Background and Conference Focus

In recent years South Korean families have been sending their pre-college aged children abroad for education at remarkable rates, making for a veritable education exodus of the middle class. These so-called “early study abroad students” (chogi yuhaksaeng), many of whom come alone and others with one of their parents (most often their mothers), are a prominent demographic phenomena in Chicagoland, Urbana-Champaign and the University of Illinois. For example, some high schools in the northern suburbs of Chicago (with large concentrations of Korean immigrants generally) have a large number of these students in their ESL programs. In Urbana-Champaign, many academic families host or are parents to these students, making them the largest international population in private schools in the area. At the University of Illinois among the over 1000 Korean American undergraduates, over 200 of them are such students, having come alone or with a single parent in middle or high school. Further, university officers nationwide are baffled by what has been called the “drop and run” pattern of Korean visiting scholar and graduate student men who drop their families in the U.S. and run back (to jobs) in South Korea. Ubiquitous are so-called “geese families” (kirogi kajok) in which the father stays behind in South Korea to support his wife and children abroad. Not surprisingly, there are currently at least 6 in-progress dissertations at the University of Illinois alone on these children and families in the community.

This local reality is one replicated in every major U.S. city and university town. Early study abroad is a rapidly escalating market in South Korea: a $550 million industry in the first quarter of 2004, doubling the 2002 figures. Remarkably, a recent national survey revealed that “if given the opportunity, one out of four parents would like to emigrate for their children’s education.” Not surprisingly then, 80% of elementary students in South Korea are enrolled in some form of after-school private English education.

This “early study abroad” prompts a number of important questions:

Why do the middle class citizens of an economically prosperous and democratic society desire and decide to support the education exodus of their children at such a remarkable rate?
What can this teach us about new forms of and desires for global citizenship?
What are the personal, familial, educational, and societal contours and costs of this sort of education exodus?
What challenge does this exodus pose to the young people who are living this trend?
How can American educators and service professionals best meet the needs of South Korea’s early study abroad children?

Education emigration is not new; families have sought better opportunities for their children for a very long time. Nor is the early study abroad of the very rich new (e.g., Hong Kong’s so-called parachute kids). Nor are split-household transnational families in which women or men migrate to support children back home new. What is remarkable in the South Korean case, however, is the widespread extent of middle class participation in this transnational strategy. While the phenomenon of "brain drain" has been studied with regard to the migration of the elite, when middle class families participate in this education emigration and family reorganization, the personal, marital, and familial costs are significant: middle and high school-aged children live in boarding houses, with relatives, or even alone; parents often become functionally and in some cases legally divorced; and families are taxed financially.

What drives this exodus? We suggest that this phenomenon reflects a complex confluence of a multitude of factors, namely: the mobility desires of a Korean middle class jockeying for global citizenship and the advantages it confers; the waning faith in the economic and social future of citizens whose lives remain “domestic”; the rejection of South Korea’s excellent but highly competitive schooling; and finally the global citizenship project of parents (foremost of the mothers who accompany their children abroad). Relevant to this exodus are: South Korea’s aggressive globalization, a shared project of the state and citizenry, beginning in the 1990s with the earliest democratic presidencies (democratic elections began in 1988); the faltering of the middle classes in the aftermath of the so-called IMF (or Asian Debt) Crisis in which South Korea became the largest IMF bail-out in history; and the aggressive neoliberalization of the South Korean economy in response to the IMF Crisis. All of this said, however, observers remain somewhat perplexed by the extent, costs, and risks of this phenomenon.

This conference will take up the both the macro-level context and consequences and the U.S. realities of this growing “immigrant” population. The conference will both ask large questions about South Korea’s particular globalization embrace, cosmopolitan desires, and education system; and about the changing face and social reality of Korean America with the arrival of these new immigrants. We argue that these are the critical contexts for burgeoning research on the lives and predicaments of the many split households in the United States, and of the many children here alone.

In addition to more conventional academic sessions, the conference will also host an Educational Practice and Policy session targeted to local and Chicago educators and service professionals whose institutions have been impacted by the considerable needs of this large population of South Korean children and split households.

Conference Organizing Committee

Nancy Abelmann (Anthropology, Asian American Studies, East Asian Languages & Cultures)
Soo Ah Kwon (Asian American Studies, Human and Community Development)
Adrienne Lo (Educational Psychology)
Sumie Okazaki (Psychology)