Despite the growing importance of shadow education, literature on middle-class parental involvement has focused on the significance of family-school partnerships, and has neglected to examine the influence of parental involvement in terms of shadow education. Drawing on narratives of middle-class Korean mothers, this study explores their…

This study aims to understand the ways in which children's play is situated in and shaped by middle-class parenting practices in South Korea. Drawing on a set of data collected through semi-structured interviews with 16 parents having children aged 6-11 years, I observe that despite the widespread rhetoric of the significance of play, parents'…

Since the turn of the millennium it has become clear that the Asia-Pacific Region is, economically, the fastest growing continent in the world, and is likely to remain so for some time despite the setbacks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Asia-Pacific's share of the world's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) doubled from 15 per cent to 30 per cent between 1970…

This study is about contemporary Korean parents' social tensions and the cultural meanings around digital play. Through interviews with 13 middle-class Korean parents, they discussed their perspectives on digital play, including their views of popular culture, high-technology, and learning, which created inner conflicts and negotiations with their…

South Korean society in the late 1990s was confronted with socio-economic setbacks and discursive turbulence concerning the quality of education being provided. It was at such a particular historical juncture of South Korean society that I conducted ethnographic research on homeschooling families. Based on field data collected from four…

A recent study of Korean middle-class mothers' perceptions and parenting practices associated with children's participation in musical activities reported unique forms of musical parenting, which closely correspond with previous studies of concerted cultivation in Western middle-class families. Are these unique patterns exclusive to middle-class…

This study investigated how 2000 adolescents from middle-class families in six countries perceived and coped with parent-related and peer-related stress. Adolescents from Costa Rica, Korea, and Turkey perceived parent-related stress to be greater than peer-related stress, whereas stress levels in both relationship types were similar in the Czech…

"Jogi yuhak" (early study abroad) has become a prominent educational and linguistic investment strategy for middle-class Korean families to raise their children as global elites, allowing them to attain multilingual competence through transnational educational migration. Singapore, a newly emerging center of "jogi yuhak",…

This study investigates the changing dynamics between the Korean state and society in the field of educational policymaking. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the Korean developmental state implemented a series of drastic egalitarian educational policies to address serious educational crises that were mainly driven by Korea's affluent middle class.…

Amidst emerging trends in transnational migration via globalization, an increasing number of families have gone abroad to help their school-aged children and youth gain international education credentials and provide them an opportunity to acquire English as a global language as early as possible. This early study abroad before college (ESA) has…

A growing number of South Korean students are going to an English-speaking country as teenagers to escape from the grueling, test-oriented Korean schools in hopes of gaining entry into American universities. American colleges and universities are starting to see more of these "early study abroad students," as they are called in South…

In order to understand how mothers develop their parenting styles under rapidly changing cultural contexts, this study examines and compares Korean upper-middle-class mothers' parental goals and real parenting practices as they reported. For this purpose, face-to-face in-depth interviews with 20 Korean mothers were conducted. By analyzing the…

The last half century has seen a dramatic expansion in access to primary, secondary, and higher education in many nations around the world. Educational expansion is desirable for a country's economy, beneficial for educated individuals themselves, and is also a strategy for greater social harmony. But has greater access to education reduced or…

Middle-class moderates had begun to adopt the confrontational tactics of student protesters when the ruling party in South Korea made dramatic concessions to opposition demands for direct presidential elections. It indicates that politics is beginning to bow to societal conditions. (MLW)

Examines projections about the future of Korea, predicting a highly diversified society built upon industrialization and moving toward an information society. Discusses the growing middle class and its societal implications and considers the effects of the country's increasing democratization. (GEA)