Investing in “The Academic 1%”: Caring for South Korean Adolescence at the Junctures of Global Market Volatility, Obsolescence, and Play

• Main Author: Oh, Hyun Joo Sandy
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01.01.2019
• Subjects: Adolescents; Asian Studies; Educational Practices; Finance; Higher education; Individualized Education Programs; International Education; Language Skills; Teaching Methods; Undergraduate Study
• ISBN: 1392825067; 9781392825068

This dissertation analyses the production of South Korea’s aspirant “1%.” Focusing on affluent adolescents, their parents, and private educators, I show how my interlocutors understand the world to be inherently volatile and uncertain under the current conditions of global capitalism. Understanding their current position to be fundamentally precarious, my interlocutors seek to create new circumstances from which value can be accumulated, invested, appreciated and generated. These orientations towards futurity position adolescents as sites of speculation and investment in the production of human capital. Based on fieldwork undertaken at “IHE Prep,” a private academy (hagwŏn) specializing in American college exam and application preparatory lessons, in addition to international schools (Kukchehakkyo) in the Seoul metropolitan area, I analyse how the South Korean economy, education, and class conflict fuel my interlocutors’ aspirations to embed themselves in global markets. Notably, international schools are vested with special powers by the Ministry of Education to implement their own curriculums in full foreign language immersion. I will argue that these processes rest on social obligations of kinship, intergenerational exchanges of reciprocity, and aspirational classed identity. By tracking the process leading up to admissions into elite American universities, I argue that adolescents’ pursuits are not effects of rational, calculating individuals. Rather, their aspirations are wrought from their status as debtors to their parents’ enormous investments. Intently focused on American education, the valuation of adolescents is further grounded in English acquisition and university branding, as markers of future leaders, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and innovators. Moreover, adolescents as financialized subjects, constituted through care and capital, are further valued for their physical, emotional, and social well-being. Throughout my examination, I show how processes of investment become a lived reality, contingent not only on the global economy, but forms of embodiment where one should cultivate a creative, playful disposition, compassionate heart, indexing their status as the newly aspirant “1%.”