In and out of South Korea: examining inter-Asian mobilities in higher education

Abstract

In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, South Korea transformed itself from a major supplier of international students to Anglophone universities into a crucial hub of inter-Asian student mobility. In this introduction to the special issue, we situate South Korea in the global context of higher education with a focus on the non-elite and middle-class turn of study abroad and the concurrent marketization and active state involvement in regional globalization. By attending to these new dynamics of inter-Asian knowledge mobilities, we call for careful examination of student experiences—even when they do not fit alongside normative models of hierarchy, success, and cultural experience—and ask what constitutes successful study abroad and how scholars should discuss it.