© 2014 SANGSOOK LEE-CHUNG AMBIVALENT GLOBALIZERS, VICARIOUS COSMOPOLITANS: SOUTH KOREAN “GEESE-DAD” ACADEMICS BY SANGSOOK LEE-CHUNG DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in East Asian Languages and Cultures in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Nancy Abelmann, Chair Professor Poshek Fu Assistant Professor Jungwon Kim Associate Professor Robert Tierney ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the shifting subjectivities of contemporary South Korean professors, the most prominent, symbolic group of South Korean intellectuals, focusing on the experiences of “geese-dad” professors who respond to the challenges of globalization in both private and public realms. I explore how these professors engage in the globalization process both through raising their children abroad and through their university roles as campus globalizers. Through ethnographic field research (2009-2010) on twenty eight Seoul-based geese-dad professors, I identify the transformative (cosmopolitan) qualities of their transnational experiences and argue that their experiences reflect the larger landscape in which South Koreans are creatively responding to the challenge of globalization and unwittingly training as cosmopolitans in the process. These geese-dad professors are ambivalent about raising their children abroad. In this vein, they often mask their privilege and motivations through the rhetoric of inevitability. They are at once proud of being competent fathers with a pioneering spirit, but also critical of themselves as self-wounded intellectuals whose practices are often seen as individualistic efforts at social reproduction -- efforts at odds with the social ideals of critical, respectable, and nationalist intellectuals. I demonstrate, however, that this seemingly apparent contradiction itself is also unstable. Their experiences in fact challenge longstanding South Korean binaries of private/public, individualistic/collectivistic, national/global -- binaries that are increasingly blurred today. Despite this ambivalence, these fathers in fact vicariously nurture their own desires for cosmopolitan and autonomous liberal subjectivity through their children’s study abroad experiences. Moreover, many of these professors undergo a paradigm shift in their thinking ii about the nation and the global as they negotiate the process of raising their children abroad. Further, these transformations also affect and are affected by the roles that they play as agents in the imperative to globalize their universities. They emerge as both cynical consumers of and critical players in globalization projects in South Korean higher education. In the midst, they also develop new ideas about the role of professors and their responsibility as intellectuals in South Korean society. Still, they are caught between the nostalgia for the yesteryear professor who enjoyed the aura of respectable, privileged intellectuals and the new ideals of autonomous professionals who are unrestrained by traditionally imagined collective identity. This study thus not only analyzes the veritable transformation of the ethos of the professoriate in South Korea’s aggressively globalizing society and higher education sector, but also offers a rich window on larger cultural and social struggles and paradigm shifts in South Korea. Further, my study offers a broader window on intellectuals’ struggles in a transforming East Asia and developing countries; even more broadly it offers a portrait of how South Koreans today carve out lives in the face of globalization. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation was made possible only through the generous support and guidance of many people and institutions. First of all, I am deeply grateful to all my informants, those professors who shared their time, thoughts, and such honest stories of their own experiences with me. Without their kindness and sincerity, this research would not have been possible. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I am most grateful to the four members of my doctoral dissertation committee. My overwhelming debt is to Professor Nancy Abelmann, who is my remarkable mentor, the chair of my committee, my dissertation advisor, and my long-time dear friend. Without her keen and insightful scholarly guidance, unfailing support, and warm encouragements, it would have been much harder for me to both complete my study and manage my life, especially as a study abroad student who returned to education in her later life with two children. She has been an inspiration and also a role model for junior scholars to emulate in terms of how a good scholar simultaneously could become a great teacher and mentor, with her commitment, enthusiasm, and humanity toward scholarship and people. I also cannot express enough gratitude to Professor Jungwon Kim, who is no longer at the University of Illinois but is now at Columbia University. She has greatly influenced me through her wonderful courses and scholarly insights and I am grateful for her scholarly guidance and constant support. I also deeply appreciate Professor Poshek Fu who has genuinely shown his interest in my project from my early research proposal to the defense with warm encouragements. He gave me invaluable comments to improve my dissertation with attentive reading. I am also very grateful for having Professor Robert Tierney in my committee. I appreciate his close reading of my dissertation and giving precious insights and comments from a different field. iv Through the course of my graduate studies, I count myself as extremely fortunate to have met and worked with these amazing, insightful, warm, and encouraging professors. Many institutions generously supported my study and dissertation research. I am very grateful that the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) Korean Studies Dissertation Workshop gave me a great opportunity to be more prepared for my field research and dissertation writing with productive feedback and comments by mentors and colleagues. During my dissertation research in South Korea, I had greatly benefited from the Institute of Cross- Culture Studies at the Seoul National University as a visiting researcher. I am especially indebted to Professor Hwang Ikjoo and Professor Park Myoungkyu at the SNU. My thanks also go to the Korea Foundation (Fellowship for Graduate Studies) and the Graduate College (Dissertation Completion Fellowship) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both of which helped me to focus on dissertation writing with the generous funding. I would also like to acknowledge the generous financial support and great opportunities that I have received during my graduate studies through the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Illinois, including numerous teaching assistantships, grants, and tuition and fee waivers. At the University of Illinois, I have benefited from the friendship and collegial support of many people. I am especially grateful to the members of both Professor Abelmann’s weekly advisee group meetings and Korea Workshop throughout my graduate career. Our advisee group meetings in particular have afforded not only intellectual stimulations through constructive comments but also emotional support for each other. I am indebted to all previous and current members, however among them I would like to particularly thank Heejin Kim, Yoonjeong Shim, Josie Sohn, John Cho, Sujung Kim, Dohye Kim, Agnes Sohn, Yoonjung Kang, Kyou Ho Lee, Alex Lee, Hee Jung Choi, Yu-Kyung Kang, Wei Li, Ga Young Chung, So Jung Kim, Jeongsu v Shin, Jonghyun Park, Chungwoong Park, Soo-Yeon Yoon, Audrey Chun, and Noelle Easterday for their insightful comments and warm friendship. Finally, I would like to thank my family. I thank my mother Kim Sungwook for her lifelong support and love. Special thanks are due to Sangryong Lee, my husband, dearest friend, and my love. I cannot thank him enough for his support, encouragement, understanding, patience, and love. And I am boundlessly grateful to my loving sons, Hyunbin and Eubin, who are my source of joy and happiness. Without your love and support, how could I keep studying and finish this work? I am truly grateful. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………………..................1 CHAPTER TWO CAUGHT IN BETWEEN: THE LEGACY OF SOUTH KOREAN INTELLECTUALS AND THE EMERGENCE OF “GEESE-DAD” PROFESSORS …………………..............................28 CHAPTER THREE “INEVITABLE” EARLY STUDY ABROAD ………………………………………………….70 CHAPTER FOUR PERSONALIZED GLOBALIZATION, VICARIOUS COSMOPOLITANS ………………...108 CHAPTER FIVE CAMPUS GLOBALIZERS AT HOME ……………………………………………………….158 CHAPTER SIX NOSTALGIC INTELLECTUALS, AUTONOMOUS PROFESSIONALS ………..................196 LIST OF REFERENCES ………………………………………………………………………211 vii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION The sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals. […] [It] enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two with society (Mills 1959, 5-6). Illustration I: On a cold day at the beginning of March, 2010, I am in the midst of my fieldwork in Seoul, meeting up with old friends of mine who graduated from the same department in the same university — for South Koreans this sort of consociate is marked with its own name, taehak kwa tongch’ang. It was a regular