—or relevance—of the Korean minjok in

the world were all coming into question. On the one hand, since the late 1990’s

there has been a resurgence of nationalist sentiment and rhetoric in various

aspects of Korean public life. Perhaps the best demonstration of that resurgence

was a confluence of events in 2002. Korea (along with Japan) played host to that

year’s World Cup, and hundreds of thousands of Koreans rallied in Seoul,

chanting pro-Korean slogans in support of the national team. In that same year,

Roh Moo-hyun, a liberal politician with a stance that was explicitly critical of

Korea’s longtime ally, the United States, was elected president. Additionally, an

incident in which American soldiers accidentally killed two Korean girls in an

automobile accident led to a series of demonstrations and editorials expressing

indignation on behalf of the Korean people. In quieter ways, the government has

been sponsoring programs to promote uniquely Korean aspects of cultural

identity. Kim Young-sam, Korean president from 1993 to 1998, spoke in 1996 of

the “five major goals of globalization,” one of which dealt with what he called

“Koreanization.” “Koreans cannot become global citizens without a good

understanding of their own culture and tradition,” he said. “Koreans should march

out into the world on the strength of their unique culture and traditional values.

Only when the national identity is maintained and intrinsic national spirit upheld

will Koreans be able to successfully globalize.”17 As Gi-Wook Shin has noted,

Kim’s government and those of his successors have sponsored the creation of

17 Kim Young-sam, Korea’s Reform and Globalization (Seoul: Korean Overseas Information Service), 273; quoted in Shin, 214.

15

institutions like the Andong Folk Festival and a 2001 celebration of a famous

Korean Confucianist.18 A recent East Asia Barometer Poll found that Koreans

were more likely to express “pride” in their country than Japanese respondents.19

Perhaps most significantly, the South Korean state has entered into direct dialogue

with North Korea for the first time since the Korean War, and an accompanying

sense of pan-Korean feeling has entered political rhetoric and written opinion.20

But, on the other hand, globalization—with all of its cultural and

economic connotations—has been on the rise in Korea. It is, of course, impossible

to give a universally approved definition of “globalization.” But for the purposes

of this paper, we define it as “the process by which communications, culture, and

commerce have crossed international borders with greater ease since the second

half of the 20th century.” In Korea, a term often used instead of “globalization” is

segyehwa, another difficult-to-translate term, roughly meaning “globalizing the

economy and internationalizing local society by adopting new ways of

thinking.”21 For instance, one of the bases of Korean nationalism had long been

anti-Japanese sentiment, but with the end of military rule in 1987 came a massive

18 Shin, 215.19 “Korea Questionnaire 2003,” “Japan Questionnaire 2003,” National Taiwan University, Taipei: East Asian Barometer Survey, 2003. http://www.jdsurvey.net/bdasepjds/easiabarometer/eab.jsp (accessed 11 November 2007).20 For an introduction to this so-called “Sunshine Policy,” re-engagement, and talks of reunification, the best sources are Oberdorfer or Cumings. Shin offers examples of the cultural implications of such reunification in the tenth chapter of Ethnic Nationalism in Korea. Op. cit. Cumings; Op. cit. Shin; Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, 2nd ed. (New York City: Basic Books, 2001).21 Kevin Murphy, “Seoul Arrives at a Difficult Crossroads,” International Herald Tribune, 16 September 1996. http://www.iht.com/articles/1996/09/16/overkor.t.php (accessed 15 December 2007). This definition is, of course, only one interpretation.

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jump in Korea-Japan trade and investment.22 The two countries even held the

aforementioned World Cup together. On a broader scale, the Korean state has

aggressively pursued success in the globalizing economy. As noted, Kim Young-

sam set out principles for globalization, saying that “all aspects of national life”

needed to be directed towards it and establishing a Globalization Promotion

Committee.23 His successor, Kim Dae-jung, followed suit.

Even after the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997/1998, which hit Korea

particularly hard, the state remained committed to engagement in the global

economy.24 The so-called “Korea Wave” has exported Korean soap operas and

pop music throughout Asia. And then, of course, there is the under-researched

phenomenon of the Korean educational exodus. Since 1994, the number of

Korean students studying abroad in the United States has nearly doubled, reaching

a total of 62,392 in school year 2006-2007—a number bested only by China and

India, but which is catching up to those countries’ totals.25 And, if one takes the

total populations of the three countries into account, Korea holds a firm lead in

the percentage of the student population studying abroad. Simultaneously,

Koreans have become a major study-abroad population in China, with even more

students going there than to the US.26

These are only a handful of examples of the rise of Korean national pride

22 Victor D. Cha, Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States-Korea-Japan Security Triangle (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1999): data collected from various points in the book. Bilateral trade in 1983 was USD $9,723,000,000; by 1993 it was USD $31,579,000,000.23 Shin, 212.24 Shin, 213.25 Open Doors Project.26 “Destination Countries for Study, 2007” Korean National Statistical Office, Seoul, 2007. http://www.nso.go.kr/ (accessed 25 November 2007).

17

and Korean participation in globalization, but hopefully they illustrate the power

of the two forces—and suggest a potential contradiction between the two. There

have been a number of theories as to how Koreans will manage the two socio-

cultural phenomena. Alford has argued that Koreans are over-confident in their

belief that “the Korean body can ingest foreign ideas without altering the basic

structure of the Korean body”—he calls such notions of cultural compromise a

“collective fantasy.”27 Samuel S. Kim agrees that the forces of segyehwa and

minjok nationalism are relatively incompatible, and argues that Koreans have

simply gone through the motions of economic globalization and not changed

anything about their view of the world. “Despite the rising globalization and

globalism chorus, deep down Korea remains mired in the cocoon of exclusive

cultural nationalism,” he writes. There has been “no fundamental learning—no

paradigm shift” in Korean thought—“only situation-specific tactical adaptation.”28

On the other side of the spectrum sit theorists like Shin, who has argued that what

Alford calls a fantasy is, in fact, a reality. “Most Koreans appear to see no

inherent contradiction between nationalism and globalization,” he writes. “Rather,

they seek to appropriate globalization for nationalist goals.”29 Similarly, Park and

Abelmann, in their study of how Korean mothers push their children to study

English, have argued that “nationalism and cosmopolitanism are not

contradictory.” In their view, “the idea of what it means to be South Korean is

27 C. Fred Alford, Think No Evil: Korean Values in the Age of Globalization (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 12, 151.28 Samuel S. Kim, “Korea’s Segyehwa Drive: Promise versus Performance,” in Korea’s Globalization, ed. Samuel S. Kim (New York City: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 263, 275.29 Shin, 208.

18

transforming: increasingly, to be South Korean means to be South Korean ‘in the

world.’”30 There is no consensus as to how nationalism can exist alongside

internationalism (or, depending on the term used, globalism, cosmopolitanism, or

globalization) in Korea.

The terms of this debate are by no means restricted to the Korean

peninsula. Since the fall of the Eastern Bloc, a whole social-anthropological

literature has blossomed, focusing on variations of a single question: What does it

mean to be part of a “nation” in a “globalized” world? With increased

communications and cultural exchange, one must start questioning the fate of the

“nation”—which Anderson famously defined as an “imagined community”

among a group of people who believe they have similar traits that separate them

from other such communities at a primordial level.31 How will modern subjects—

especially ones who live outside of the geographic bounds of their “imagined

community”—conceive of what that community is, and whether they are a part of

it? As Appadurai has put it, there are now “diasporic public spheres” which

“confound theories that depend on the contained salience of the nation-state as the

key arbiter of important social changes.”32 From this basis, he has concluded “that

the nation state, as a complex modern political form, is on its last legs.”33 In its

place, he sees a world of people who “extend” Anderson’s “imagined

30 So Jin Park and Nancy Abelmann, “Class and Cosmopolitan Striving: Mothers’ Management of English Education in South Korea.” Anthropological Quarterly 77 (2004), 650.31 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 3rd ed. (New York City: Verso Press, 2006), passim.32 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 4.33 Appadurai, 19.

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communities” to include peoples across the world.34 Ong, on the other end of the

spectrum, has argued that what she calls “transnationality”—“the condition of

cultural interconnectedness and mobility across space”—has in fact bolstered the

concept of the nation and the nation-state.35 “Contrary to the popular view that

sees the state in retreat everywhere before globalization, I consider state power as

a positive generative force that has responded eagerly and even creatively to the

challenges of global capital,” she says, looking at economics.36 When it comes to

identity politics, she holds a similar view: “Over the past few decades, the

multiple and shifting status of ‘Chineseness’ has been formed and embedded

within the processes of global capitalism.”37 In between those two influential

writers and their studies of India and China, respectively, are a wide range of

theoreticians. All of them look at what Juergensmeyer has succinctly called the

“Paradox of Nationalism in a Global World.”38 The debate is, by no means,

limited to social anthropology, either—Fukuyama argues that nationalism is in its

death throes thanks to liberal democracy; Huntington counters that the world is in

a “clash of civilizations”; and so on.39

It was this discourse that Ch’oe, knowingly or unknowingly, entered into

when he decided to establish his school. We will cite some of these authors as

34 Appadurai, 33.35 Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Modernity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006) 4.36 Ong, 21.37 Ong, 24.38 Mark Juergensmeyer, “The Paradox of Nationalism in a Global World,” in The Postnational Self: Belonging and Identity, ed. Ulf Hedetoft and Mette Hjört (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).39 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, 2nd ed. (New York City: Free Press, 2006); Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

20

warranted during our analysis of our own data, and conclude the paper by

revisiting the existing literature and seeing how our findings fit in with it. But

what is most important is not the existing literature—it is the as-yet-untold story

of KMLA. Indeed, the only scholar to ever publish anything about the school is

Shin, who offers a grand total of a page and a half about it in a book on the history

of ethnic nationalism in Korea. Apparently, he met a KMLA graduate and decided

to visit the school in 2002. “Although instruction takes place in English, KMLA

emphasizes a curriculum aimed at enhancing Korean national identity,” he writes.

The curriculum includes Confucian ethics and traditional rituals, music, and sports. For instance, every morning at 6 a.m., students gather in the courtyard of a traditional building to bow deeply to their teachers, a demonstration of filial piety that is performed by sons toward their parents. After the ritual, the students are required to practice at least one of three traditional forms of music or sports. KMLA’s experimental methods seem to be working: every year the school sends its best students to top American colleges.40

By his estimation, KMLA was just another bit of proof that there was no

contradiction between nationalism and globalization—that the latter could be used

as a tool to further the former. That analysis, as we shall see, is based on flawed

data, and is a gross oversimplification of the realities of KMLA. But in a way, he

described exactly what Ch’oe wanted to create. In order to understand what he

created, we must first examine who Ch’oe is and what his ideological goals were,

in establishing KMLA.41 By doing this, we can move out of the realm of theory,

and into the realm of facts, evidence, and case study.

Part 2: The Founder’s Life and the Initial Balance

40 Shin, 204-05.41 As of this writing, Ch’oe is alive, but lives in seclusion.

21

In a way, Ch’oe’s life reflects the experiences of an entire generation of

Koreans—those who were born under Japanese colonial rule, lived through the

Korean War, worked during the modernization drives of the 1960’s and 70’s,

became prosperous in the 1980’s and 90’s, had to make severe cutbacks during

the Financial Crisis, and now see their country deciding how it will respond to the

internal and external economic and cultural forces of the 21st century. That lived

experience, according to him, deeply affected the way he viewed his life’s

mission—to create KMLA. Unfortunately, the only widely available account of

his life is his autobiography, published in 2004. Entitled 20 Nyŏn Hu Nŏhŭidŭli

Malhara (roughly, “Students, Let Your Voices Be Heard in 20 Years”), it is

largely a self-aggrandizing book, so it must be taken with a grain of salt, when it

comes to facts.42 Nevertheless, the book offers a window into his thoughts on the

ideology of KMLA and his beliefs about the balance of the national with the

international.

The book is heavy on nationalist rhetoric. Born in southwestern Korea in

1927, Ch’oe paraphrases Plato to describe how his early life affected his view of

the world. “Plato said that he was happy for three reasons: For being born a man,

for being born a citizen of Athens, and having Socrates as a teacher,” he writes.

“Similarly, if someone asks me what my three biggest reasons for being happy

42 Ch’oe, passim. For example, one of the chapters about his brief career in banking is entitled “I Created the Very First Rule-Book of Banks,” and he devotes a whole section to the “Milk Wars” between his company and his competitors, which he claims to have won through “Ch’oe Myŏngchae Style Advertising” and not having the “Viagra effect” of his competitors (i.e. they were able to succeed for a brief period of time, but returned to impotency soon afterwards).

22

are, I’ll say, ‘I was born with a healthy body, I went through the colonial period

and the Korean War, which gave me the strength and endurance to continually

challenge myself, and third, I received a stable goal in life from my parents.”43 He

says that goal was to run a school. According to the book—as well as speeches

and interviews given at other occasions—his father used all his money to establish

an elementary school in 1936.44 Ch’oe says his father—a farmer—did it because

the schools in that era were centered on Japanese-mandated education, and he

wanted to offer a more Korea-friendly alternative.45 The Japanese government

eventually squashed it, as it did with many independent schools of that type.46 So,

Ch’oe went to a conventional school, and he recalls the birth of his minjoksŏng

—“sense of minjok”—in high school, in the early 1940’s. There was a “name you

weren’t supposed to say, but everyone knew,” and that was Yi Sunsin—the 16th

century Korean admiral who defeated invading Japanese forces and has since

become a symbol of Korean pride. Ch’oe says he found a sort of samizdat book

about Yi, and stayed up all night reading it, thus wholly changing his view of the

world and of Japan.47 “Yi is still alive in our world today,” he writes, and he is not

far off from reality—the admiral was a hero of Korean president Park Chung-hee,

a statue of him stands in Seoul, and Ch’oe put a similar statue of him at the gates

of KMLA.48

It was this admiration of Yi, he says, as well as the inspiration of his

43 Ch’oe, 27.44 He also mentions this memory in his address to the first graduating class of KMLA, for example. That address is published in the school’s 1999 yearbook.45 Ch’oe, 26.46 cf. Seth.47 Ch’oe, 28-9.48 Ch’oe, 29.

23

father’s school, that later crystallized in an inspirational moment—one that led to

the creation of KMLA. After living through—though not fighting in—the Korean

War, Ch’oe says he became a banker, and then a transporter, driving throughout

Eurasia for shipping companies. He describes a day when he was making a

shipment in England and passed through Eton College, the famous preparatory

secondary school. Apparently, there was a ceremony being held for another

famous admiral who had become a nationalist symbol—Lord Nelson, the hero of

the Napoleonic Wars. The ceremony, he writes, stirred his minjok chuch’esŏng—

rougly translated as “minjok identity.” What follows is a quotation that is

absolutely essential for understanding what Ch’oe intended for KMLA: “That

day, I made two promises to myself,” he writes.

Number one was that I would build a school that would educate more world leaders than Eton College, and number two was that I would also educate youngsters who, like Yi Sunsin, will preserve the minjok chuch’esŏng. If you combine number one and number two, you have the training of world leaders who have a sense of national identity.49

It is important to remind the reader that minjok chuch’esŏng —a word

Ch’oe uses repeatedly throughout his book—is not exactly the same as

“nationalism.” It has fewer connotations of chauvinism, and is more of a thought-

process than a plan of action. As one of my interviewees put it, the term is “less a

political tool or movement and more a strong sense of knowing who you are and

staying true to your roots.” It is precisely because of nuanced definitions and

translations such as this one that we will use the term “the national” to describe

49 Ch’oe, 176.

24

what is being balanced in KMLA’s ideology, rather than “nationalism.” We are

talking about notions of geographically and ethnically specific identity, not

necessarily missions of political upheaval. We will get to specific definitions of

such terms soon. Nevertheless, the equation Ch’oe laid out in that passage is

clear: He wanted to create an institution that could produce a certain type of

student, one that held both “national identity” and successful engagement with the

global marketplace in high esteem.

That pursuit of creating global leaders with Korean identities also had

roots in Ch’oe’s frustration with the Korean educational system, itself. It is worth

dwelling on this point for a moment because his frustrations are shared by nearly

all of the students I interviewed. In his book, Ch’oe writes of how he was

astonished that so many Koreans were pursuing degrees at Seoul National

University, given that “around that time, some research abroad reported that Seoul

National University was only around the 800th best university.” “Are our youth

really investing so much time to get into a college that only ranks 800th?” he

writes.50 “Instead of aiming for a college that only ranks 800th, we should aim for

schools in the top 10, such as Harvard, MIT, or Oxford.” He declared early on

that his school “will only accept students who aim for the top schools in the

world, not Seoul National.”51 He never cites where that number, “800th”, came

from, but students I interviewed repeatedly echoed his tendency to throw around

numbers about the low “ranking” of Seoul National, as an indicator that Korean

tertiary schools are of low quality. Indeed, that notion of an international

50 Ch’oe, 233.51 Ch’oe, 234.

25

hierarchy of schools, and of Korean schools being low-quality (“all drinking, no

learning” as one student put it), was one of the primary factors in motivating these

students to attend KMLA and look to leave Korea. Coincidentally, around the

time that Ch’oe was coming up with these ideas about Korean universities, the

Korean government was waking up to problems with its tertiary education

system.52 But the reforms clearly did not come in time for Ch’oe to be deterred

from his viewpoint.

In 1992, flush with money from the milk fortune he had amassed in the

intervening decades, he tried to accomplish that goal by taking over the reins from

an existing high school. But his ideas were too radical for the institution or the

Ministry of Education, and in the face of such resistance, he abandoned the

project.53 Not deterred from his goal, he decided to build his own school in his

own backyard—right behind the Pasteur Milk factory, in Korea’s rural,

northeastern Kangwŏn Province. Principal construction began in 1994, he

received a permit to start the school in 1995, and opening ceremonies were held in

1996. The Korean Minjok Leadership Academy was up and running, with Ch’oe

and his ideology holding the reins.

Before we go any further in discussing the ideological balance at KMLA,

we should define some key terms. One is “balance,” itself—a complex word, but

one that serves our analytical purposes. When it comes to national and

international factors at the school and in the minds of its students, no other term

really suits the situation. It is not quite a “mixture” or a “blend,” because a key

52 cf. Mok.53 Ch’oe, 181.

26

idea behind the school is to explicitly define certain things as “Korean” or

“traditional”—as separate from everything else in the world, as part of the minjok,

as what we will call “the national.” We will give examples soon, but “the

national” contains everything from material objects to ritual practices to spoken

words. The “everything else” that is not “the national” is hard to define, but some

of it is what we will call “the international.” That term entails key things involved

in the pursuit of education and life abroad, especially in the United States. For

example, these specific things include Advanced Placement examinations,

learning in English-only environments, or aspiring to run international firms. The

problematic aspect of this demarcation, of course, is that there are things that are

not one or the other. For example, studying for long hours and wearing school

uniforms are both prominent aspects of Korean schooling, but are not unique to

Korea—indeed, they are practices shared by schools around the world. So, in

order to bring some semblance of sense to this muddy set of definitions, we

emphasize that what we call “national” is what our subjects see as unique to

Korea. Likewise, we will call “international” those things that they see as

explicitly oriented towards life and education abroad. It is not a perfect distinction

—not nearly as simple as Ch’oe’s “number one” and “number two,” or Shin’s

“nationalism” and “globalization”—but having a less nuanced definition would

do a disservice to the realities of identity formation at KMLA.

As for “balance,” the word is somewhat deceptive. It implies that there are

equal amounts of each factor, but that is not necessarily the case. Think of it this

way: A lever can require a disproportionate amount of one material on one side if

27

the fulcrum is closer to that side, if it is to balance out with the other side. Our

point is that Ch’oe’s vision was not to have an institution that would educate

students to have identities that are 50% Korean and 50% international, but instead

to have identities that prevent the scale from tipping in such a way as to eliminate

unique Korean-ness or eliminate aspirations to global achievement. It is not the

purpose of this paper to evaluate whether or not he “succeeded” or “failed” in

“maintaining” that balance—we are analyzing the ways that he, his school, and

his students all have their own balances between the national and the

international, and the causes and effects of those balances. But we have digressed

back into the realm of theory again. We must return to practice, if we are to

effectively demonstrate what we mean by “the national,” “the international,” and

the “balance” that Ch’oe initially created.

A good jumping-off point is a glance at the two most crucial school

mottos created by Ch’oe: The School Motto and the English Motto. The former

reads as follows:

Through education based on the deep awareness of the heritage of our people;Towards tomorrow’s bright Fatherland;Let us study, not for the sake of personal gain, but for the sake of learning.Let us not choose a career in thoughts of personal gain,But choose a career based on our talents and aptitude.Such is my true fortune and tomorrow’s bright Fatherland.

There, we have a strong sense of the national, but not anything necessarily

oriented towards the international. However, the latter creed is recited and printed

nearly as much as the former, and completes the picture:

28

English is a tool for us to make use of an advanced civilization and culture, and Koreanize it in order to advance.

That slogan was not only to be recited at school gatherings—it was inscribed all

over the school, including on the elevators at the dorms. In looking at it, we see

the beginnings of the ideological balance. From here, we will look at the national

aspects of his initial set-up, then look at the international aspects.

The notion of English being “a tool” necessary for the “advance” of a

nation is not a unique ideological construct. It evokes Meiji Japan’s drives for

industrialization along Western lines, or Li Hongzhang’s push for Qing China to

upgrade its military to Western standards—both in the name of defending against

the West and competing with it. Indeed, the militaristic connotations go deeper

than a possible association with East Asian leaders of the past—the very name of

the school connotes militarism. In the school’s early years, Ch’oe faced friction

from the Ministry of Education about the Korean name of his nascent school:

Minjok Sagwan Kodŭng Hakkyo. In order to understand why, we have to break

down the meaning of the words. The name certainly does not translate to “Korean

Minjok Leadership Academy,” which was an English title Ch’oe created

separately. Kodŭng Hakkyo merely means “high school,” and as we have seen,

minjok has many meanings. The problem that the Ministry had was not with

“Minjok”, but with “Sagwan”—a word used in the past to describe military

academies. It seems unlikely that Ch’oe would have been unaware of the

connotations that the word held, but nevertheless, he successfully argued that it

meant something else. He claimed that his word sounded the same as the word for

“military academy,” but had different hanja—Chinese characters—behind it, ones

29

with the same sounds. “Sa,” in this case, meant “history” or “tradition,” and

“kwan” meant “view” or “perspective.”54 Therefore, the meaning, for him, was

something along the lines of “Minjok Traditional Perspective High School”—a

title full of national connotations, with virtually nothing of the international in it.

But just as important as the school’s name are the places where it is

written—the built environment of the school was another aspect of the school that

weighs heavily on the national. Maps of the school from as early as 1997 show an

intent to foster something of a pre-modern, Korea-centric sensibility in the look

and feel of the area. “Kangwŏn Province is mountainous, clean and quiet—the

ideal place to engage in concentrated academic study without the distractions and

disturbances of urban life,” reads an advertising pamphlet from 1997.55 The

pamphlet is right, to an extent—it’s a half-hour drive by cab to get from the

nearest town. It also shows plans for the campus to be filled with massive

buildings in classical Korean style—the sloping, tiled roofs and so on—more than

were ever actually built.56 The gate to the school was built with two statues: One

of Yi Sunsin, and the other of Chŏng Yakyong—a late Chosŏn-era philosopher

and social critic better known by his pen-name of “Tasan.” The two main

classroom buildings, according to a map printed around the same time, were given

names charged with Korean national connotations: Ch’ungmu Hall and Tasan

Hall, “Ch’ungmu” being a posthumous title given to Yi Sunsin.57 Ch’oe also

commissioned even more thoroughly classical Korean buildings on a hill above

54 Ch’oe, 238.55 “Korean Minjok Leadership Academy,” pamphlet self-published by the Korean Minjok Leadership Academy, 1999. Hereafter cited as “Pamphlet #1.”56 Pamphlet #1.57 1997 map shown to me by a teacher who was hired in 1997.

30

everything else, in the so-called “Minjok Kyoyukkwan”—roughly translated as

“Minjok Education Area,” but often referred to in English as the “Cultural

Center.” The space was planned to be a large complex of single-floor structures

made without plastics or glass.58 “The Cultural Center is an extra-curricular

facility constructed according to traditional Korean aesthetics,” reads that early

pamphlet.59 Even within the main teaching buildings, which were relatively

unremarkable in their modern-style interior construction, there were to be strong

elements of the national. Each classroom had a Korean flag and large hanja

reading “My Country.” And, of course, the English Motto was inscribed into the

elevator walls.

The other most visible—and perhaps most famous—element of the

national planned for KMLA was the use of hanbok. A style of clothing dating

back to the Chosŏn era, hanbok is not entirely absent from Korean life, but is

usually only worn ceremonially, at cultural events or weddings. But Ch’oe wanted

that situation to change—not just at his school, but in the world at large. “Back

during the colonial era, whenever Japanese people passed by Korean kimchi

[pickled cabbage], they would pinch their noses and curse and say ‘Chōsenjin’”

he writes in his book, referring to a common slur used against Koreans during the

colonial era. “But now those Japanese stand in line just to buy our kimchi because

they love it so much. Similarly, I think there will be a day when the Korean

traditional attire will be appreciated by the world’s leaders. Minsago graduates

will probably lead that change,” he says, using a colloquial abbreviation of

58 For a view of the Minjok Kyoyukkwan, see photo #3 in Appendix II.59 Pamphlet #1.

31

KMLA’s Korean name.60 Accordingly, from the very outset, KMLA students and

teachers were to wear slightly modified forms of hanbok at almost all times—

complete with a large and somewhat cumbersome head-piece for teachers.61 At

special occasions, everyone was to wear even more formal types of hanbok. At

the outset of the school, Ch’oe believed all of this hanbok would contribute “to

the establishment of the school identity and reinforce the idea of developing and

preserving the national culture.”62

Continuing on that matter of culture, Ch’oe envisioned the arts as a huge

part of his program for national education. The 1997 pamphlet features a list of

artistic endeavors students would be able to learn at the Cultural Center:

Calligraphy, Korean opera (p’ansori), Korean three-verse poetry (sijo), Korean

folk singing (chang) and a musical style based on a quartet of classical Korean

instruments (samulnori).63 These were all to be taught in the Minjok Kyoyukkwan.

Ch’oe hired, as the music teacher, one of Korea’s most famous players of

traditional instruments, a man who still teaches what he taught in 1996, and

reflects Ch’oe’s ideals from the early days. “I want you to have a clear definition

of the word, minjok,” he says in an interview. “In my point of view, the meaning

of ‘global,’ of ‘international’—it means that it’s not about having a homogenous

culture. It’s about recognizing the differences in cultures and uniqueness of those

cultures.” I ask him how he can teach minjok. Without a word, he plucks a leaf

from a plant on his desk, places it to his lips, and whistles out a mournful melody

60 Ch’oe, 221. “Minsago” is an abbreviation of “Minjok Sagwan Kodŭng Hakkyo.”61 For an example of typical student hanbok, see Photo #6 in Appendix II.62 Ch’oe, 217, 221.63 Pamphlet #1.

32

for a minute and a half. As per his and Ch’oe’s ideas, all students were to learn

how to play such classical Korean instruments as the changgu drum and the

kayagŭm zither. Indeed, teachers who have been at KMLA since the early days

say that, in the early days, Ch’oe would not allow any non-Korean instruments on

campus. Meanwhile, students were also to learn Korean styles of traditional art

and painting.

The last of the national elements of this initial vision were a set of Korea-

centric activities. The most crucial of these was the daily bow to the “dorm

parents.” At the student dormitories, there were to be people hired to act as

supervisors of dorm life, but who would also be referred to as “parents,” and to

whom students would bow every day in a brief but mandatory ceremony. The idea

was that these individuals were to stand in for the students’ actual parents, thus

allowing them to perform a traditional form of Confucian filial piety while

separated from their real families. Bowing was to extend beyond the dorm

parents, too—students were supposed to bow to each other, especially to those

older than they. One teacher who was present at the beginning of the school says

the bows were crucial, and relatively simple to institute. “We taught Korean

traditional manners, like the bow,” he says. “It was easy to implement that.” The

pamphlet contains a litany of other activities for students to learn about in the

Minjok Kyoyukkwan: “classes in traditional Korean Customs and Manners,

traditional ceremonial practices including those of Coming of Age, Marriage,

Funeral and Ancestral Remembrance, the Histories of the Korean Dynasties, Filial

Piety,” as well as “meditation” and “Tea Ceremony.”64 In addition, all students

64 Pamphlet #1.

33

were required to perform some form of Korea-oriented physical activity every

day, such as silent archery, kŏmdo, or other martial arts. But on top of all that,

there were to be daily “Morning Meetings” just after dawn, at which all students

and teachers would gather and recite the mottos of the school and sing all the

verses of the Korean national anthem.

Taken together, these six elements—the mottos, the school name, the

physical environment, hanbok, Korean arts, and Korean activities—form what is

commonly called “traditional learning” at KMLA. There is no official name for

the national aspects of the school, other than one mention of “National Identity

Education” in an email that an administrator sent to me, but “traditional learning”

was the phrase most often used by students when talking about the elements we

have just described. It is important to note that none of this traditional learning

included chauvinistic indoctrination about the superiority of the Korean minjok, or

the re-writing of history textbooks to favor Korean interpretations of history.

While acknowledging the depth, breadth, and unprecedented nature of the

traditional learning program, we should not give the impression that it was aimed

to brainwash its students, or (besides the décor and the clothing) enter into the rest

of the curriculum of academic subjects. For the most part, the rest of the

curriculum was, in fact, oriented towards the other side of Ch’oe’s ideology:

Vigorous emphasis on the international.

It is more difficult to describe Ch’oe’s focus on the international, in that

there was never anything as cohesive as the traditional learning aspects, and in

that many of his internationally-oriented ideas were not unique to his school or to

34

Korea. Nevertheless, we can point out some specific aspects of the school’s initial

balance that are clearly international. For one, the School Motto, to be recited

every morning, clearly emphasizes that idea of being a “global leader” that Ch’oe

says he thought of while visiting Eton. But even more than the Motto, one

particular institution represented Ch’oe’s vision of international education more

visibly than anything else: the English-Only Policy, or “EOP.” The EOP was

instituted a year after the creation of the school, in 1997. It stated that all classes,

except for those in Korean music and Korean language, were to be conducted

entirely in English, and that students were to speak in English on school grounds

at nearly all times (there would be some exceptions for Sundays and after-hours

on weekdays). Ch’oe says he received criticism for the decision to institute the

EOP—that it formed a “contradiction” to his ideas of preserving national identity.

But he recalls in his book that, when facing that critique, he came up with the

English Motto.65 The wording of that motto, stating that the English-speaking

world is an “advanced civilization” and that Korea needs to use it “in order to

advance,” strongly evokes the idea that students need to formulate their identities

with international aspirations in mind. Signs were placed on teachers’ doors,

reading, “This teacher has his teaching, discussion, and comment [sic] only in

English.”66 We will explore the degree to which this policy was and is

implemented later, but suffice it to say that the EOP, on paper, represents one of

the clearest examples of balancing the international with the national at KMLA.

Just as important is the idea of training students to study abroad. Ch’oe, in

65 Ch’oe, 238.66 See Photo #4 in Appendix II.

35

his book, claims that he was the first to implement a program specifically aimed

at sending students abroad. And, indeed, when he created the so-called “Ivy

Program”—a track within the school that focused on the US application process

—in 1997, the educational exodus had not yet begun. But around the same time, a

handful of other elite high schools—most notably Seoul’s Taewŏn Foreign

Language High School—established similar programs. Whoever was the first is

somewhat irrelevant—they all happened around the same time, in the late 1990’s,

and the Ivy Program is the flagship of KMLA. The idea of teaching students

based on aptitude for Advanced Placement tests and the SATs is firmly

international—those are tests designed for and by Americans, tests that are valid

almost exclusively for American schools, and certainly irrelevant for any Korean

universities. For those students who wanted to enter into Korean universities, the

“Minjok Program” was established as an alternative to the Ivy, but was never the

marketed aspect of the school. From the very beginning, Ch’oe’s closest advisers

and subordinates agreed that the Ivy Program was absolutely crucial to the school.

“Going abroad gives opportunities for students to get better knowledge,” one

teacher who was there at the beginning says. “They can also have better

opportunities as a Korean.” Ch’oe put it more bluntly. In his book, he recalls

students initially leaving the school because it could not get them into Seoul

National University. “So I pronounced to insiders and outsiders that, if you want

to go to Seoul National, don’t come to Minsago.”67

Alongside the tests and examinations required for attending American

colleges came tests and examinations for international academic competitions.

67 Ch’oe, 233.

36

Ch’oe envisioned a school that would train students to compete in science

Olympiads, math Olympiads, and other contests held outside Korea with an

explicitly international bent. Again, by looking beyond Korea, this aspect of

Ch’oe’s initial program acted as a counterweight to traditional learning. Indeed,

knowledge of math and natural science is, by its very nature, non-national, but we

must be careful in calling the teaching of such subjects “international”—there is

very little ideology in the idea of rigorously teaching a given academic subject.

Nevertheless, the idea of competing on an international stage with those subjects

does fall under the rubric of the international. And, as we shall see, it played a

strong part in bringing the school its fame and prestige.

One final aspect represents an ideological element of the international: the

so-called “Nobel Pillars.” Ch’oe ordered that roughly a dozen granite pillars be

built on the campus, with plaques saying “Here sits the winner of a Nobel Prize.”

But the pillars did not have busts of Einstein or Martin Luther King, Jr. on them.

In fact, there were to be no busts or images on them. They were to be blank. The

idea was to inspire students to become so successful that they would be the ones

whose faces would be carved in bronze and put on top.68 They were first placed

on a hill, and later moved to the side of the main road into the school, but no

matter their location, they were to send a clear message—this school was looking

to achieve the highest levels of international prestige, even while maintaining a

balance with deeply national ideas that are exclusive to Korea.

Before we move on to the ways in which these ideas were implemented

and how they have changed, we must emphasize that the balance of the national

68 Photo #2 in Appendix II.

37

and the international was by no means Ch’oe’s only concern. As made clear in the

School Motto, the other base upon which KMLA was built was the idea of

creating leaders—independent in their thought, aiming towards the value of

thought for its own sake, and taking the helm of their country. Indeed, in that

pamphlet we have cited so often, there is more space devoted to things like the

school’s high-tech computer centers and claims that the school has “one

overriding purpose—the development and nurturing of the potential in Korea’s

most gifted high school students.”69 That idea is somewhat separate from our

discussion of the national and the international. Our aim in this paper is not to

encompass all the aspects and goals of KMLA, but rather to focus on this one

balancing act, as a test case in the larger debate about the creation of identity in a

national and international context.

Part 3: Changes and the Present Balance

In 2006, the administration of KMLA published a large, yellow book

chronicling the history and current state of the school. On page 20, it lists the

school’s three greatest strengths: “Students, teachers, and facilities.”70 No mention

of a uniquely Korean experience. No mention of traditional learning. Only seven

pages later, in a passage looking at the origins of the school, is there any mention

of such national ideals. The school’s “main goal,” it reads was “to foster world

69 Pamphlet #1.70 Kyoyugŭl Pakkugo, Soesangŭl Pakkunda (Seoul: Hyungseul, 2006) 20. Hereafter cited as “KPSP”.

38

leaders who are armed with minjok chŏngsin” [a minjok spirit].71 Similarly, later

in the book, there is a list of “Six Skills” that the administration hopes to teach to

its students: English fluency, hanja, “control of one’s mind,” volunteering,

reading books, and playing “traditional musical instruments.”72 While the book

does not discount the importance of national elements, it certainly downplays

them. What happened during the decade that the book chronicles that might have

led to such statements? Did the balance change?

In many ways, the answer is “yes.” The school was in constant flux from

the very beginning, when Ch’oe was still in charge. “Usually at the initiative of

the founder, who was a creative man, changes were implemented virtually every

month,” recalls one teacher who arrived in 1997. One of the first changes was the

implementation of the EOP, which was much easier in theory than in practice. “At

one time, he decided that all teachers except for Korean language teachers should

teach in English,” a teacher of the time recalls. “There was a panic. Foreign

teachers were told to teach English to the Korean teachers, who didn’t know

English.” That particular teacher—a non-Korean—recalls chaotic attempts to do

so. “Once a week, I would meet with [the Korean teachers], I would simply tell

them jokes, do activities the teachers can relate to.” Eventually, the panic

subsided, but he says the changes never really stuck. “The physical education

teachers will say ‘today morning.’”

But the EOP was in no way the only policy change that led to confusion

and consternation. Nor was it the only way in which Ch’oe alienated those around

71 KPSP, 27.72 KPSP, 187.

39

him with his ideals of change and educational reform. “When I got here, there

were three other foreign teachers, and they all left,” one non-Korean teacher

recalls. “The founder was in your face all the time.” Teachers tell of how Ch’oe

would make pronouncements—like that all students needed to have independent

research seminars—and everyone would immediately have to adjust. He also had

a very hands-on approach to monitoring his students and teachers—students and

teachers recall him bursting into classrooms and chastising people for not obeying

the EOP. Although he is no longer in charge, all interviewees refer to him as “the

founder”—never as “Mr. Ch’oe” or “Ch’oe Myŏngchae.” “If you met the founder

in his prime, just staring into his face is scary,” an early student recalls. “He’s a

scary person. He’s tall, has a huge head, has these huge eyes. He just screams at

you. He’s just a very scary figure.” A teacher put it this way: “He’s a typical

Korean patriarch—he wanted everything under control, and everyone joining in

with him to give 100 percent, if not more,” he says. “He wanted the world’s best

school.”

Ch’oe achieved one goal indisputably—KMLA became a smash success

in terms of national prestige. No one is exactly sure how it happened, but a

number of theories abound. “When we got the first few students into Ivy League

schools, his prophecy fulfilled itself,” one teacher recalls. What he means is that

the national publicity given to the first few students getting into top-ranked

American colleges made KMLA seem like a place where students could go to get

into such schools, and thus fulfilled the founder’s prophecy that KMLA could

make international leaders. The authors of the yellow book concur: “It had been

40

rare for Korean high school students to think about going to prestigious US

colleges,” the book reads. “But as people got into Duke, Columbia, and Yale,

KMLA became popular.”73 Ch’oe himself puts the start-date for the school’s fame

a bit earlier, with the success of students at various international academic

Olympiads.74 There was some advertising, early on: One early student says she

heard about the school through an ad in a newspaper, and I heard through a fellow

American researching Korean hagwŏn (cram-schools) that a hagwŏn owner she

knew found out about KMLA through a session it held with educators.75 But the

school quickly abandoned advertising efforts, according to teachers and

administrators—the phenomenon caught on, and the success of the school was

self-perpetuating. Despite a rocky start—in the first year, only about 30 students

enrolled, and more than half of them dropped out at the semester—the school

eventually saw its application and enrollment numbers skyrocket. These days,

over a thousand students apply each year, and about 150 are admitted.76 A 2006

newspaper poll showed that 27.7% of elementary school students explicitly say

they want to go to KMLA, and 31.9% of their parents concur.77 Whole programs

73 KPSP, 19.74 Ch’oe.75 Hagwǒn are private, after-school “cram-schools” that are de rigueur for competitive Korean students in urban environments.76 There are no two sources that give the same exact set of numbers, but the KPSP, the school’s official Web site, and private correspondences with administrators yield the rough estimate of more than one thousand applicants and 150 admitted students.77 Yi Chaeyong, “Ch'odŭnghagsaeng 10Myŏngchung 9Myŏng 'Haeoeyuhak Kago Ship'ŏyo,” Hanguk Ilbo, 26 November 2006, Economy Section. http://economy.hankooki.com/lpage/news/200611/e2006112617100570300.htm (accessed 11 January 2008). For further evidence of the school’s fame, a search of any Korean newspaper database will show dozens of articles explicitly about the school.

41

exist at hagwŏn throughout Seoul with names like “Minsago Track.”78 By 1999,

Korean students who had lived abroad started to flood the school, as well. “From

the third year onward, I practically taught international students exclusively,” one

teacher recalls. “We had students coming in who spoke better English than most

of their teachers.” Ch’oe, in his book, theorizes that the rush of Koreans from

abroad came as a result of the Financial Crisis—Koreans living abroad had to

bring their families back home, and wanted their children to attend a school that

held international standards.79

But despite that success, a chaotic atmosphere persisted—one in which the

balance began to tip towards the international. “Good things survive and

impractical things don’t,” Ch’oe writes in his book, and that dictum applied to a

number of aspects of his initial vision.80 Initially, Ch’oe had taken in students free

of charge—there was no tuition. But that policy was not to last, as Pasteur and the

Korean economy in general were swept up in the Crisis of 1997/1998.81 Pasteur

went bankrupt, leaving the school to focus on streamlining its approach to

education for the rest of its existence. Teachers, administrators, and students are

all quick to point out that, despite the school’s success, it still has a very small

alumni base, and thus very little in the way of donorship. Buildings have gone

unfinished. Ideals had to be sacrificed for practicality—the school initially had

78 Ch’oe writes about this phenomenon, but more importantly, I saw it firsthand while visiting a few hagwŏn in Seoul—the institutions were explicitly advertising “Minsago Tracks.” A colleague who is researching hagwŏn tells me it is widespread.79 Ch’oe, 237-242.80 Ch’oe, 217-221.81 KPSP, 401-4. The school still offers dozens of scholarships, thus not wholly excluding low-income families from sending their children to KMLA.

42

only a one-way road that forced drivers to see all of KMLA, but the road has

since been torn up, moved, and made into a two-lane. Teachers say they were

pressured to take pay cuts. A system of closed-circuit TV cameras was installed to

monitor students in their dorms, but it was later shut down. “They ran out of

money and had to run everything in a more economic way,” one teacher recalls of

the transitional years around the turn of the millennium. Another teacher

described the atmosphere, when he arrived in 2000, as being one of “controlled

chaos.”

Amidst this chaos, the greatest change to the school arrived in 2003: An

aging and ill Ch’oe stepped down as headmaster, giving the reins to a former

Minister of Education, Yi Tonhŭi. Nearly every adult interviewed agreed that

Ch’oe’s departure was either a cause of a drastic shift away from the national, or

at least representative of a shift that was already underway. Even a top

administrator says he regrets the change. “Under the founder, every day, the

students would gather in the auditorium and sing the Korean national anthem and

the school song. People followed traditional rules,” he says. “The new headmaster

emphasizes sentimental attachment to Korean values, but not actually

implementing them.” He goes on: “That is a change in the mission of the school,

of the founder’s vision of psychological and emotional attachment to tradition.” A

college counselor agrees: “There’s less patriotism now. Especially now that the

president of our school, or, rather, the headmaster, does not emphasize so much

traditionalism,” she says. “The founder had more emphasis on that.” One

American teacher, who is no longer at the school, describes Yi’s shift away from

43

Ch’oe’s unique mission in blander terms: “I believe he thinks KMLA should be

like Daewon—its greatest rival, and a conventional Korean magnet school.”82

The Yi era also brought a shift in the school’s implementation of policies.

One might think of it as a shift from education by force to education by

allowance. “The founder was very stern and firm in his beliefs. He pressured and

forced students to stay after school and have shorter breaks, et cetera,” one

teacher says. “But after they changed the school headmaster, teachers have more

freedom to teach their students… They used to gather students in a room and beat

their legs with a stick. But now they have a point system.” Gone are the corporal

punishments. Morning Meetings are only held once a week.83 No one bursts

through classroom doors to verify compliance with rules. As we have already

said, the closed-circuit TV cameras are gone now. Students are allowed to run an

independent student court for punishments and an executive branch for carrying

out policies. More independent studying time is in every student’s schedule.

An administrator echoes a sentiment I heard in interviews and informal

conversations with many teachers—that one of KMLA’s strengths is the choices

and freedoms offered to students today are what make KMLA special. “The new

headmaster gives more self-governing to the students. The pressure and control

over students is relieved,” he says. “And that’s a good thing. For students, it’s

good for them to have time on their own. Our school is excellent because it

incorporates things like extracurriculars inside other academics.” One teacher,

82 This quotation came in an email, and as with the Wall Street Journal article, we have opted to stay true to the original text here. The McCune-Reischauer style transliteration of the name of the rival school is the Taewŏn Foreign Language High School.83 For a look at a current-day morning meeting, see Photo #7 in Appendix II.

44

born and raised in Korea, draws a contrast between KMLA and other elite schools

because it gives students literal space to think. “They have more opportunity for

independent thought than I got, as a student. They have some free time,” she says.

“They’re away from nagging parents and don’t have to go to hagwŏn at night.”

The college counselor even goes so far as to say that traditional learning is

more optional. “Students should have a chance to learn traditional Korean values

if they want. It’s not forced,” she says. “They can compare the values and choose

one of them if they want. I want them to have the chance to compare to other

cultures’ values.” An art teacher agrees: “[KMLA students] have the chance to

learn and the chance to experience Korea, not just nationality but Korean

identity,” he says. “But then, maybe after this, they can make a choice. We have

to give them a chance.” We will return to the unexpected implications of this

freedom and the effects it has on students’ construction of identity in the next

chapter. But now, we will take a look at how the balance of the national and the

international stands, after all of these years of change.84

Many of the national forms and practices of traditional learning set out by

Ch’oe still exist, but nearly all of them have been watered down, in some way.

Take, for example, the Morning Meeting. As we already said, it is held only once

a week now. No longer do the students sing all the verses of the national anthem

—they only sing an abbreviated version. An ensemble of Korean instruments

plays, but so does a small orchestra of Western instruments—gone is the ban on

non-Korean instruments. I attended two Morning Meetings, and there was little

84 We will focus on the identity of the institution, not on how students think about it—that latter set of observations is the entirety of our next chapter.

45

effort to keep jostling, chatty students in line. After one meeting, an administrator

kept all the students in the auditorium for a stern talking-to about bowing.

Apparently, in his view, students were not doing it correctly. They were to bow at

a 15º angle when greeting a peer or someone below them in age, and they were to

bow at a 30º angle when greeting an elder. One student refused, and bowed to the

administrator at a 15º angle. When the man yelled at the boy and asked him why

he had bowed at that angle, the boy replied that he had given the administrator the

respect he deserved. There was giggling, but the administrator went on. What

struck me was not so much the disrespect (for all I know, he was punished later in

the day), but rather the lack of any ideology behind the administrator’s words. He

was talking about forms, not the ideas behind the forms. As Richard Jenkins once

said, “Meaning is not as easily imposed as method.”85

Teachers and administrators consistently confirmed that impression—that

the forms had been hollowed out of their meaning, to a large degree. “They have

the school motto, but they think about it for one second,” a teacher tells me. A

high-ranking administrator has a similar view. “The students wear hanbok just

because it’s the tradition of the school, because they’re required to,” he says.

“They’re not accepting it as Korean culture, or their culture.” Even the hanbok

itself has been reduced—teachers are no longer required to wear the headpieces

that they once wore, and openly make fun of them (one calls them “Mickey

Mouse hats”). The school’s director of public relations made no attempt to defend

85 Richard Jenkins, “Transnational Corporations? Perhaps. Global Identities? Probably Not!” in The Postnational Self: Belonging and Identity, Ulf Hedetoft and Mette Hjort, eds. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 70.

46

traditional learning as a crucial part of the school’s approach to education. “I think

we’re very modern. The only difference is on the outside—the school looks

Korean,” he says. “But inside, I don’t think it’s much different. Not that different

from American trends.” He speaks about samulnori with a certain degree of

respect (“I can feel the past, I can feel the ancestors’ spirits”), but immediately

says traditional learning is not a major selling point of the school. “The bigger

points are facilities, education, and faculty,” he says. “Why are we so popular?

That’s very easy. This school sends the most number of students to the most

prestigious universities.”

Even in advertising, the school no longer portrays itself as doctrinaire in

teaching national ideas. A current pamphlet given out to American colleges

prominently displays this statement about the school’s goals:

While maintaining a liberal view on education, the school expects students to hold fast to their identity as Koreans. However, instead of blindly preserving old customs, KMLA aspires to educate national identity by pursuing harmony between old and new practices. By observing Korean tradition, students experience Korea’s cultural heritage in their daily lives.86

That language stands in stark contrast to Ch’oe’s words about holding close to the

minjok. Indeed, that phrase, “blindly preserving old customs,” almost sounds like

a reaction against Ch’oe’s ideas. Nevertheless, there is potentially some credence

in the idea that the school now emphasizes “harmony”—potentially, harmony

between the national and the international. There are certainly authority figures

who express that feeling—but only conditionally. “The school has become more

86 Ch’oe Onha et. al. “KMLA: Korean Minjok Leadership Academy,” pamphlet self-published by the Korean Minjok Leadership Academy, 2006. Hereafter cited as “Pamphlet #2”.

47

cosmopolitan,” one teacher says. But he does not use the term positively, not as a

way of describing a new ideology of harmony between national and international

elements. “It has become less special than it once was. It’s just about a regular

Korean school, to an extent.” A longtime administrator and teacher is quick to

dispel the idea of any “contradiction” between traditional learning and efforts to

send students abroad—but also doubles back. “There is no less emphasis today on

Korean values than there was,” he says. “However, there is a difficulty, due to an

increase in student numbers. There’s a difficulty in teaching kids about Korean

values these days. It used to be easy to implement that, but now it’s not easy.”

Within the classrooms, there is virtually no trace of the national. A teacher

of Korean history says that he has never been under any administrative pressure to

modify his curriculum—which uses the same textbooks as most Korean high

schools—to fit any ideological ends. “Not really is there any pressure to teach

Korean values,” he says. “The administration actually does not focus on the

content of the class. They focus on the exams.” He does feel that there is some

“biased opinion” in the textbooks, often “Japanese influenced bias,” but he is

insulted when I suggest that he would mention that in class. “It’s not important for

me to correct that history—it’s for individuals, themselves, to think in their

opinions through the course readings.” He tries to give them as many

supplemental readings as possible, so that they can form their own views. “As

things go by, it’s coming more and more towards the international side of the

education,” he says, when asked about the institutional direction of KMLA. A

Korean language teacher, teaching in the Minjok Kyoyukkwan, says he feels no

48

responsibility to emphasize Korean values—“The minjok is implemented through

the history classes,” he says with unintended irony. For him, the pressure is on the

opposite end. “The school is not pressuring students to develop their ideas on

nationalism too much,” he says. “Actually, downplaying nationalism and

patriotism is critical.” Of course, Ch’oe never explicitly called for the history or

literature classes to be ideological. But he did call for the art classes to instill pride

and awareness of the minjok. And the current art teacher, who has been there

since 2001, is decidedly against any and all forms of Korea-oriented education.

“There are no more traditional Korean art classes here,” he says. Instead, he

teaches how to use computer graphics. And he, himself, was originally taught in

traditional Korean styles, but has since abandoned them. “I wanted to find more

than nationality. That’s why I stayed away from Oriental painting,” he says. He

says the school is, in theory, balanced between the national and the international.

“I think the school is supposed to be in between,” he says. “But realistically? It’s

internationally oriented in its objectives and curriculum.”

The national is not gone from KMLA, at all. For instance, Ch’oe’s goals

are still being expressed through the teachings of the music class. I sat in on one

session of the class, and the teacher spoke at length about the uniqueness of

Korean music and how it relates to the Korean minjok.87 But, as we shall see in

the next chapter, students have a low regard for the class. An Earth Sciences

teacher says that he tells his students to refer to the body of water between Japan

and Korea as the “East Sea” rather than the “Sea of Japan.” And, of course, the

school looks wildly different from any other high school in the country, and

87 For a look at that music class, see Photo #5 in Appendix II.

49

everyone still wears hanbok. Everyone still recites the mottos and performs the

daily bow to the dorm parents, too. Yet, one cannot escape the rhetoric and

indications that the ideology has been somewhat drained from these forms, and

we shall see more examples of this change in the next chapter.

On the other side of the coin, the ideology of training students to be global

leaders is largely intact—at least rhetorically. For instance, that new pamphlet we

cited earlier features a message from Headmaster Yi about how “we” (it is unclear

if he means humanity or Koreans) live in a “knowledge-based society.”

“However, only a small, gifted segment of society will be able to lead this nation

to greatness and elevate the general standard of living,” the statement reads.88 The

college counselor echoes that sentiment. “Traditional learning is very important,

but for me, the more important thing is that they must get prepared or

competitive,” she says. “I don’t mean test scores. They must be prepared for

education standards in America if they want to survive.” One teacher speaks

proudly of how knowledgeable his students are about the world, and how

outspoken they can be. He tells a story of some US state-level congressmen

visiting the school on a tour. “Our students asked critical questions to a degree

that astonished them,” he says with a smile. “In Seoul, other students just said,

‘We are allies.’ But my students didn’t fall for propaganda or uni-source

positions. They asked questions.” And, of course, the Nobel Pillars still

prominently stand alongside the road.

And yet, there has been a bit of a draining of ideology here, too. Ch’oe’s

School Motto explicitly says that learning should be done “for the sake of

88 Pamphlet #2.

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learning” and not “in thoughts of personal gain.” But when I spoke with students

about their average days, they spoke constantly of preparing for AP tests and

SATs, of memorizing words and sweating over their college applications. The

idea of “learning for the sake of learning” is a difficult one to maintain when the

school’s fame, as acknowledged by its students, teachers, and even its public

relations representative, is its ability to get kids into the Ivy League. Perhaps the

most representative manifestation of the international aspects’ loss of ideology is

the status of the EOP. To put it bluntly, the EOP barely exists. Yes, there are large

banners up in the cafeteria that read “ENGLISH ONLY POLICY,” and students

are spottily punished for using Korean on campus. But the teacher who is

nominally in charge of enforcing it cannot speak English, and had to conduct his

interview with me through an interpreter. When asked about the EOP, the public

relations representative shakes his head in exhaustion and says, “When people

visit, I don’t say that we have an English-Only Policy.” Another teacher, Korean-

born and Korean-bred, firmly says, “I don’t enforce the EOP. Nope!” No student

who had attended the school in recent years told me that the EOP was enforced—

nearly all teachers who speak Korean teach in Korean.

Classes taught by non-Korean-speakers, of course, are in English. One

such teacher offered his thoughts on why the EOP had lapsed so much. He was

the one who had to teach those Korean teachers in the early days, telling them

jokes in English, so he thinks it is simply not feasible for most Korean teachers to

become fluent. But he thinks it is also a matter of efficiency on another end. “We

now have so many students who have lived abroad, and they don’t need it,” he

51

says. “In the early period, it helped, when the level of English for the students

wasn’t that good. By now, it’s not really necessary anymore.” He also remarks

that the EOP is only important for students insofar as it gets them into top-tier

colleges—and when they realize that they are good enough, they use English even

less. “Students who come back from American field trips to American colleges

totally forget about EOP,” he says. In general, the international goals have

remained more durable than the national ones, but have still changed—everything

is more streamlined towards what is more efficient. As we saw in the words of

teachers talking about independent thought, even the idea of free thinking and

open research is invoked as something that gives KMLA something of a

competitive edge, something that makes it more effective at what it does

internationally.

Conclusions

We must note immediately that this chapter is not intended to be the story

of how a school has failed. Indeed, if anything, KMLA is a success story by any

number of measures. Koreans see it as one of the most desirable schools to attend

in the whole country. As the Wall Street Journal has noted, it sends more students

to top American colleges than most American high schools, and more than any

other Korean school. The quality of the education is much lauded by students,

faculty, and administrators, as well. As the official history says, the best parts of

the school are its students, teachers, and facilities. Teachers constantly echo that

52

sentiment, saying that KMLA’s students and faculty are its greatest assets.

However, we must remember that those words lack the rhetoric about the minjok

that Ch’oe initially used and tried to implement. The institution, in a way, might

be seen as an individual, constructing its identity over time. For various reasons—

financial problems, demands of outsiders, dilemmas of efficiency, recognition of

its own strengths—that individual has gradually watered down the national parts

of its identity. While still maintaining some forms and ideas that are specifically

national, it has become much more international in its outlook and in its notion of

itself. But the proof is in the pudding, so to speak. To get the deepest possible

sense of KMLA’s ideological balancing act—and its implications for

understanding the larger balancing in Korea and the world—we must look to the

students. Now that we have the background and the story of the institution, we

can look at the words of the students, and the ways in which they themselves

think about the dilemmas Ch’oe once faced.

53

Chapter Two:

“Traditional Learning” and Its Discontents

Introduction

Students at the Korean Minjok Leadership Academy spend most of their

daylight hours in two buildings at the bottom of a hill: C’hungmu Hall and Tasan

Hall, which we introduced in the previous chapter. And as we said, these

buildings are intended to seem specifically Korean. They are named after two

iconic, pre-20th century Korean figures. They have classical Korean roofs, with

blue-painted tiles and gentle concave slopes. A six-foot-tall statue of Ch’oe,

dressed in hanbok, sits nearby. In stark contrast, at the top of the hill stands the

massive student dormitory, to which the students return each night. More than a

dozen floors high and made of gray cinderblock, it looks thoroughly modern. It

could fit in with the apartment complexes of Seoul, or New York City, or even the

newer dorms of Harvard University. Inside, the dorm rooms could also have been

plucked from any American college, with bunkbeds and spaces for computers.

The contrast between the two buildings is something of a gateway to

understanding one of the central questions in this paper. KMLA students study in

an environment that was designed to evoke a pre-modern, uniquely Korean past,

but they ultimately leave that environment. The question is whether or not that

environment has enough of an effect on them for them to take it back up the hill

and into their lives. To put it more bluntly: How do KMLA’s students interpret

54

and incorporate the national aspects of the school into their own identities as

transnational subjects? In this section, we will look at the words of KMLA

students—both current ones and graduates—and analyze their responses to

questions about this issue.

This chapter and the one that follows it comprise, in a way, their own

balance between the national and the international—this one focuses on the

former, and the next focuses on the latter. But, as we shall see, when it comes to

the ways KMLA students think and speak about their identities and aspirations,

the relationship between “national” and “international” is far more complex than a

simple division into two concepts. In this chapter, we will focus on what students

said about the “national” aspects of their time at KMLA. Those aspects largely

consist of—but, as we shall see, are not limited to—the school’s traditional

learning initiatives. We will also introduce a new term: “Korean-ness.” 89 That

term, in this context, encompasses a handful of concepts, all related to what we

have previously called “the national”—a sense of duty to work for the benefit of

the Korean community, a sense of being a member of a larger community of

Koreans, and/or pride in having a Korean background.

Our argument here is as follows: Although a minority of the interviewees

said the school’s institutional emphasis on traditional learning had a direct

impact on making them feel a greater sense of Korean-ness, most of them did not.

However, that latter group is not monolithic. To be sure, there are those who said,

89 The term may sound odd, but has its roots in Ong’s work on transnational identity among ethnic Chinese. She uses the term “Chineseness” to describe the same feelings I describe here, albeit in the context of China and Chinese. One can also point to Appadurai’s use of the term “Englishness” in his studies of post-colonial identity in India. Ong, passim; Appadurai, passim.

55

outright, that their time at KMLA has not made them feel more Korean-ness. But

there were also many who said that they developed a greater sense of Korean-ness

while at KMLA, but not because of any traditional learning policies. This third

group raises questions about how and where national identity is produced, but the

other two also offer insights into the theory and practice of identity formation in

an educational context. We will analyze each of these three groupings, beginning

with those who said the traditional learning made them feel more Korean-ness,

whom we will call the “Yes Group”; moving on to those from that middle

category, whom we will call the “Conditional Yes Group”; and finally looking at

those who said they felt no greater Korean-ness from their KMLA experience,

whom we will call the “No Group.” What this chapter will suggest is that aspects

of the school that have nothing to do with traditional learning have made students

more aware of Korean identity, pride, and even tradition. We do not have the space

to quote every student, so we will do our best to offer illustrative quotations from a

select few.

Part 1: The Yes Group

The Yes Group is hardly uniform. 9 of the 28 respondents fit into the

category, which represents respondents with a wide range of views. There were

those who expressed unequivocal praise for the traditional learning programs to

people who were very reluctant to admit that such programs changed them at all.

We shall begin with the most vehement proponents of traditional learning, and

56

move towards those who had a more mixed opinion of it, so as to present a segue

into our next section.

Haeil90 is a senior at KMLA, and has lived his entire life in Pusan, in the

southeastern corner of South Korea. Nevertheless, despite having lived only in

Korea, he says there was something lacking in his life before he came to KMLA

—a sense of being Korean. “My identity as a Korean was quite a little bit not that

strong,” Haeil says with a laugh. He was not looking for a revamped identity in

his scholastic experience, he says: “I’m sure that the traditional learning was not

the reason that made me decide to go to KMLA.” But when he speaks of his

experiences at KMLA, he uses an almost religious vocabulary, as though he had

gone through a conversion experience.

Haeil cites the first time he heard one of the student music groups play

samulnori as a key moment in his personal development. “Something strange that

I didn’t feel before was rising in my heart,” he says. “I got to know that this was

something that I, as a Korean, got to feel when hearing it.” Now he, too, plays in

the student samulnori ensemble, and he says it has changed him. “Whenever I

play samulnori, I feel something I’ve never felt before, and it’s as a Korean—I

feel pride as a Korean,” he says. “There is something that makes me feel so…”

And he trails off for a moment. “I cannot express it in words. I feel Korean,

really.” He also cites a visual dimension to his transformative experience at

KMLA—the classroom buildings. “The architecture is really similar to the Blue

House,” he says, referencing the Korean presidential building in Seoul. “I was

90 Not his real name. As per my anonymity agreement with all interviewees, all of them will be written about pseudonymously.

57

really interested to see that, because I’ve almost never seen such architecture

before. I didn’t expect that to be a school building. But when I saw that, I also got

to be proud that I am a Korean, because there is something that makes me feel

so…” He trails off, before saying, once again, “I cannot express it in words.”

When asked if he means he cannot express it in English words, Haeil says that he

cannot express it in any language. “I don’t know if I was, something like,

brainwashed or not, but I think KMLA gave me something like a Korean identity

and a strong feeling and power as a Korean.”

Tongwŏn’s life story stands in stark contrast to that of Haeil, at least in

terms of residency. He lived most of his life in the United States, moving from

there to matriculate at KMLA. Indeed, he almost canceled the Korean half of his

dual citizenship, leading to a national media scandal surrounding him and his

father, a government employee.91 Also, unlike Haeil, he says he definitely came to

KMLA with an agenda to strengthen his Korean identity. He feared that if he

“stayed more and more in America,” that he would “become more and more

Americanized,” and wanted a school that would prevent that process from

occurring. “I noticed that this Minjok, KMLA school had a lot going on—hanbok,

kŏmdo, doing archery, learning a lot of special Korean cultures, all of those

combined,” he recalls. In his estimation, those elements—all central to the

school’s traditional learning initiatives—changed him. “The heritage aspects have

definitely been met,” he says. “Instead of being just a good school, KMLA tries to

make us more Korean. Going to a good school is huge, but it’s a secondary

thing.” He goes on: “Our goals are to go to America and spread the Korean spirit

91 We will analyze that story in the next chapter.

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to all the people in the world.” When asked to define the “Korean spirit” and what

it means to “spread” it, Tongwŏn, even more explicitly than Haeil, uses language

associated with religion. “It means to make people understand that Korea is a

great country, make people understand what Korea is,” he says. “To have a

Korean spirit, all you need is to be proud of Korea. It doesn’t matter whether you

know a lot about Korea or whatever—it’s about being proud of becoming

Korean.”

If Haeil seems to be describing a conversion experience and Tongwŏn

alludes to a goal of proselytizing, we might see Kŭnsŏk as someone who felt that

KMLA offered salvation, lifting the burden of Korean history from his shoulders.

Kŭnsŏk grew up in Los Angeles, around Korean-Americans who often asked him

—a native-born Korean—to tell them about Korea. When he ran out of facts that

he already knew, he turned to the books he could find. “I tried to study Korean

history, but the more I did, the more sad I became,” he recalls. “I become sad

when I study Korean history because it’s always been invaded by China or Japan

or Russia.” He was not without pride, though. “I was not ashamed of Korea,” he

says. “For example, if my mother or my father were collaborators [with the

Japanese colonizers], I would be ashamed. But I felt remorsed. That’s where

KMLA stepped in. “I was just frustrated about the whole thing of Korean history.

But KMLA helped me feel more proud and happy.” He says he chose KMLA,

instead of comparable foreign-language high schools, because he was “a little

interested in its special mission.” He is now a graduate, and looks back on the

rules of traditional learning with admiration. “Hanbok and bowing—some of

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those things were very superficial, but I had to know what they meant,” he says.

Such rules constituted a separate set of “ethics” that non-KMLA students do not

experience. “In public school, ethics would be, like, ‘don’t steal.’ But at KMLA,

you had to be Korean with your ethics.”

But unadulterated enthusiasm is not the norm here. The other students in

the Yes Group all said that they had felt an increase in Korean-ness as a result of

KMLA’s traditional learning aspects, but they all tended to downplay that change,

in relation to the other experiences they had at the school. Sangmin, a 10th-grader,

offers an example of such an attitude. When asked about his sense of Korean

identity, he says, “I have that now. Before I came to KMLA, I had it a little. After

I came to KMLA, KMLA’s education confirmed it.” But he does not wax poetic,

like Tongwŏn or Haeil: “I’m a bit more of a patriot now,” he says. “I think that

wearing hanbok makes students feel that they are Korean.” He also speaks of the

Korean flags and the hanja in the classrooms as objects that “always emphasize

this patriotic mind.” He is enthusiastic about the school’s emphasis on traditional

learning. “I think it’s important to think about patriotism,” he says. “Education in

KMLA tends to prevent students from losing their national identity.” But that

effect, he says, is not always overt. “Wearing hanbok and following Korean

traditions unconsciously gives a sense of nationality for me, I think,” he says. “I

think KMLA’s education—some part of it, not all—gives me a sense of ‘I’m

Korean.’”

For Sŏna, improving Korea’s image abroad is a deeply-held goal, one that

she actively works for in her extracurricular activities. But, as with Sangmin, it is

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unclear whether KMLA did much in the way of actively strengthening that aspect

of her Korean-ness. A life-long resident of Seoul and senior at KMLA, she is even

more blunt than Sangmin when it comes to downplaying the traditional learning.

“I would not say that the focus on tradition is important,” she says. “But it is the

only school in Korea that teaches so much about the Korean tradition.” She

describes the ceremonies and symbols almost as a kind of wallpaper, constantly

shaping students’ vision of the world around them. “Just by having hanbok and

teaching music, it gives students an idea, and reminds them what Korea is like,”

she says. “In a normal high school, you wear Western-style uniforms, and the

buildings are just Western there… It doesn’t give students an idea, or an

inspiration at those schools.” She is already working on her own idea of how to

“publicize Korea”—she works for an NGO that she was involved with in middle

school, and that she brought to KMLA. “We write some essays about Korea that

might help foreigners better understand about Korea,” she says, “Especially

websites and textbooks… so we send emails to those webmasters and publishers

that such and such information is wrong, and we want to change it to this or that.”

The group, she says, also sets up “e-penpals” with “some high schools in the US

or other countries, to keep in touch with them and exchange our cultures.” But we

must note that this effort, so central to her Korean-ness, began before she arrived

at KMLA, making it unclear if the traditional learning did much to actually

change her.

Chihun and Chinhŭi, the last two members of the Yes Group we will

profile, are reluctant to say that traditional learning had no effect on them, but

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come very close to doing so. “The traditional things, they changed me a little bit,”

Chihun, a graduate of the school, says. “You have to do the Korean traditional

instruments, and while doing that, I felt some patriotism. And wearing hanbok

made me feel some of it.” She is quick to point out that she takes her Korean

identity very seriously, though. “Our country is very precious for me, and I want

to make our place much better,” she says. But did her education give her that

idea? “KMLA made me feel that preciousness a little bit. But not so much,” she

says. “I don’t think they failed.” Chinhŭi, a current senior, sees the situation in

lowest-common-denominator terms. “At least, thanks to the education at KMLA,

we know how to wear hanbok and play at least one Korean instrument,” he says.

“It’s better than nothing, and other schools have almost nothing.”

Those words are a fitting transition to the other two groupings. Even

among those in the Yes Group, many were emphatic in saying that traditional

learning was not the most important part of their experience at KMLA, and more

importantly, that it did not necessarily have a huge impact on their Korean-ness.

Such statements put them near to our next group, who bear strong similarities to

the Yes Group in their rhetoric about the transformative power of KMLA, with

one important difference—they have an even lower opinion of traditional learning

than even Chinhŭi or Chihun.

Part 2: The Conditional Yes Group

This group, comprising 10 of the 28 interviewees, problematizes the

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notion that an educational institution can directly influence a student’s sense of

national identity. In fact, the paradigm of “directly” and “indirectly” does not

even do justice to the nuances of this group, because such a paradigm implies that

the school is seeking indirect means to implement a national agenda. What most

of these students express, instead, is that they gained a sense of Korean-ness at the

school through institutional aspects that no administrator or official document

identified as being aimed towards Korean identity-building. It would be easy to

lump these students in with the Yes Group, but we must take a nuanced look at

their words to see that they are of a different mind.

Sangmi and Sŏngsu provide two very clear examples of how one can gain

a greater sense of Korean-ness without being primarily influenced by the mottos,

ceremonies, or objects of traditional learning. Both have lived parts of their lives

in North America, both speak in clear English, and both have a forceful

enthusiasm about their school. “Just being at KMLA made me feel that I am

important to the world and I am important to my country,” Sangmi, an 11th-grader,

says. Sŏngsu, a senior, is even more direct: “I’m in love with the school.” But the

greatest similarity between the two is their involvement in extracurricular

activities.

Sangmi is the head of the judicial branch of the KMLA student

government—a position she speaks about with considerable gusto.92 “There are no

92 We conducted our interview immediately after she had presided over that week’s session of “student court”—an institution much loathed by all of my other interviewees, but one that she held in the highest regard. In a very stylized and strict procedure, students are brought forth to Sangmi and other, lower-ranked members of the legislative branch. They are told the crime of which they are accused (violation of the EOP, tardiness, use of computer games during study time, and so on) given an opportunity to plead not guilty (most chose not to, and

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teachers in this,” she says. “Teachers have nothing to do with it.” She is especially

proud of the moral standard the student government sets. “Korean politicians are

rotten,” she says. “But KMLA is a beacon. In our school at least, we are proud

that we are transparent; no bribery, no nothing. If I become involved in law, since

I learned those attitudes, I know how I should act as a leader.” She also says her

patriotism has increased since she came to KMLA. “KMLA has made me feel

more love for my country, but I cannot really say how,” she says. However, she

later concludes that it was her work with a school music group. She lights up

when she talks about the independence the group has. “We don’t have a proper

Western music supervisor in our school, but we don’t really need one!” she says.

And finally, we have hit upon what has given her this greater sense of patriotism:

freedom and responsibility. “That’s how I learned that Korea is important and

valuable and beautiful—through club activities,” she says. “Just being in KMLA,

just being here makes me feel that I am important to Korea.” She goes on, talking

about being a judge at the school:

It’s like my job. Our school is a school, but it is also a place where you have a job to do, work to do, a position. It’s your duty. I felt like serving for students or making judgments for people is something I want to do. You see, it’s the Korean Minjok Leadership Academy. You’re making future leaders.

Sŏngsu tells a similar story, also about an orchestra, albeit the larger of the

school’s two ensembles. But first, he talks about how he feels a duty to “fix”

afterwards told me it was because they just wanted to get the process over with), and after deliberation between Sangmi and her other magistrates, a sentence is declared. The sentences are “points”—rack up too many points, and you can face various forms of non-corporal punishment, such as having to write hundreds of hanja on a blackboard. What stands out about student court, and what Sangmi is so proud of, is the fact that there are no adults in the room when court is in session.

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Korean institutions. “Korea has still only had 50 years of democracy, and it still

has lots of problems in the political processes,” he says. “It’s not so much that I

want power, but that I want to be in a position to observe the problem and make a

solution, where I can fix the situation. Corruption, the whole thing. Education, too

—I want to improve it. International relations, I want to greatly improve that stuff,

too.” When asked how and when he started to feel such a mission to fix his

nation-state, he remembers a specific incident—one at KMLA. “I think it was

after I was president of my orchestra,” he says.

The orchestra is over 80 people, and there’s no teacher or executive. All the stuff, the student president has to do—all the administrative things. When I got into the orchestra, it had tons of problems. People wouldn’t show up for an hour. There was chaos. Then I came in and I became the president and conductor. I tried many new policies. When I see my policies working and improving the whole group, I feel a certain self-achievement, that I’d fixed something—not only helped myself, but all the others. I want to do the same kind of thing, now, likewise things in the bigger world. That happened at KMLA. Before, I was only interested in science, purer academics. But now, I’m more interested in handling people.

Right after that monologue is when he says he’s “in love” with KMLA. Later, he

says the traditional learning elements—like the “traditional clothes and the minjok

characters up on every classroom”—are important, but he never speaks of a

transformative experience coming from them. “You can’t teach patriotism,” he

says. Again, the freedom and space afforded in extracurriculars seem to be the

key for him, rather than the traditional learning.

There is another aspect of KMLA life and the free space it allows to its

students that seems to have an effect on interviewees’ senses of Korean-ness:

dorm life. Boarding schools are not the norm for elite academies in Korea. All

research on Korean education notes the cramped, urban nature of the high-end

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high schools, and the fact that such schools tend to be in Seoul. Students there are

shuttled from school to cram-school, returning to their homes late at night, and

never having much time to speak with one another.93 Our interviewees tended to

be aware of the fact that they were in unique circumstances when it came to living

conditions. But for three students in particular, that uniqueness seemed to play a

special role in their development of a Korean identity.

Sori is a senior who, like Sŏngsu, says you cannot teach patriotism. “The

school hasn’t forced us or taught us about Korean pride,” she says. Nevertheless,

she says she has felt more of that kind of pride since she came to KMLA. But the

reasons have little to do with ceremonies or mottos. “My personal opinion is that

the reason I felt national pride is dorm life,” she says.

We sit together and spend every day, most of our lives, like a family. We get to talk about studying abroad. Funny as it sounds, we do talk about national pride and coming back to Korea after we graduate. I don’t think the school taught us to be proud of ourselves—it’s just, when you’re going abroad, nationality comes into mind. The school hasn’t forced us or taught us. We just think about it.

Note that particular phrasing—“We get to talk about studying abroad.” Again, the

emphasis here is on space, on freedom, on a lack of total supervision. The

students are allowed to form a community, in Sori’s description, and from that

basis, they are able to talk about what it means to be proud of Korea.

Usŏng is a recent graduate of the school, and he gives an almost identical

account of how his time at KMLA affected his sense of identity. He was

disappointed with KMLA’s traditional learning programs. “I was surprised that

they didn’t emphasize traditions and patriotism enough. They were just about

93 cf. Seth; Park & Abelmann.

66

studying and just about success,” he recalls. “At morning meetings, they say

things about patriotism, but they don’t emphasize that during their academic

programs. They don’t have extracurricular activities about patriotism.” He does

not fault the school, though: “Eventually, I understood that you couldn’t do much

about it—it would be like propaganda, and they didn’t do propaganda.” But after

saying all of that, Usŏng makes a curious statement. “I expected to learn how to

be a patriot, how to work for your country,” he says. “It wasn’t actually like that,

but I still think that they somehow reached their goal.” That “somehow,” again,

has to do with space afforded to the students in dorm life. “Me and my friends

would talk a lot, just spend all night talking,” he says. “You’re not supposed to

hang out in your friends’ rooms after 12, but I did it anyway. We didn’t always

talk about being a patriot, but we would talk a lot about patriotism.” He

emphasizes one point, though: “The school wasn’t the main influence on that

patriotism.”

Hŭisŏn’s story is, in a way, a darker, more violent version of the previous

two accounts. Born and raised in the United States until the age of 9, Hŭisŏn says

she was, “identity wise, a very confused child” during her pre-adolescence. “Then

I relocated to Korea and a lot of things got shaken up. I didn’t know what it meant

to be a Korean anymore.” However, she was given a firm tutorial when she

arrived at KMLA. Her class was admitted earlier than usual, so their hanbok did

not arrive until well into the school year. Older students did not approve. “When

we came in with our ordinary clothes, they thought it was inappropriate, too loud,

too revealing,” she recalls. “They already thought of themselves as Korean

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leaders, you know, saying ‘We have to set an example, we have to be put

together, and responsible.’” She says the most disciplining she received was from

her seniors, not the administration, and that it was even more severe among the

boys—her male classmates often got “beaten up” by upperclassmen for not fitting

their standards, she says. “I got yelled at if I was seen as an ‘Americanized’ girl. It

made me conscious of what I was doing.” One of the primary aspects, other than

dress, of not being “Americanized” was one’s motivation for going abroad. She

says it was considered more “Korean” to talk about going to the US with an aim

towards helping Korea in some way, not just for personal gain. But once Hŭisŏn

left this pressure cooker, she says she stopped worrying about the

American/Korean duality. “There was no deep ideological change in myself,” she

says. “I do have a more acute awareness, at least, of what Korean-ness is, which

does not necessarily mean blind patriotism.” What she chooses to do with that

awareness has yet to be determined.

There are others in this Conditional Yes group whose stories have less to

do with nuance than ambivalence. “It would be an exaggeration if I say that I feel

my pride or anything like that has been strengthened while here,” one says.

Another says traditional learning is there, “but it’s not the main thing—we have to

study.” Yet another thinks that the traditional learning aspects have not changed

her, but might do so in the future. “We are not sure if we are more nationalistic

than before,” she says of herself and her fellow seniors. “But if we go abroad and

study and are separated from our families, then we may think at that time if we

are more nationalistic or not.” Finally, one says she is simply not that interested in

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Korean identity. “I don’t think I will directly use my power to help Korea be a

‘stronger nation,’” she says. “But KMLA gives me the opportunity of thinking.”

As we saw in the first chapter, that notion about the “opportunity of thinking”—

the idea that students are given a choice to develop their Korean-ness or not—is

central to present-day KMLA institutions and ideology.

We will now move on to our final group—a group the founder would

likely find to be an example of the school’s failure to execute its mission. But

before we do, we must make one point clear: The members of the Conditional

Yes Group are not anti-KMLA. Indeed, almost all of them express deep fondness

for their school. The mechanisms and institutions that explicitly exist to promote

the development of Korean-ness simply did not affect them. Nevertheless, they

did develop some sense of Korean-ness. We will address the implications of this

seeming paradox throughout the rest of this paper.

Part 3: The No Group

The members of the No Group make up the final 9 of our 28 interviewees.

As with the previous group, we should note that many of these students felt

enthusiastic towards their time at KMLA or grateful for the education they

received—but that is not the point of our analysis. The point is that, according to

all of them, the experience of going to KMLA in no way strengthened their sense

of Korean-ness. Indeed, some of them said they went in as patriots and came out

feeling less Korean pride than before.

69

Chŏnghyŏk and Insŏng fit firmly into that latter category—they say their

time at KMLA has dampened their sense of Korean pride. Chŏnghyŏk is a

freshman at the school, raised mostly in the United States, and says he came to

KMLA with big dreams. “I want to be a global CEO,” he says early on in his

interview. “But I want to get educated in America and still have a Korean

heritage.” From that perspective, KMLA seemed like an obvious choice. His

words sound strikingly similar to those of the founder: “My mission is to raise

Korea to be one of the highest-earning countries, the most economically strong

country, even.”94 But he has only found disappointment at KMLA. “There’s

traditional music and morning ceremonies, but that is just superficial,” he says.

“KMLA just uses the same textbooks as other schools,” he adds, concluding with

disdain that “KMLA isn’t any different from other foreign-language high

schools.” He does not blame the school for the gaps he sees. “The school has no

endowment, so you can’t emphasize Korean heritage and identity and also be

teaching students at a high level,” he says. Ultimately, he feels that he may have

wasted his time by coming to KMLA. “KMLA or Philips Andover—it doesn’t

matter to me now,” he says.

Insŏng, a recent graduate, is undoubtedly the most extreme in his critique

of KMLA and its traditional learning policies, dwarfing Chŏnghyŏk in that

respect. “When I was 15, I was nationalistic,” he recalls. “Kim Young-sam was

energetically pushing the plans to get rid of all the Japanese facets of our society,

and I deeply agreed with that. I was young and immature. That’s how I got

94 In his ideal world, the Korean educational exodus would be reversed—“Students would want to study abroad in Korea.”

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nationalistic. I was anti-Japanese.” But KMLA, he says, exposed him to the

dangers of nationalism. “While I was at KMLA, I became less nationalistic, and

that’s definitely because of the internationalism,” he says. “I learned more about

the outside world. I saw how nationalistic behaviors do not help us, do not nourish

our concepts of the world, of your life, of your attitudes towards life and other

countries.”95

Traditional learning was key in this change: “Part of the eye-opener came

because I was forced to salute the flag and sing the national anthem every

Monday, which I thought was very much a sign of this nationalistic behavior,” he

says. “That was why I felt that nationalism didn’t help—it seemed meaningless.”

And unlike some of those in the Conditional Yes Group, Insŏng points to dorm

life as a factor that drained his nationalism. “Dorm life was totally non-

nationalistic—they all listened to J-Pop and Western music,” he says. “I’m sure

this is solid evidence that students and faculty members are not as nationalistic as

we may appear to outsiders who only watch us wearing hanbok, shooting

archeries, bowing politely to teachers, all of which add up to the biased viewpoint

toward the school.” When asked if he could change anything about the school, he

says he would change the name. “I would take ‘Leadership’ out of the school

name, and ‘Minjok,’ too,” he says. “So, I guess you would lose the ‘L’ and the

‘M.’ It would just be ‘Korean Academy.’ Korean Academy isn’t bad—it’s close

to the truth. There’s not so much of a leadership or minjok ingredient in school

95 Indeed, Insŏng makes a comparison that would have shocked Korean nationalists of previous generations: “I started to draw a parallel between the administrators and Communists, in their way of thinking, in the way they behaved,” he says.

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life or what the school teaches us.”

Tongwan, Chaewŏn, and Yongjun are of a markedly less depressed

disposition than Insŏng or Chŏnghyŏk in discussing their time at KMLA. For

them, the school did not drain their Korean-ness—they just say that they have felt

no effects on it, one way or the other, while at the school. Tongwan, raised largely

in the United States, wishes that even the tiny traces of those aspects would be

erased. “It’s a fraud!” he says of traditional learning at the school, throwing his

hands in the air. “There’s not much to it. Even if I went to a regular high school, it

wouldn’t be much different. I’m just wearing hanbok.” He points to the Korean

music class as a particularly blatant example of the “fraud” he sees. “Korean

music class is a joke,” he says. “The teacher is one of the most famous traditional

Korean musicians in the country, but he comes in and he just talks and no one

listens.” Ultimately, he is pessimistic about the school’s capacity to construct

national identity. “It’s gonna be a fallen dream,” he says. “I might end up telling

my kids that the school I went to has fallen.”

Chaewŏn, on the other hand, wishes that there were more effective

traditional learning programs at the school. He came to the school in no small part

because he believed in its national ideals. “Compared to other schools in Korea,

where they follow Western traditions; going to a school that values our culture is

a school that thinks one step above, one level higher,” he says. But he cites the

bow to the dorm parents as an example of unmet expectations: “Today when we

do it, it has become a very, a very not-significant experience, neither for the

dorm-parents nor the students.” He wants change. “I think there should be

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something more—I think we should learn something that allows all the students to

preserve the values that our ancestors valued,” he says. “Loyalty, courage, things

like that.” Instead, he just sees routine. But he also blames himself. “I am self-

contradictory, because I do value what the school teaches, but I don’t intend to

follow that final goal of being a great leader,” he says. “It’s me sort of sneaking

out of the way. I’m providing another brain drain.” In a way, Chaewŏn is

describing a corollary of what many of the Conditional Yes respondents say—he

has been given a choice to embrace some sense of Korean-ness, but he has opted

not to. He seems to be saying that the school has failed, in a way, by allowing him

to opt out.

Yongjun makes that point about choice even more explicit. “The school

kind of influenced you, but if you chose to ignore it, you can.” He is simply

neutral on the issue of the lack of strong traditional forms at the school. He came

because he “always wanted to go to the best universities,” and also because of

pressure from his parents. He does say that he wants to be a CEO and that he

“plans to come back to Korea,” but his current aim is on succeeding abroad—and

the traditional forms are just a sideshow to that goal. “Basically the only

traditional class around here is music class, and that’s only once a week,” he

says.96 “It’s all about getting abroad—better APs and whatever.” Bows are “more

of a school tradition than anything else” in his mind. “KMLA has not helped me

get that Korean identity.”

96 Many others echoed this blasé attitude about music class. “The musical instruments—I played them, but it was just playing music. I didn’t think of it as patriotism,” one said. Another said he liked the class, but because the teacher “let us order pizza and chicken wings and relax during class.”

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Hyechŏng and Chiyun offer helpful bookends to our analysis of the No

Group. Hyechŏng graduated from Cornell years ago, and was in the first class of

“Ivy Students” at KMLA—the track of students specifically aiming for study at

American colleges. Chiyun, on the other hand, is a current member of the Ivy

track. But both of them have the same assessment of why the school has had little

to no effect on their Korean-ness: the founder’s balance does not make sense.

“The school is in a very confused position, when it comes to traditional learning,”

Chiyun says. “They want to emphasize it, but the reality is that we have to do a lot

of time preparing to go abroad. It’s only one or two periods a week. It exists, but

students get the feeling that the school isn’t emphasizing it anymore. I get the

feeling that the priorities are changing.” But Hyechŏng says that very little has

changed since her time there—that problem existed a decade ago. “Stressing all

those nationalistic values and at the same time gearing towards globalism or

whatever, it doesn’t really make sense,” she says. “I still get lots of questions

from other people who don’t know the school very well, asking, ‘Well, if the

school is so minjok-oriented, why are you speaking in English? Shouldn’t you be

learning Korean in more detail?”

Chiyun has a particularly eloquent summary of the national and the

international at KMLA: “If there’s a KMLA sundae, the ice cream part is that we

have to do well in our academics. The sprinkles are the nationalism.” Hyechŏng

remembers the days when the school was more propagandistic about its national

pride, but says there was not much to write home about. “When I hear the word,

‘propaganda,’ that assumes that it’s working—that you’re forcing people to

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believe something,” she says. “But if no one is believing it, it doesn’t count as

propaganda!”

In a way, Hyechŏng’s weak sense of Korean patriotism or nationalism—

she says the two are “dangerous words”—is a vision of things to come that people

in the Yes and Conditional Yes Groups must contend with. When students like

Sangmin or Sŏngsu say that KMLA provides “subconscious” elements of Korean

pride, which will be awakened when its students go abroad, they must temper

their optimism with the example of Hyechŏng, who went to the school at a time

when the founder was still in charge and ideology was still a prominent part of

daily life. What has been the result of her travels in the world? “I think the

traditional learning was sort of appealing, but I don’t remember clearly,” she says.

“I don’t think that, during the time I was at the school, I became more patriotic—

that’s not what happened.”

Conclusions

At this point, we must reiterate that this section is not intended to be a

denigration of KMLA or its mission. What we are looking at is how students—

especially those in the No Group and the Conditional Yes Group—have

interpreted that mission. An important question in teasing out that interpretation is

whether the Conditional Yes Group fits in more with the Yes Group or the No

Group—a question that can sway one’s view of how much agency the school has

in constructing its students’ identities as Koreans. I argue that they belong more

with the No Group, especially given the aforementioned agreement from teachers

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and administrators about the school’s goals of freedom, as well as the fact that,

even among the Yes Group, most of the interviewees said that traditional learning

was not the most prominent aspect of their experience at KMLA. And yet, the

Conditional Yes group offers salient points about how attending a school like

KMLA can increase one’s sense of national identity through non-overt means.

Most importantly, we should note that many of the Conditional Yes students say

their increased Korean-ness came from activities oriented towards making them

successful leaders on an international stage—not from explicitly national-oriented

activities.

In general, the words of the students in this chapter should demonstrate

relatively conclusively that the school’s direct attempts to instill a sense of the

national in its students are nowhere near as powerful as the founder intended. But

if there is one idea to take away from this chapter and use as a segue into the next,

it is this idea that national pride and identity can come from unexpected places,

places that are explicitly non-national or even—as we shall see in the next chapter

—explicitly international. In many ways, the founder seems to have succeeded in

spite of himself.

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Chapter Three:

International Sources of National Feeling

While sorting through the interview responses of my student interviewees,

I came across something of a paradox. As we saw in the previous chapter, only a

minority of students said KMLA gave them a greater sense of Korean-ness. And

yet, I also found an overwhelming amount of interview data about how strongly

these students identified as Koreans. At first, I wrote it off as a consequence of the

simple fact that they had been born Korean, spoke Korean, and were living in

Korea. But I could not get over the fact that these students spoke of their

attachment to Korea in urgent tones—Korean-ness was at the forefront of their

thoughts, even among the ones who said traditional learning did nothing for them.

What was troubling these students, and why was their feeling of Korean-ness so

urgent? Eventually, an answer made itself apparent.

As promised, this chapter forms something of a companion piece to the

previous one. Here, we will focus on the international. KMLA, as we learned in

the first chapter, has tilted its balance towards the international, institutionally, in

the past few years. More focus is given to AP preparation than samulnori, and so

on. That preparation is explicitly international—students are preparing to study

outside Korea and meet standards of success that are not uniquely Korean. But

there are international sources of national feeling—the international can feed the

national.

In this chapter, we will focus on two sources of national feeling among

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students—what we will call the “assimilation anxiety” and the “improvement

capability.” What makes these factors distinct from the traditional learning

program is that they stem mostly from students’ notions of studying or living

abroad, not from notions of Korean tradition. In a way, both are a response to—

indeed, in some cases, a reaction against—the prospect of living up to

international standards. What makes these factors salient to this particular paper is

not just that our particular interviewees express them. Rather, they are salient

because they are closely related, in these students’ minds, to KMLA’s attempts to

help them construct identities as international leaders. Indeed, in some cases,

students said that they came to KMLA, in the first place, because of international

factors that frightened them—factors that we will examine here. Our argument is

as follows: The factors we will call “assimilation anxiety” and “improvement

capability” stemmed from the international side of the national-international

balance, and yet, they increased students’ national feeling of national identity and

pride.

We must reiterate that we are not arguing that these two phenomena are

the “most important” or “first” factors in students’ formation of Korean identity.

Speaking Korean and being born to Korean parents, of course, would arguably be

far more important. We are making a comparative argument, to contrast against

the explicitly national factors explored in the previous chapter. The two factors in

this chapter are merely two examples of international factors that can contribute to

constructing a national identity. We chose them because they were ideas that

students brought up voluntarily and about which they felt strongly. They are

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crucial in the way these students construct their personal balance of the national

and the international.

Part One: The Assimilation Anxiety

All of the current students at KMLA whom we interviewed express some

degree of anxiety about their journeys abroad. Often, those anxieties are about

academics and the college admissions process—whether their application essays

will be good enough, whether they will get good recommendation letters, whether

their Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) scores will be high enough,

and so on. Students usually talk about such fears before or after their interviews.

But there is another anxiety that comes up even more often, and always on the

record—what we might call the “assimilation anxiety.”

We step into murky terminological waters by using that word,

“assimilation,” so we must offer up a provisional definition. For the purposes of

this paper, “assimilation” means “adopting the customs and attitudes of a

community with which one does not feel an a priori membership.” In this section,

we will present and analyze the words of 18 of the 28 student interviewees, all of

whom expressed a fear that, by studying or living outside of Korea, they could

lose some essential part of their Korean identity through such assimilation. These

18 students vary widely in the amount of time they have spent outside of Korea

(some had never left the country, some had lived most of their lives there), as well

as in their opinions about a whole range of other issues relating to Korea, KMLA,

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Korean pride, and even whether or not they planned to return to Korea. But what

makes the point even more salient than its widespread occurrence is its attachment

to international thoughts, concerns, and aspirations. Thoughts of life abroad—not

traditional learning or national customs—were almost always the trigger for

speaking about these national anxieties.97

Sŏngsu phrases his anxiety about assimilation by bifurcating himself into

two forms: Present-day Sŏngsu and future Sŏngsu. In his words, the two seem to

be at war with one another. He grew up all over Korea, from Chŏlla to Inch’ŏn,

and also studied in the US for a year and a half in his middle-school years. His

reasons for going abroad are academic: “I want to go abroad probably partially

because I wanted to double-major, and you have to choose one major in Korea,”

he says. “I just liked that American colleges provide more variety of studying

environments. In Korean ones, you just… you drink all night.” Sŏngsu listed

various motivations for coming to KMLA, but one had to do with this conflict

between his present and future selves over assimilation. As we have seen in the

previous chapter, he expresses admiration for the general “atmosphere” of

KMLA, but he specifically praises the institution as something of a safeguard.

“Right now, I might not feel a sense that I’m improved in terms of patriotism,” he

says, “but I think 12 years, 20, 30 years from now, I’ll think about how we all

97 What also makes the point salient—and somewhat problematic—was the fact that I never asked anyone about his or her fears of assimilation, in those exact words. Therefore, because I never asked directly about the fear of assimilation, some of the quotations are shorter and less elaborated-upon than we would like. On the other hand, that means this pattern is unprovoked—I asked no leading questions about it, and thus got expressions of anxiety that the students actively wanted to make sure were part of my research.

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wore traditional clothes and had the [hanja] characters up on every class.” He

imagines his journey to the US to be an arduous one, identity-wise. “I’m saying

that, because we’re going abroad, it’s more important for us to preserve that sense

of patriotism before we actually leave.” Then, he voices his concern about his

lack of total control over his future self. “There is a chance that I’ll go to the US

and feel like, ‘I love this country better,’ and change my mind to live there

forever,” he says.

Yongjun is also a senior, and speaks of his anxiety almost in terms of

preparing for an exam—one in which non-Koreans would be quizzing him about

Korea, and a low grade would mean he had failed to live up to his potential as a

Korean. A high grade would mean sticking out like a sore thumb in America—a

goal he wants to achieve. He lived in the US much longer than Sŏngsu—a full 5

years. Unlike Sŏngsu, he is a firm example of someone in the No Group, feeling

that KMLA’s traditional learning elements were easy to “ignore,” and that he has

largely ignored them. He even has harsh words for Korea, as a whole: “I’m

satisfied that I’m a Korean, but I’m not proud of Korea.”

Nonetheless, he narrates his predicted journey to the US as one of identity

crisis, not liberation from Korean restrictions or traditions. Indeed, he fears that he

will not be able to express the Korean traditions that he “ignored” in high school.

“I have this feeling that, when I’m going abroad and saying, ‘I’m from Korea,’

and people ask what’s special about it, I don’t think I can reply well,” he says. He

especially fears the idea of blending into the US too much: “I’m afraid that I

would just be an American—just another foreigner who speaks good English.” He

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says he “doesn’t know why” the idea of losing his Korean identity scares him so

much, but that he knows he “doesn’t want to just become another organ of

America.” Therein lies the essence of Yongjun’s fear and a deep source of his

developing Korean-ness—he does not want to fit in when he goes to the US. “If I

am a foreigner, I want to really be a foreigner, not just a foreigner on the outside,”

he says. “I don’t know why, but I really don’t want to be like those Asians who go

to other countries and don’t seem to retain their identity.” He sums up his feared

future scenario in poetic terms. “When I finally started thinking about going

abroad for university, when I meet new friends, when I study there, it’s like I’ll

have a Korean instrument but no ability to play it,” he said. “I have these Korean

clothes, but I don’t know how to explain them.”

Time and again, another factor causing anxiety comes up in interviews:

living around Korean-Americans. Unlike most of the interviewees, Tongwŏn has

lived the majority of his life in the US. He was born in New Jersey and lived there

for 7 years, attended part of middle school in Korea, returned to the US for the

rest of his middle school education, and did not return to Korea until the day he

had to take the entrance examination for KMLA. When talking about his life in

the US, he tells a variation of a narrative that many other students echo: learning

to love being Korean by witnessing the “Americanization” of Korean-Americans

in the US. “Growing up, I saw kids who were Korean but didn’t speak any

Korean,” he says. “And I thought they were pretty cool at the beginning—he or

she gets along well with American students. But then, I saw that I was a Korean

with citizenship, but didn’t know anything about Korean culture!” He says he had

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an epiphany: “I thought, ‘Wow, if I stay here longer, I’ll be like one of them! I

won’t speak [Korean] naturally!”

But Tongwŏn’s assimilation anxiety remained after coming to KMLA. For

one thing, he was the subject of a national media circus when his father, a famous

professor, pressured him to revoke his Korean citizenship—a decision that

brought the family and KMLA under scrutiny, and that was resolved when the

KMLA administration pressured him to maintain dual citizenship.98 Still, he says

he was bullied for the incident, as well as for being “Americanized.” “But then, an

older student came to me, and he had been Americanized somewhat, too, and he

said, ‘Keep on going,’ and that he had even been hit by people before,” he recalls.

Nevertheless, all those experiences—intimately tied up in a fear of becoming a

Korean-American, as opposed to being a Korean—have stuck with him, and he is

still anxious about the future. “I’m actually still worried,” he said. “Three years of

high school in Korea might not do that much good towards not being

Americanized.”

Chŏnghyŏk is even more vehement on this issue. He is a freshman at

KMLA who spent 3 years of middle school in Oregon. He is quick to say he

“made all ‘A’s’” in middle school, “had a lot of activities going on” there, and

that he could have gone to the Philips Andover Academy or the Stanford College

Preparatory High School. Given all of that information, I had to ask him why he

had bothered to apply to KMLA. His answer was swift: “I didn’t want to be a

Korean-American.” He goes on to say that he wants to be a “global CEO,” but

98 There is media documentation of this event, but I have opted to omit it, so as to preserve the interviewee’s anonymity.

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that one of the most attractive features of KMLA was the fact that it “was a pretty

prestigious school, like Andover,” while “they could also teach the Korean-style

teaching.” Again and again, he emphasizes that the fear of being a Korean-

American had pushed him towards a deeper degree of Korean “patriotism.” “I

saw many students, many Koreans at my middle school in Oregon, and also at

Oregon State University,” he says.

Many of them, their parents came to Oregon way before their sons and daughters were born. This one friend that I knew grew up there for his whole lifetime. But they couldn’t speak Korean, even though they had Korean blood. They were more comfortable speaking English and talking with their American friends. Living in America for three years, I felt that, even for me, English was becoming more comfortable than Korean. I felt that it was right for me, as a Korean, to keep the Korean culture. That’s why I wanted to go to high school in Korea.

Usŏng, on the other hand, had very little experience in the US before

coming to KMLA. He was born in the US, but left for Korea when he was 3. He

graduated from KMLA a few years ago, and is currently attending college in New

York City. It was there, in New York, that he saw Korean-Americans and started

to fear the loss of his identity, as he tells it. “At college, I didn’t exactly become

more patriotic, but I started to see why I had to be a patriot,” he says. He speaks

of the polyglot world of New York City. “There’s a lot of Koreans in New York,”

he said. “You can wake up and go back to bed, and in between those times, never

have to speak a word of English—just Korean all day. I talk with my Korean

friends [at college] like I used to when I was in high school.” But he tells this

story not to speak of how pleasant it was to speak Korean, but to illustrate how

seeing Korean-Americans has caused him to reflexively chastise himself for not

being enough of a “patriot.” “I feel that none of them really care, my Korean-

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American friends and the other international students,” he says. “I don’t think

they really think that Korea is their country, especially if they’re born in the

United States.”

Chaewŏn demonstrates just how powerful this anxiety about Korean-

Americans can be—he does not even want to live in Korea, but the sight of

Koreans abroad has made him feel an urgency to preserve Korean identity. He

grew up in Los Angeles. “I have seen many other Korean-American students in

L.A. who have an identity crisis,” he recounts. This desire to hold on to his

Korean heritage and prevent an “identity crisis” of his own is what made KMLA

so appealing, according to him. “I first learned about the school from a church

friend, who said, ‘There’s this great school where everybody wears hanbok and

follows tradition,” Chaewŏn recalls. “The appeal was that… I had a right to be

proud of our national heritage and culture.” Nevertheless, as he looks towards the

future, Chaewŏn does not see Korea as a good place for him to live. “I worry

about my future children,” he says. He thinks that “growing up in Korea’s current

environment would be bad” for his children, especially educationally.

Nevertheless, those early experiences with Korean-Americans have stuck with

him, and make him anxious to prevent his children from losing their Korean

identities. “What matters is that anywhere you go in the world, you’re still a

Korean,” he said. “No matter where I am, I would make sure to teach my kids

Korean.”

Haeil never grew up with Korean-Americans, and rarely left Korea as a

child. Nevertheless, his one, brief experience abroad made him acutely aware of

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his identity as a Korean. In grade school, he visited various parts of Oceania. “I

had been to other countries, and my identity as a Korean was quite a little bit not

that strong,” he says of his travels. “I started to think, ‘I am just one of the

international citizens.’ I had not such a strong identity as a Korean.” As a result,

he says he has always planned to return to Korea, no matter where he goes—a

feeling that predates his time at KMLA. “My whole life, I thought I’d come back

to Korea after studying abroad,” he says. “That feeling became stronger when I

went to KMLA.” Here, again, we see a form of assimilation anxiety. But unlike

Chaewŏn, Haeil is staunch in his view that Korea is, and always will be, his main

place of residence. Such a contrast is illustrative of how pervasive the assimilation

anxiety is, even among students with different views of how to act on that anxiety.

Tonghun and Insŏng speak about a variation on the assimilation anxiety,

one that emphasizes the feeling of being a fish out of water and also, in a way,

emphasizes the potentially positive effects that can come from being in an alien

environment. They show a corollary of the assimilation anxiety, by embracing the

idea of not assimilating. Tonghun has never lived outside of Korea, other than a 2-

month jaunt to Canada in grade school. As we shall see in the next section, he is

very enthusiastic about helping Korea. But in addition to assisting his country, he

predicts that his experiences abroad will give him the opportunity to strengthen

his own Korean identity—by being a non-assimilated individual. “If you’re in

Korea, and Korea is everywhere, then it’s not special for me,” he says. “But if I

go to foreign countries and interact with other students from other countries, that

means that the name, ‘Korea,’ makes me special.” Later in the interview, he re-

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emphasizes that point: “If I’m in Korea, the feeling that I’m Korean won’t be that

special. But if I go abroad, I’m one of the few students from Korea, that makes

me special.” Insŏng, as we have seen, is arguably the most vehement opponent of

KMLA’s traditional learning program, and of nationalism in general.

Nevertheless, he holds a sentiment similar to Tonghun’s. He says that “when

you’re away from home,” you feel more in touch with your national identity.

“That’s how everybody feels, whether you’re Korean or American or Japanese.”

Chiyun’s assimilation anxiety startled me—not only because the scenario

she offered was unique, but because, in describing it, she directly confronted me

and my own ethnic identity. She lived in New Jersey for 4 years of her life, and

went to middle school in the hagwŏn Mecca of Kangnam, a neighborhood in

Seoul. She expresses ambivalence about Korean nationalism. “I don’t hate my

country, but I don’t really have a strong attachment, either,” she says. “It’s not

that I have no attachment, but only a little. I’m proud to be a Korean, but it’s not

that I want to dedicate my life to my country.” And yet, she sees the preservation

of Korea as a nation-state to be vital, for a specific reason. “If you don’t have a

nation that protects you, that could make your life hard if you go or live abroad,”

she tells me. I ask her what she means. “You’re Jewish,” she tells me. “Don’t you

understand? It’s like Israel. It’s a matter of your ethnicity. It can be a protection.

I’d want Korea to be strong.” In this way, she manifests her assimilation anxiety

through the fear that there might come a day when she could be threatened

because of her identity, and that, in such a situation, rather than assimilate for

protection, she would rather have a nation-state that could offer her protection.

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“It’s more pragmatic than patriotic,” she says. It is also intimately tied up in

international life.

Tongwan is probably the least patriotic or nationalistic of the interviewees,

and he wears that badge proudly. As we have seen, he calls traditional learning a

“farce.” When asked if he considers himself a patriot, he says he is not. “What

I’m saying by saying that I’m not a patriot is that, if a war occurred, then I would

run away,” he elaborates. But he says that, despite his lack of patriotism, he thinks

his heightened English abilities might actually lead to problems while he lives

abroad—problems with assimilation. “I’m afraid of studying abroad, because it’s

such a big place,” he says. “It seems like a problem, because my English is better

than my Korean.” I ask him to elaborate, and he says he is not sure exactly what

he means by that statement. But his use of the language of fear and the

comparison of English with the Korean language suggests that he felt the same

sort of anxieties that others had expressed.

Sŏna wants to be a diplomat, and she, more than anyone else, speaks of

her assimilation anxiety while still wanting to remain as cosmopolitan as possible.

Most of the interviewees say their motivations to go abroad had more to do with

job and education opportunities, but she wants to be part of the mixed salad of

nations and ethnicities. Nevertheless, she presents a scenario not unlike Yongjun’s

—a situation in which she would be tested on her knowledge of Korea and her

Korean identity. But the stakes were much higher in her scenario. She is involved

in the Model United Nations (MUN), having done the activity in middle school as

well as high school, and she says that MUN trips “made me decide to study

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abroad.” But they also taught her an important lesson about the importance of

maintaining a Korean identity. “It’s important for students to be concerned about

Korea and keep it in their minds even after they get into college, because, you

know, they, many of the students might have to work for Korea, even if they just

think they’re studying abroad,” she says. Upon being asked to elaborate, she

presents what she calls a “case scenario.” “I might be working for the UN, and if

there’s an issue dealing with Korea, if I don’t know Korea, then it’s a problem.

Koreans should know more than anyone else about Korea.”

Some of these latter examples may seem weaker than the earlier cases, in

the evidence they provide for showing pervasive assimilation anxiety. Indeed, one

of the reasons we included the less clear ones as specific case studies was in an

effort to parse out details and implications that the interviewees did not make

obvious. However, in order to reinforce our point that the assimilation anxiety

really was a widespread phenomenon, we will conclude with something of a

“laundry list” of brief quotations from interviewees. Each of these statements was

blunt in their expression of fear about assimilating and losing Korean identity

while abroad.

“I’m worried about going abroad,” Tonggŏn, a senior, says, “because I

have seen friends who have gone abroad, and I feel a difference between them

and me—I worry that I would lose my identity.” I ask him why it is important to

maintain his identity, and he says he is “not sure why it’s important, but just

because I am Korean and I love my country.” Another senior, Minsik, puts it

simply: “I don’t think that going abroad would be a good thing if I lost my

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identity as a Korean.” Taesu, also a senior, emphasizes that he greatly admired

KMLA’s founder, Ch’oe Myŏngchae, and that he believes in Ch’oe’s vision for

KMLA students. “If you go abroad and lose all our traditional values and our

identity that we are Korean, then all his purpose is lost,” Taesu says. “Our school

is trying its best to provide us with programs that are necessary to nurture our

Korean thinking—thinking like a Korean, I just mean thinking about Korea.”

Hanŭl has an interesting spin on anxiety about maintaining her Korean identity—

one that she extends to the identity of projects she might create while abroad. “I

want to come back to Korea because if I keep living and working in foreign

countries, abroad, maybe the technology I develop will not be seen as Korean,”

she says. “If I develop the technology or find something very unique, I want to

tell people that it was developed by a Korean person.” Sangmin, a freshman who

has never left Korea, perhaps sums up the assimilation anxiety most succinctly. “I

want to study abroad, but I’m afraid, because I don’t want to lose my nationality.”

Sangmin’s statement acts as a jumping-off point for our larger analysis of

KMLA. Ch’oe Myŏngchae would certainly be proud to hear Sangmin’s words—

they describe his vision of the world. We are not saying the assimilation anxiety is

wholly separate from the KMLA experience. Indeed, it is often deeply wrapped

up in it. What we are arguing is that it is wrapped up in thoughts about

international factors. KMLA students may have those thoughts at home or at

school, but the fact remains that they are not triggered in interviews by talk of

national symbols or traditions. And the same fact is true of another phenomenon

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that we must examine, one of a largely different character.

Part Two: The Improvement Capability

Hŭisŏn has a story that she says is revealing, when it comes to the mindset

of her fellow KMLA graduates. “I had a conversation with a KMLA graduate at

MIT,” she says.

He’s a very good-looking guy, but he’s never been able to hold down a girlfriend for a long time. He was slightly drunk and he told me that a lot of KMLA guys have difficulty holding down long-term relationships because they feel that they don’t deserve that until they achieve something, and also because they always feel that the girl has to understand their ambitions to save humanity.

She admits that the story was a bit of an exaggeration, but that there is a little bit

of truth to it. As we shall see, there is more than just a little bit of truth in those

words. Lofty ambitions and a feeling of responsibility are immensely important

for the students in this study, even if they do not necessarily include “saving

humanity.” The anecdote illuminates the second of our two featured factors in

developing Korean-ness while thinking internationally. That factor is a sense of

power that students have to improve Korea through their own actions. We will

call this factor the “improvement capability.”

“Improvement” and “capability,” in this study, have many meanings,

which we will parse out in each individual case. But the umbrella definition of our

phrase is as follows: a perception that Korea is sub-optimal in certain aspects,

combined with a feeling that the student can ameliorate those shortcomings, even

if they do not necessarily want to do so.

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In cases where students explicitly say that they feel a duty to improve

Korea because it is the nation with which they identify, then the improvement

capability is clearly linked to development of Korean-ness. But there are students

who fit this rubric less clearly—those who say that Korea might benefit from their

work, even if such national improvement is not their goal. In a way, this latter

feeling is even more strongly connected to a sense of Korean-ness: Such

respondents are saying that the gains of their success will automatically funnel

specifically into Korea, implying that they are inextricably linked to a wider

imagined community of Korea, whether they like it or not.

The improvement capability was roughly as widespread as the

assimilation anxiety—20 out of 28 respondents expressed it in one form or

another. Again, we must emphasize that these respondents did not necessarily

develop this factor outside KMLA. Indeed, all the focus on leadership and

“advancing” the “Fatherland” is strongly tied to an improvement capability. But

those ideas, even at KMLA, are aimed internationally, not nationally. The

improvement capability about which these students speak is only possible if they

look abroad. It is an international source of national feeling.

We will divide the respondents who spoke of the improvement capability

into two groups: those who said they planned to return to Korea to do the work

that they thought could improve Korea, and those who were agnostic about the

prospect of returning to Korea. We will call them the “Return Group” and the

“Agnostic Group,” respectively. It is a bit of an arbitrary division, in that both

groups tended to express the same sets of ideas. However, it will do, given that it

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will peripherally shed light on the possibility of brain drain resulting from the

Korean educational exodus.

The Return Group

Of the 20 students who spoke of the improvement capability, 10 of them

said that they definitely planned to return to Korea for the bulk of their lives. Not

all of them said that they felt a duty to return to Korea—although some did.

Rather, this grouping came solely from personal plans.

Sori, Sangmi, and Sangmin all came from different backgrounds, but held

one belief in common: Korea is running out of unique advantages in the world,

and the best way they could help their country is by contributing to the one

natural resource it has left—intelligent minds. Sori is blunt in stating that idea.

“Personally, I think Korea is losing its special identity. We used to make ships,

cars or phones—but Japan has all that. We have nothing to do unique,” she says.

“We have no materials, and high labor fees. We only have brainpower. I think

that’s what Korea will be best at, after 20 years.” But that belief is not her only

reason for wanting to turn a career in international relations into something that

aids her home country. She says she feels an “innate” desire to improve Korea, a

desire that, indeed, makes her uniquely Korean. “I feel like I have to do

something for the nation. I have to come back and make Korea proud,” she says.

“I don’t think a lot of people around the world feel that. We have one ancestor, we

have the story of how we are all related to each other—that kind of concept is

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what minjok is all about.” Sori also wants to return. “No matter how well I would

do, how good a job I would get in the US or Europe, no matter how handsome a

boyfriend I might get, I would bring him home to Korea,” she says. Sangmi may

turn her passion for the school’s judicial branch into a career in law, or she might

go to medical school, but she knows where she will end up. “I have to come back

to Korea,” she says, as if it is an a priori statement. When asked why she “has to,”

she has trouble expressing the English term for her reasoning. “Well, because

Korea is having a big trouble of…” she pauses, “Running out of brain? Brain

drain! Yes, brain drain.” Her notions of Korea’s international standing, therefore,

fuel her sense of national duty.

Sangmin is a member of the Yes Group, but only barely. He says that

KMLA’s traditional learning had only influenced his ideas about patriotism “a

bit.” By comparison, his desire to improve Korea is far more intense. “After I

study abroad, I want to come back to Korea and work for Korea, because Korea

needs some educated youth,” he says, echoing Sori and Sangmi. “Because Korea

doesn’t have natural resources. I think Korea only has its personal resources.” In

that vein, he plans to bring much-needed knowledge about environmental science

to Korea. “When I become, like, an expert in that field, I want to come back to

Korea and make some big facilities and institutions that research about

environmental engineering,” he says. Korea needs such engineering institutions,

he says, “because there are no good educational facilities in Korea that teach it.”

He thinks he can change that state of affairs, and improve Korea in the process—

but only by going abroad. International aspirations have fueled his belief in his

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ability to improve Korea. Chihun was also a borderline Yes Group member,

having said that KMLA only influenced her patriotism “a little bit.” More

important to her is a desire to help Korea. She sees deficiencies in Korea’s

brainpower, but unlike Sangmi, Sangmin, or Sori, wants to attack the problem

head-on, by reforming the Korean education system. “I want to have my

education in the USA, more advanced education. I want to learn how to advance

information and knowledge for students,” she says. “I want our country to have

better Korean education.”

Tongwŏn and Hanŭl see Korea as lacking in scientific prowess, and feel

that they can bring tools back from their studies in the West. “I want to be a

pediatrician,” Tongwŏn says. “I’ll study in America and learn a lot, and then

come back with more medical treatments than Korea has today. Hanŭl, as we saw

in the section on assimilation anxiety, wants her work in biology to be identified

as specifically “Korean,” and fears that the world might not see it as such. But she

also thinks that she can ameliorate the social “problem” of needing “connections”

for getting jobs in Korea. She thinks her potential fame could change that: “If I

come back from Korea as a famous researcher, then I can become an example of

someone who doesn’t need to have those connections; who can contribute to

change society.” Again, going abroad is a key for her national pride and identity

—it can improve Korea’s standing internally and externally.

Sŏngsu and Kŭnsŏk see politics as their area for reform. Sŏngsu says that

his desire to improve Korea came even before he went to KMLA. “I always

wanted to come back some day and contribute to my country’s development,” he

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says. He is the one who says he wants to “clean up” Korean politics, and thinks he

can only pursue his national dreams by going abroad for a double major at a US

college. Kŭnsŏk fits into the Yes Group, saying that KMLA helped him get over

his feelings of “remorse” at Korea’s historical weaknesses. He says Korea’s

biggest problem is reunification between North and South. “There’s China, Japan,

and Russia, and overseas there’s the USA—we’re in the middle of a lot of strong

countries,” he says. “I don’t think Japan or China want us to reunify—because

they want us divided.” He calls that division a limitation on Korean power, and

says it is a “real problem.” And, like our first few students in the Return Group,

Kŭnsŏk believes that Korea’s last, best hope is human capital. “We don’t have

many natural resources, so our main resource is smart people,” he says.

Chŏngan’s sense of improvement capability applies to national power in a

broader sense than just politics, and she says she became aware of it when she

was in an international situation. “After I went to the States, as I was studying

among the Americans, the Indians, the Chinese, I kind of realized that my identity

as a Korean…” she says, and pauses. “It’s my duty to come back and contribute

to my country.” Although she is specifically working in finance, she thinks she

can potentially help Korea’s standing in both global economics and global

geopolitics. She can see herself “bringing financial knowledge from abroad into

Korea,” so that she “can improve the institutions, the regulations and all that.” She

cites the 2006 “Lone Star scandal,” in which two Americans were accused of

manipulating the Korean stock market, as an example of Korean weakness.99 “I

99 For more information on the Lone Star scandal, a good starting point is this article from the International Herald Tribune: “Seoul court issues warrants for 2 Loan Star executives,” http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/16/business/lone.php

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feel like we could have responded better to that event if we had more knowledge

about hedge funds and leveraged investments and all that,” she says. “Money and

power are linked.”

Of the students in the Return Group, none was more grandiose in his or

her sense of improvement capability than Haeil. “Many Koreans are really

egoistic. It’s the thing that can be called minjoksŏng,” he says. “Of course, it is

impossible for me to fix such a minjoksŏng, but I think I can appeal to other

Koreans at least, after I become a famous scientist or something like that,” he

says. “I can appeal to other Koreans that we have to change. Many Koreans

already know that they are egoistic.” He says he wants to “make Koreans feel

more of a community,” and although “it’s too big a dream for one Korean,” he

can nevertheless aspire to it. “I think if I make many contributions and make a

higher position to appeal to others, I’ll have more opportunities for that,” he says.

“I think if Koreans just get out of that egoism, we have really such a great

potential to be a really well-living people.” Interestingly, he says that such

changes would make Korea “a developed country.” After being told that many

would consider Korea already “developed” in a conventional sense, he says, “We

lack some things right now. We’re not yet developed,” and refers back to what he

has said about egoism. In this way, Haeil’s perceived duty is to fix duty itself as a

concept in Korean mindsets by serving his minjok abroad.

The Agnostic Group

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The other 10 of the 20 students who speak of the improvement capability

are what we might call “agnostic” about the prospect of returning to Korea. That

word encompasses a wide range of opinions—from people who felt that there was

a relatively good chance that they would return to people who felt they could best

improve Korea by living outside of it. But they are all united by the belief that

doing their life’s work in Korea is not a prerequisite for improving Korea.

Chŏnghyŏk, Yongjun, and Usŏng offer emphatic arguments for why a life

abroad could improve Korean deficiencies, and put those arguments in terms of

success in the business world. Chŏnghyŏk, as we saw in the previous sections,

feels a deep sense of Korean pride—more than he thinks KMLA can match. He

channels that pride directly into an economic goal: “My mission is to raise Korea

to being one of the highest-earning countries, the most economically-strong

country,” he says. He even directly links his sense of Korean-ness to his sense of

mission. “When I say I want to keep a Korean heritage and Korean identity, it’s

that I want to, later on, benefit Korea and raise Korean power in the world, to be

as strong as America or powerful countries like China.” He wants to be a CEO,

but one who retains a sense of Korean identity. However, he does not see Korea

as a necessary base of operations for his potential firm—indeed, the whole point

of his goal is that he can best help Korea by thinking internationally. “I do not

think that the only way to keep the Korean identity is to live in Korea or start the

business in Korea,” he says. “I can live in America or other countries and have

big companies there to influence the whole economy, and later to benefit the

Korean economy.”

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Yongjun wants to be a CEO, but more generally wants to help the Korean

economy in the global marketplace. “I could help Korea in increasing its exports

and profits,” he says. “I could be a lawyer, too, working on international trade

talks or agreements. I just want to help my country.” That kind of rhetoric stands

in stark contrast to the way he talks about the preservation of traditions at KMLA,

which he describes as something one can “choose to ignore.” He says he plans to

come back to Korea, but is not wedded to that idea as much as he is to the idea of

helping Korea. “If I can’t come back, I would still try to promote Korea’s image,”

he says. Usŏng also wants to help Korea’s economy flourish through what he

learns abroad: “I’ll definitely use my skill for my country,” he says. And he, like

Chŏnghyŏk and Yongjun, says he plans to come back to Korea, but does not feel

a need to do so: “I don’t have to, if I can contribute to my country from abroad.”

These are all very strong words in comparison to the way he describes official

KMLA programs as being “just about studying and just about success,” and

lacking in “patriotism.” The difference is striking, and indicative of how much the

improvement capability, and the international aspects of his aspirations, have

influenced his degree of Korean-ness.

Chiyun, as we have seen, is a pragmatist when it comes to her Korean-

ness. “I don’t hate my country, but I don’t really have a strong attachment,

either,” she says. “I don’t really have that feeling that I have to give back to my

country.” As we have seen, she also has an acute sense of the fact that national

strength is important to her survival. She is the one who draws the allusion to

Israel, in talking about how “If you don’t have a nation that protects you, that

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could make your life hard if you go or live abroad. It’s the last protection you

have.” For her, fears of the international climate prompt a feeling of national

urgency. But she also works to strengthen Korea at a smaller level, in terms of

what she calls “financial literacy.” “There’s not an emphasis on that in Korea,

because college entrance is so important for Koreans,” she says. She sees this lack

of financial education as the reason behind any number of Korean economic

crises in the past half-century.

Tonghun, like Chiyun, is concerned with financial literacy in Korea. He

has translated an American book called What Color is Your Piggybank? into

Korean in order to educate children about economics. “It was very meaningful

because although the economy and economics are quite emphasized more and

more in Korean society, there aren’t that much materials for students, especially

young kids,” he says. But what makes Tonghun unique is his belief that he can do

the best for Korea by remaining outside of it. “I will give back to my society just

if I do my best in my field, which will be economics,” he says. “It will make my

country high if I do very good things, and set some milestones. It’s a prestige not

only for myself but also for my country.” Then he goes one step further in his

reasoning. “If I go somewhere else, then I’m doing well for Koreans,” he says.

“My achievement in my field, everything will directly or indirectly affect

thoughts about Korea in other students’ minds.”

Sŏna, Hŭisŏn, and Insŏng are of a different mindset from all the previous

respondents: They think their successes will automatically benefit Korea—

whether they like it or not. Sŏna does like that prospect. As we have seen in the

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previous section, she is part of an NGO that promotes Korea’s image abroad in

various ways, and as we have seen, that involvement came before she arrived at

KMLA. But even beyond her work with that organization, she thinks her personal

success will help the country she seeks to promote. She wants to work for some

kind of international company: “As long as I’m concerned about Korea, at least, if

I work in the US and do good in my career, that is kind of like spreading out the

Koreans’ reputation to the world.” Hŭisŏn is far less committed to the idea of

helping Korea, yet still has a similar interpretation of what her life’s work might

lead to. She says she knows many people who want to “help Korea.” “For me, it’s

not that,” she says, and speaks about how she is more into the idea of aiding a

“community,” but not necessarily a Korean community. Then she pauses and adds

a caveat. “But I guess, if I become successful, as a result there would be a good

image for Korea,” she says. “But that’s not the goal.” Insŏng is somewhere in

between the two female students in his assessment of how important it is to help

Korea, but he agrees with their interpretation of what will happen if he succeeds.

“Doing your best wherever you are can be seen as doing good for your country.”

Ajung offers an example of the improvement capability at a bare-bones

level. “I don’t think I will directly use my power to help Korea be a ‘stronger

nation,’ but I want to help,” she says. She wants to go into business, probably

outside Korea. But “I want to help Korea, people living in Korea,” she says. “I’m

interested in orphans and I will help orphans in Korea as much as I can.” In

Ajung’s case, the improvement capability is far from the most important factor in

the development of her Korean-ness, but she speaks more concretely and

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emphatically about it than about anything she has experienced at KMLA.

Finally, we have Chaewǒn. He feels guilty. He does not plan to return to

Korea after his studies, but understands the potential implications of that plan.

“I’m thinking about staying in the US or moving to somewhere like Dubai or

Morocco, or France,” he says. When asked if he feels any sense of duty to help

Korea while abroad, he starts to speak in tones of personal shame. “There are

other places in the world that are better than Korea. Even though Korea is my

nation and I’m proud to be a Korean, I don’t have a responsibility to be tied to

Korea,” he says. “I haven’t thought about my commitment to stay here and make

Korea a better place, because I don’t know how much I can do as one person.”

Then he adds, “Maybe that’s a little individualistic.” His feeling of guilt deepens.

“I would never tell my teachers” about not returning to Korea, he says. “I have a

guilty conscience about that.” He sees his decision as a potential detriment to

Korea. “It’s me sort of sneaking out of the way, providing another brain drain,” he

says. “I’m disappointed in myself. Maybe if I think about it more and weigh the

costs and benefits, I think I would be able to change my mind, but for now…” and

he trails off. These comments offer an interesting perspective on the notion of

transnational identity. Chaewŏn recognizes his capability to potentially improve

Korea, and that recognition is so deep that it makes him feel guilty when he

chooses not to act on it. It is attachment by negation, and journeying

internationally brings it out in him.

We began this sub-section with a story from Hŭisŏn, and we can close it

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with a comment she made about the phenomenon we have analyzed here. “I think

a lot of my friends feel obliged to return to the Korean community,” she says. “I

know a lot of friends who plan on going back to Korea immediately, without

question. They say that it’s almost wrong to not help Korea.” Although that

statement is purely anecdotal, it reinforces the idea that this notion of duty to help

Korea is even more widespread than this paper can illustrate.

One question we have not been able to answer, and will not be able to

answer, is one that the grouping of sub-sections here has raised: that of the

potential return of Korean study-abroad students to Korea. Just as the Korean

educational exodus is under-researched, so is its potential for brain drain. But as

the grouping here shows, our sample group is relatively split down the middle,

and more importantly, all its students are too young to speak concretely about

their long-term plans. Even Hyechŏng, who was in the first wave of students to

follow the Ivy Track for studying abroad, and who is currently living in Korea, is

unsure of whether she wants to remain there. It is simply too early to tell whether

the Korean educational exodus will be one of brain drain or growth in Korean

human capital. Nevertheless, this idea that one is imbued with a unique power, as

an individual, to help a given imagined community is crucial to understanding the

ways in which transnational individuals like our students conceive of nationhood

and identity. We will examine the implications of that idea, as well as many

others from this thesis, in our final section.

Conclusions and Thoughts on “Cosmopolitanism”

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These anecdotes take us back to that concept of “freedom” that the

teachers and students spoke of so fondly in the previous two chapters. National

feeling, we have seen, can come from sources that have more to do with varying

degrees of freedom, for better or worse. Better, in that students say they have the

world at their fingertips—they can lead orchestras and courts, they can speak

freely about what it means to be a patriot, and they have unprecedented

opportunities to learn and succeed outside of Korea, be it in business, law, or

science. The other side of that coin, of course, is the terror that comes from the

freedom to enter that “battlefield without borders” that Mr. Ch’oe predicted. That

kind of freedom can instill a desire to cling fiercely to a sense of national identity

that is localized and uniquely Korean, for any number of reasons, or even without

any conscious logic.

But more importantly, we should note one concept that is absent from this

chapter, because it is absent from the words of the students: cosmopolitanism. At

the beginning of our first chapter, we said “balance” was the best word to describe

the process of identity construction at KMLA, as opposed to “blending” or

“mixing.” The statements in this chapter, by and large, justify that decision. Who,

other than the girl with aspirations to join the UN, says anything about being a

“global citizen” or experiencing “world culture”? Where, other than in the words

of the girl who wants to be a part of “a community, but not necessarily the Korean

community,” is the idea that these students passionately want to become both

Korean and international? Virtually nowhere. We might expect that these

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students, being given the opportunity and training to be part of a global imagined

community of elite intellectuals, would speak about the wonderful idea of joining

a “global village.” But that is not what we see. Instead, the prospect of going

abroad—although implicitly one that involves creating a new identity, simply by

the fact that they will speak English and live out non-Korean mores—reinforces

their sense of Korean-ness.

A summation of Chapters Two and Three is in order before we move on to

the conclusion. Taken together, this chapter and the previous one reveal a

particular balance that these interviewees have struck: They are almost single-

mindedly oriented towards the international when it comes to their immediate and

long-term plans, but they are just as committed to the idea that they themselves

are fundamentally and inexorably Korean. And on the whole, they formulate the

national part of that balance not through learning about Korean traditions at

KMLA, but by learning how to succeed abroad at KMLA and having the freedom

to think independently at KMLA. The concepts that these students express have a

problematizing effect on conventional wisdom about the erosion of the nation-

state and the decline of nationalism in the wake of the Cold War. It is with these

thoughts in mind that we move to our conclusion, in which we will return to the

theoretical literature and see how these ideas contribute to the larger, world-wide

dialogue about globalization and national identity.

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Conclusions:

Globalization and National Identity on Trial

In the introduction to this thesis, we laid out two questions. The primary

one was as follows: “In what ways have KMLA and its students balanced their

aims for international standards of success with their sense of national identity?”

We have dedicated the bulk of the thesis to pursuing an answer to that question. Yet

there was a larger query, one that we cannot come close to conclusively answering,

but that our study addresses nonetheless: “How do the larger forces of globalization

and national identity interact in the modern world?” It is a dilemma that concerns

social scientists of numerous disciplines, but more importantly, one that affects

populations and political systems around the world. Now that we have addressed

our first question in depth, we have the opportunity to explore briefly the

implications of our research for that second, more universally relevant question.

Here our study suggests the following point: Globalization and national identity

are not incompatible, but they interact in dynamic, unexpected ways that are

difficult to control. As we conclude, we will offer up some thoughts about how this

implication connects our study to the world at large.

In a sense, the story of KMLA is the story of one man trying to control the

interaction between national identity and globalization, the story of an attempt at

systematic, institutional control. His equation was simple: Globalization has come

to Korea, but unique Korean identity needs to be preserved; therefore we should

prepare students for the SATs on the one hand and teach them samulnori on the

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other. The end product was supposed to be students who could succeed abroad, but

who also had pride and attachment to Korea. But this view turned out to be an over-

simplification of a complex dynamic. There was no simple binary of “national” and

“international.” What we see are students going abroad with strong views about

their national identity, but for reasons that, on the whole, do not fit into the

founder’s equation. For clarity’s sake, let us briefly review our argument, and then

see how it challenges this belief in the efficacy of controlled systems.

Ch’oe Myŏngchae founded a school in 1996. It was to have a dual purpose

of creating international leaders and graduates with a deep sense of national

identity and pride—that was the initial ideological balance. The school became

famous throughout the country. It was at the forefront of a revolution in Korean

education—the rise of Korea to the status of number-one per-capita exporter of

study-abroad students. Then the school’s ideological balance tipped in favor of

the international. Why? New leadership was one factor, as were dire financial

straits. But the deeper reason, playing into both of those two previous factors,

seems to have been the pressures of maintaining what had made the school so

successful—achievement of international standards of success. Today, some of

the national elements remain in the form of traditional learning, but they are

largely hollowed-out.

On what basis can we make an evaluative statement like that? We see it

somewhat through observation of rituals and practices at the school, but more

through the words of the very people who are supposed to be transformed by

traditional learning—the students. On the whole, the students we interviewed felt

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that traditional learning was unimportant or at least not transformative in any

meaningful way. Nevertheless, most of them expressed a pressing concern about

their Korean-ness. What makes this study interesting is the fact that, despite the

lack of care the students showed for explicit displays of national pride, they still

embraced that Korean-ness, and that embrace was often triggered by international

factors. For some, the increased concern about Korean-ness came during their

time at KMLA, as a result of the space given to them for extracurricular activities

or discussion and interaction with other students. That space and freedom was

given to them, according to the school, so as to allow them to be more

competitive in the international education market. For even more of the students,

that concern came from more obviously international factors, such as anxiety

about assimilating into a foreign culture, or a sense that their travels abroad can or

will inevitably improve Korea.

And so we are left with a story about students who form their identities in

a counterintuitive fashion: When faced with explicitly, uniquely Korean objects

and traditions, they are unmoved; when faced with the rest of the world, they

think deeply about Korea. This situation might be labeled simply as a case of

“absence makes the heart grow fonder,” except for the fact that many of these

students feel this increased Korean-ness before they even leave Korea. They feel

it while they are confronted with traditional learning every day. They are not

longing for something they do not have, because it is often right in front of them.

This phenomenon is not simple enough to reduce to such an aphorism.

The phenomenon is also, in a way, bigger than KMLA, and bigger than

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Korea. We can examine its implications by parsing the statement we made earlier:

first, that globalization and national identity are not incompatible; second, that

they interact in dynamic, unexpected ways that are difficult to control.

Puzzling Pieces: The Compatibility Issue

There are those who claim that the forces of globalization are wholly

antithetical to nations and the concept of the nation-state. One need look only a

few hundred miles north of KMLA to find a hermit kingdom that actively resists

nearly all penetration from outside culture. But beyond that fringe, there are those

who think globalization and national identity at least erode one another, or that

one will win out over the other. In the realm of theory, there are political scientists

like Fukuyama, who sees the proliferation of liberal democracy wiping out

vigorous nationalism over time, or Huntington, Barber, and Webb, who see

radical nationalism as a militant response to and opponent of the onset of

globalization.100 In social anthropology, we have Juergensmeyer, who also sees

100 Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism’s Challenge to Democracy, 2nd ed. (New York City: Ballantine Books, 2001), passim; Adam K. Webb, Beyond the Global Culture War (New York City: Routledge, 2006), passim; Fukuyama, passim; Huntington, passim. Obviously, this sentence is an oversimplification of their arguments. Indeed, Huntington’s book was written as a backlash against Fukuyama, and Webb proposes an alternative to their arguments, for example. However, we have grouped them together because they all posit that there are forces that rise up against the forces of globalization—although each author’s terms for the latter differ (“liberal democracy” for Fukuyama, “McWorld” for Barber, “liberal modernity” for Webb). Huntington is more complex, in that he sees globalization itself as a force proving the incompatibility of various nations. His different “civilizations,” all based on some degree of common, primordial, internal connection, cannot be combined. So, on that basis, he falls into the “incompatible” camp. What unites all of these writers is an assertion that the post-Cold War order is one in which primordialist, often

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recent rises in nationalism as a nemesis to globalizing forces, and Appadurai, who

predicts the death of the nation-state in a world of global communication.101 Even

in Korean studies, there are those who see a certain degree of incompatibility

between the forces. Alford and Kim, as we saw in the introduction, think Korea

cannot maintain a unique national identity and fully enter the global community—

the current situation of high nationalism and high globalization is untenable, in

their view.102

Hopefully, this study has suggested that international aspirations and

national feeling are not mutually exclusive within one person or one institution,

although the balance might shift over time. Indeed, as we have seen, the forces of

globalization can strengthen national identity. Of course, this small study cannot

address the entire spectrum of issues about compatibility, but we have at least

begun to engage the debate.103

nationalist groups stand in opposition to a harmonious, globalized order of some kind.101 Juergensmeyer, passim; Appadurai, passim.102 Alford, passim; Samuel S. Kim; passim.103 The most important issue we have not—and cannot—address is that of mass migration, which is an oft-discussed issue among theorists and politicians in Europe, the Americas, and even Korea. For issues of migration and migrant workers in general, good starting points are Benhabib, Koopmans et. al., and Soysal. In Korean issues, Samuel S. Kim, Katharine H.S. Moon, and Hyun Ok Park have all written about how the influx of foreign workers to Korea threaten to erode the notion of minjok-oriented, ethnic-based nationalism. We just cannot address this issue because our students have not yet become part of the workforce in significant numbers, and we have no data on public responses to their movement to the US. That data will hopefully come soon, but it is not here now. Seyla Benhabib, “Citizens, Residents, and Aliens in a Changing World,” in The Postnational Self: Belonging and Identity, Hedetoft & Hjort, eds. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); Ruud Koopmans, et. al., Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2005); Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Samuel S. Kim; Katharine H.S. Moon,

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Dynamic Dynamics: Systems of Control

The number of theorists and regimes who actually hold national identity

and globalization to be incompatible is small, compared to those who see some

sort of compatibility. However, although this study fits into that latter school of

thought, we can still suggest that more work needs to be done in understanding

how the forces interact. Put simply, theorists cannot predict, nor institutions

control, the choices of individuals in constructing a balance between national and

international identity.

Politically, we need look no further than Korea to see an example of

people more powerful than Ch’oe trying to control the interaction of globalization

and national identity—Presidents Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung. Kim

Young-sam, like other leaders trying to maintain a 19th and 20th century notion of

nationalism alive in a globalizing economy, spoke of “Koreanizing”

globalization.104 He built up symbols of primordialist nationalism—folk villages,

traditional festivals, and so on—while pushed for international trade. After him,

Kim Dae-jung similarly tried to maintain control: He kept Korea active in the

post-Asian Financial Crisis world economy, while also proposing legislation to

“Strangers in the Midst of Globalization: Migrant Workers and Korean Nationalism,” in Korea’s Globalization, Samuel S. Kim, ed. (New York City: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Hyun Ok Park, “Segyehwa: Globalization and Nationalism in Korea,” Journal of the International Institute 4, http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/journal/vol4no1/segyeh.html (accessed 22 January 2008).104 Kim Young-sam, 273; quoted in Shin, 214.

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give effective citizenship to all Koreans living abroad.105 Those were their

attempts to control the balance of the national and the international, not unlike

Ch’oe’s. They are not alone: Look no further than China or post-communist

Eastern Europe for examples of states with leaders who have tried to reap the

benefits of the global economy while sponsoring nationalist projects, all in the

name of maintaining a simple balance between the two forces.

What our study suggests, on a microcosmic level, is that such attempts to

control the balance are unstable and potentially doomed to failure—but not

because the two forces are incompatible. Rather, what we suggest is that

individuals will interpret their personal relationship to the rest of the world and

their own imagined national community on an individual level. And that personal

interpretation may be complex—for example, like our students, individuals can

feel highly anxious about world culture, but still actively engage in it. Individuals

might ignore explicit political attempts to dictate and promote identity politics,

just as our students often ignore traditional learning. Like Certeau’s urban

pedestrians, people facing programs that manage national identity can engage in

“multiform, resistance, tricky and stubborn procedures that elude discipline

without being outside the field in which it is exercised.”106

Even among theorists, there is a tendency to over-simplify when writing

about the complex interaction between globalization and national identity. There

are those who speak of “cosmopolitanism,” such as Hannerz, Smith, Appiah, and

Beck. Hannerz gives a succinct definition of “the cosmopolitan as a type in the

105 Samuel S. Kim, 262.106 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Steven Rendall, trans. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988), 96.

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current period of global interconnectedness, when an increasing number of people

are geographically mobile under fairly comfortable circumstances and can enjoy

taking in cultural diversity along the way.”107 But as we said at the end of our last

chapter, our students are not cosmopolitans. Their aim is not “cultural diversity,”

and the idea of assimilating into an identity that is not fundamentally Korean

tends to give them deep anxiety. Then there are those theorists who speak of

another equation—that populations use globalization as a tool for national

advancement. Shin, Ong, and the joint work of Park and Abelmann all fit into this

category.108 But our students show that such causality (nationalism leads to use of

globalization as a tool) is theoretically problematic. It might be true in some

cases, but many of our students showed that the prospect and opportunity of going

abroad came before their deep national feeling. Perhaps the theorists who come

closest to our conclusions are Fong and Nelson—both write about their subjects’

ambivalence and confusion as they think about national priorities and

international opportunities.109

107 Ulf Hannerz, “Where We Are and Where We Want to Be,” in The Postnational Self: Belonging and Identity (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 228; Anthony D. Smith, “The Crisis of Dual Legitimation,” in Nationalism (New York City: Oxford University Press, 1994); Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York City: W.W. Norton, 2006); Ulrich Beck, The Cosmopolitan Vision (New York City: Polity Press, 2006).108 Shin; Ong; Park and Abelmann.109 Vanessa Fong, “Filial nationalism among Chinese teenagers with global identities,” American Ethnologist 31, no. 4 (2004): 631-648; Laura C. Nelson, Measured Excess: Status, Gender, and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea (New York City: Columbia University Press, 2000). In Fong’s case, the subjects are Chinese adolescents, deciding how to weigh pride in their country with the notion that it might be “backwards” by international standards. In Nelson’s case, the subjects are Korean consumers debating how their purchasing habits will affect their country.

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We do not mean to say that any of these theorists are necessarily “wrong,”

or much less that our study is the only one that “gets it right” when it comes to

understanding globalization and national identity. We merely want to add to an

existing conversation, emphasizing the unpredictable, complex relationship

between globalization and the national identities it faces. Indeed, our study has a

number of deficiencies that further research should hopefully mitigate. We did not

have access to a large enough sample size in order to examine correlations based

on gender, age, or class, for example.110 More importantly, due to time and cost

constraints, we were not able to do a comparative analysis with other schools in

Korea—both those that send students abroad, such as Taewŏn, and more

conventional schools. Additionally, interviews in Korean might have shed a

different—though not necessarily more valid—light on these students’ thoughts

and feelings. Nevertheless, we have recorded at least some of these students’

thoughts and feelings, and brought them into a dialogue that affects all of us

living in a globalizing world.

The late Ernest Gellner, one of the world’s authorities on nationalism,

understood the importance of education in any national identity-building. “Time

was, when the minimal political unit was determined by the preconditions of

defense or economy,” he wrote. “It is now determined by the preconditions of

education.”111 But is it, really? More importantly, what constitutes “education,” in

110 On the issue of class, we must also note that these students tend to be relatively affluent, with access to high-quality education before they enter the school. This analysis should not be taken as exemplary of all Korean students, by any means.111 Ernest Gellner, “Nationalism and Modernization,” in Nationalism (New York City: Oxford University Press, 1994), 56.

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this context? Is it not possible that a national identity can arise from dorm life

more than from classes on national identity? Is it not possible that an education

explicitly aimed at international success can just as easily inspire national

feeling? Hopefully, if nothing else, we have raised these questions, and pointed

out their importance, not only to theorists but also to the greater public. Because

students like Chŏngan and Sangmi are coming, en masse, to the United States and

into the world at large, attention must be paid to how they think and act. If we are

to promote and expand global understanding, we must be more ready for KMLA

than the Wall Street Journal was.

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Appendix I:

Notes on Methodology

The primary-source research for this study is based on 43 formal

interviews, three weeks of on-site observation at the Korean Minjok Leadership

Academy (KMLA), documents collected at KMLA, and dozens of fact-finding

emails. The bulk of this data collection occurred during the summer of 2007,

although one of the interviews and several of the email exchanges were held

during the winter of 2007-08.

All interviews were conducted in a similar format, and with similar

stipulations. Each interviewee had to present me with a signed Consent Form

before I could interview him or her. There were two Consent Forms, each written

by me with approval from the Harvard Committee on the Use of Human Subjects

in Research. One was for students younger than 19—legal minors in Korea. It was

written in Korean and was to be read and signed by each student’s parents. The

other was for non-minors, written in English, and to be read and signed by the

interviewee. Each Consent Form emphasized that all interviews would be

anonymous, that the interviewee could stop the interview or go off the record at

any time, and that his or her words would be used in a senior thesis about

nationalism at KMLA. All interviews were roughly an hour in length, and

recorded. With the exception of two small-group interviews (both held in that

manner at the request of the interviewees), all interviews were one-on-one. All

interviews were held in locations chosen by the interviewees.

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I was not fluent enough in Korean to conduct meaningful interviews in the

language, but I offered all interviewees the opportunity to have an interpreter

present. No student took me up on that offer, and all were fluent in English.

However, a handful of the faculty/administrator interviews were conducted

through a hired translator, as the interviewees did not feel comfortable speaking in

English. In addition, once I returned to Harvard, I paid two Korean students to

translate two primary-source books for me: the autobiography of KMLA’s

founder, and the school’s official tenth anniversary history.

28 of the interviews were with current and former KMLA students, and

most of those were conducted in and around Seoul during the summer break

month of August. These usually occurred in coffee shops or fast-food

restaurants.112 The remaining student interviews, as well as all of the 15

faculty/administrator interviews, were conducted at KMLA. I made three trips to

the school—two brief visits in July, while I was also a student at the Harvard

Summer School in Korea program, and an extended visit at the beginning of

September, when classes were beginning at KMLA. While at the school, I was

under virtually no administrative supervision. Thanks to the help of a teacher, I

secured a room at a building reserved for teachers and visiting parents. During the

day, I would conduct interviews, visit classes, coordinate further interviews, and

gather data.

I assembled my interview group in a way that was more haphazard than I

would have liked. The teacher who obtained a room for me also introduced me to

some current students in my first July visit, and I got their contact information. I

112 Most often, students asked to hold their interviews in Starbucks coffee shops.

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secured some interviews in this manner. Many students came to me: I asked one

early interviewee to post a solicitation for my interviews on a KMLA student

online message-board, and after he did that, I received a number of emails from

interested students. Similarly, word got out to a KMLA graduate message-board,

and some graduates contacted me as a result. I was able to surpass my goal of 25

student interviewees, but was unable to obtain a sample with equal numbers of

students of varying age, gender, regional background, or economic class.

Nevertheless, the numbers broke relatively even on gender—13 female students

and 15 male students. I looked at my data and could find no appreciable

differences between responses from males and females.113 Also by chance, the

group came from a wide range of backgrounds—some had lived in the United

States nearly all their lives while some had never left small towns in Korea; some

were there on scholarships, some had familial wealth to supply their education;

some were from Seoul, some were from Pusan or elsewhere. However, the sample

size was not large enough to justify any generalizations about those factors and

their effect on students, and with the sample we did have, there was no

appreciable difference based on those factors.

113 This is not to say that gender does not play a crucial role in understanding Korean nationalism in general—merely that it did not play a major role in understanding our subjects and their responses. For those interested, there is a wealth of literature on gender and nationalism in Korea. These are some key works: Laurel Kendall, ed., Under Construction: The Gendering of Modernity, Class, and Consumption in the Republic of Korea (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002); Seungsook Moon, Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Elaine H. Kim & Choi Chungmoo, eds., Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism (New York City: Routledge, 1998); Sheila M. Jager, Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2003).

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Interviews were conversational in style, with no set structure. However, I

did ask certain questions in every interview, such as, “What do you think of the

‘traditional learning’ program at KMLA?” “What does the word minjok mean to

you?” and, in the case of students, “Why did you decide to study abroad?” I have

chosen not to list all of these questions here, as they would give the impression

that these interviews were like surveys, when they were not. Sometimes a

question would yield a one-sentence answer; sometimes a tangential follow-up

question would be the heart of the interview.

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Appendix II:

Relevant Photographs

In the following pages, I have included some photographs I took of the

Korean Minjok Leadership Academy and certain objects I observed in it. Some of

these photos are referenced in the body of this thesis; others are included to give a

more general sense of what the institution and its residents look like.

#1: Overview of the main campus

#2: Nobel Pillars

#3: Entrance to the Minjok Kyoyukkwan (“Cultural Center”)

#4: EOP sign on teacher’s door

#5: A session of music class

#6: Students on their way to lunch

#7: A “Morning Meeting”

#8: Typical classroom

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