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Samuel Collins
Dongseo University
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ABSTRACT From the beginning of Korean modernity in the 1876 opening of the ports to the present, English has been part of the oftentimes hostile incursion of the outside onto the peaceful homogeneity of Korean life. At the same time, as Presidents Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung have consistently reiterated, English is the key to Korean survival, recovery and prosperity. This is the double-edged sword of �globalization,� at once the promise of increased wealth through exports and the threat of �McDonaldization,� the purported loss of self and, importantly, indigenous language through the homogenizing force of Western business and culture. This paper examines the contradictory attitudes of Korean people and Korean media toward English, a language simultaneously global (the lingua franca of international commerce) and imperial (inextricably linked to the hegemony of the United States). From interviews and analyses of mass media, I suggest that the (not always coherent) Korean solution to the problem of English is to appropriate English, i.e., to exert, or attempt to exert, some control over the alien by rendering it simultaneously familiar and controllable. PRESENTER
BIOGRAPHY
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