Is It Problematic to Teach English in South Korea? Part 1: The Empire of English
Part 1 of my Is It Problematic to Teach English in South Korea? series, which examines the TEFL industry in Korea, linguistic imperialism, and neo-colonialism.
Intro
“This is the language of the oppressor
yet I need it to speak to you.” - Adriene Rich
I remember how I felt when I was making the decision to come teach English in Korea. I was sheltering some anxiety about whether this whole gig was a good idea personally—and…well, more broadly.
Is teaching English in other countries ethical? Or was I contributing to a nefarious and pervasive global system of oppression?
Oof. Big questions...you might have an answer already. But I didn’t.
Neo-colonialism may seem like a strange, overly-serious topic for this humble blog but actually, this topic is one that I think about all the time.
I’ve tried writing this post for literal years now. I’d put it down for ages, simmer on it, and then return with a fury of research and purpose.
But the more I researched, the more I lost the reins of the topic. There have been so many theses and dialogues and studies written about the TEFL industry; there’s an entire field of scholarship on this. And I was just doggy-paddling along, trying to keep up.
So the first drafts of this were…extremely academic. Not a bad thing, but who comes to a tiny travel blog to read someone’s off-the-clock essay?
I’d research, write, edit, then return to the questions: is it even right for me to talk about this? Who cares? Does anyone really think that teaching English in Korea is neo-colonialism?
Well, in the wake of increased anti-Asian violence, renewed conversations about White Saviorism and exploitative white vacations, I kept writing.
I’d be remiss to be an (white) English teacher and owner of a travel blog without discussing my impact on the local communities I visit and live in. I hope what I say can add to the conversation.
Setting up the goalposts
Let’s begin with some disclosures:
Most of my sources are from BIPOC but I’m coming at this from a white American perspective.
I’ve been an English teacher in Daejeon, South Korea for almost three years.
My role in the classroom is to be an assistant teacher to a Korean co-teacher, and I’m supposed to teach conversation and culture.
A lot of the scholarship on linguistic imperialism centers on the Global South, especially Latin America or Africa, but this post will focus on South Korea.
And I’m going to use “Korea” colloquially to refer to South Korea.
winter english camp
The universal language
English has become the “lingua franca” of the world. Basically, it’s what we use to communicate all over the world, especially in the spheres of business, tourism, and education. Native speakers of two different languages will use English as an intermediary, a middle path to meet.
Humanity has had bridge languages for as long as we’ve had language—but we need a common tongue all the more as the world becomes more globalized.
What language that is though has changed throughout the centuries and is never because the language itself is somehow superior.
Many English teachers I know focus not on the inherent worth of English—as Robert Phillipson calls it, the intrinsic perspective.
Most teachers here wouldn’t hail English as some ordained language, drifted down from the heavens to unite us. In fact, most laugh at English. We’re aware of how strung-together and ridiculous our native tongue is, a patchwork of awkward vowels and leftover rules like “do-support”.
But the choice of English (and what kind of English) is not an arbitrary one, either. More on that in Part 2.
the tefl boom
“The British empire has given way to the Empire of English,” - Robert Phillipson
The rise of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) is meteoric. Pre-Covid, roughly 100,000 new English teaching positions would open every year across the world. Demand for English education rose up to 40% in countries like Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, and Mexico as of 2018.
There’s always rumors swirling around that the English Program in Korea (EPIK) will be defunded and dissolved. And yet, that never seems to happen.
Some instead believe that TEFL in Korea as an industry will only grow—but it will crackdown on the quality of teachers. These days there’s plenty of people who want to come to Korea, so Korean schools can afford to be picky.
For South Korea, this demand stems not from the legacy of the British empire directly, but from a long history of Western missionaries-turned-educators; a religious wave turned linguistic.
The first Westerners to arrive in the “Hermit Kingdom”—a country little known for anything but its isolationism—were Christian missionaries.
Board of Bible Translators, circa 1896. Source
playing the hero
Missionaries—that’s one of the things activists are calling “neo-colonialism”. Neo-colonialism is a form of imperialism; it’s the exploitation and subjugation of a people, but through political and economic means rather than directly militarily.
Neo-colonialism today is a broad label that can be applied to governments and individuals alike. It might be a government strangling another through conditional aid to ensure its dependency economically.
Or it might look like Westerners (white or not) paying thousands to go pose with uncomfortable Guatemalan children; a white parent who adopts a Black child but doesn’t do the work to respect their heritage; an American missionary who pretends to be a doctor and in doing so, kills children.
These are examples of people who want to swoop in and play the hero, instead of listening. They are activists only in ways that center and serve their ego. They promote Western-centric ideals without any consideration of the culture they’re stepping into.
This is a much bigger topic than this essay can handle. No White Saviors is an excellent resource for educating yourself on modern colonialism
When you have waves of people doing this every year, it starts to become its own ecosystem. It builds webs of soft power and influence. The infrastructure refines, solidifies. This narrative of white saviorism becomes reflected in policy and politics and the public conscious.
This is exploitation. And it becomes neo-colonialism.
Exploitation is key to neo-colonialism. So is Korea being exploited?
South Korea has had a long, difficult history of colonialism, especially within the last century.
The Japanese Occupation from 1910-1945 was (to put it lightly) exploitative, oppressive and painful for the Korean people. One example of this was the widespread erasure of the Korean language.
As Smith & Kim point out, the Japanese “actively sought to kill the Korean language” and given how incredibly recent this was, it’s understandable that some Koreans feel wary of foreign language’s influence on modern Korean (2).
We must be aware of how the nation has been exploited in the past—and yes, by America too. We must honor that history with education and consideration.
However, South Korea is now a sovereign state and is no longer a developing nation.
An example of Korea’s rise-also known as the Miracle on the Han (source).
The Korean government has been steadily trying to increase its soft power. You’ve probably heard of BTS or Parasite—that’s no accident. Korea is encouraging the exportation of K-Pop, K-Dramas, and arthouse films.
For decades, JET (Japanese Exchange and Teaching Programme) has been the go-to TEFL program for foreigners. These days, thanks to the Hallyu Wave, it’s becoming EPIK.
The Korean government funds the EPIK program because foreigners who come here add to Korea’s GDP, and then return home to become homegrown, life-long cultural ambassadors. Or they stay, which is also a net gain for an aging nation.
South Korea as a sovereign nation must be viewed with agency. To claim that South Korea benefits nothing from bringing English teachers over would be infantilizing—and also simply inaccurate.
But does what it gain from English education outweigh what it might lose?
English: the mindkiller, the little death?
We’ve talked about neo-colonialism, but what about linguistic imperialism? In my mind, they’re not the same thing, though deeply interconnected.
Bear with me for a second.
Linguistic imperialism is a theory popularized by Robert Phillipson’s groundbreaking 1992 book of the same name. He defines it as the "the dominance of English... asserted and maintained by the establishment and continuous reconstitution of structural and cultural inequalities between English and other languages" (47).
Phillipson argues that English isn’t a lingua franca but a lingua frankensteinia—essentially, a creator of linguicide (the destruction of a language).
An example of linguicide and linguistic imperialism would be the residential schools for First Nations and Native American children in North America. These English-only schools were a violent, heinous system that stripped Indigenous peoples of their languages, cultures, and communities. These were incredibly damaging and traumatizing for these people—and the last one closed in 1996.
A group of female students and a nun pose in a classroom at Cross Lake Indian Residential School in Cross Lake, Manitoba in February 1940. Photograph: Reuters (source).
English has absolutely been used to destroy Indigenous languages and Phillipson is right on that.
But while I can understand why people would be wary of Western teachers coming here to teach English...is that what’s happening here? Can we compare EPIK to residential schools?
See Part 2: What English, and Whose? for a look at the TEFL industry in Korea today.
Sources
Achebe, Chinua. “Achebe on Language.” Edited by Derek Barker, Chinua Achebe: Father of African Literature 1930-2013, 29 Oct. 2013, viennachinuaachebe.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/achebe-on-language/#:~:text=Or%20we%20may%20go%20on,out%20the%20good%20with%20it.
Achebe, Chinua. “English and the African Writer.” Transition, no. 18, 1965, pp. 27–30. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2934835. Accessed 26 Mar. 2021.
Alam, F. (2007). Imperial Entanglements and Literature in English. Dhaka: Writers.ink.
Basu, Bijoy Lal. “The Global Spread of English, ‘Linguistic Imperialism’, and the ‘Politics’ of English Language Teaching: A Reassessment of the Role of English in the World Today.” Spectrum, vol. 8, 9, July 2013, pp. 186–198.
Exambot. “Why the ESL Market Is Set to Boom in the next 10 Years.” CEFR Exam Bot, CEFR Language Exam Resource Centre, 15 Apr. 2018, cefrexambot.com/esl-market-due-boom-next-10-years-part-1/.
Hamburg, Sarah K. “Linguistic Imperialism and Volunteer English Teaching: A Neocolonial Practice?” University of Montana, 2017, scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1178&context=utpp.
James, Alyssa. “How to Teach English Abroad and Not Be a Neocolonialist.” Matador Network, 26 Nov. 2013, matadornetwork.com/abroad/how-to-teach-english-abroad-and-not-be-a-neocolonialist/.
Pennycook, A. (1994). The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. Essex: Pearson Education. Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://books.google.co.kr/books/about/Linguistic_Imperialism.html?id=4jVeGWtzQ1oC&redir_esc=y
Phillipson, Robert. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford [England: Oxford University Press, 1992. Print.
Phillipson, R. (2008), Lingua franca or lingua frankensteinia? English in European integration and globalisation1. World Englishes, 27: 250-267. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-971X.2008.00555.x
Smith, Michael. (2019). A Bourdieusian Interpretation of English Language Learning: The Case of Korea. 15. 3-22.
Smith, Michael. (2018). Centre-Periphery Agency Dynamics During Linguistic Imperialism: An Investigation of Korean Perspectives. 14. 3-30. 10.5281/zenodo.4437743.
Song, Sooho. Second Language Acquisition as a Mode-Switching Process: An Empirical Analysis of Korean Learners of English. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
The Halfie Project, director. Does White Privilege Exist in Korea? What Might It Look Like? #THPP. Performance by Cedric, and Becky, YouTube, YouTube, 3 Feb. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jP4RsQjk6k&feature=youtu.be.