English as a Site of Evangelical Contact: A Critical Ethnography of Missionary English Teaching between South and North Koreans

ABSTRACT

Drawing from a larger ethnography of North Korean young adults learning English in Christian educational programs in South Korea, this article explores the power relations between evangelicals and minority people and the political economy of missionary English teaching. This article follows Christian educational programs that provided various forms of resources—including English teaching—to North Korean young adults to examine how access to resources was regulated in relation to learner identity. Building on the sociolinguistic framework of political economy of language and emerging research on religion and second language learning, this study illustrates the integration of Christianity and English, and the intersection of religion, nationalism, and neoliberalism. The findings elucidate how English works as a secular resource in religious spaces, thus serving as a site of religious contact between people of divergent goals. Issues of professional ethics are also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical sociolinguistics
• evangelical Christianity
• missionary English teaching
• North Korean migrants
• religion and language
• South Korea

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Huamei Han for her guidance throughout this study. I would also like to thank Inchull Jang and the three anonymous reviewers for their reviews on earlier drafts of this manuscript.