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ABSTRACT
This paper explores the dynamic interconnection between educational institutions located in Seoul and the politicization of young people in the context of South Korean society’s so-called obsession with education. How are young people addressed and made politically aware? I will discuss two ethnographic vignettes that make the politicization of young Seoulites visible and tangible: A symposium organized by university students, which presents a bottom-up approach, and the so-called alternative school Haja-Center, which presents a top-down approach. I argue that both approaches foreground young people’s embodied citizenship, that is, their rights and entitlements as citizens of the South Korean nation-state.
Acknowledgment
The data this article is based on were collected during fieldwork funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Carolin Landgraf is a PhD student, scientific assistant and lecturer at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology and The Ethnographic Collection, Georg-August-Universität Goettingen, Germany. Landgraf conducted the fieldwork to her dissertation in South Korea where she resided between 2012 and 2013 and which was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service. The material in this article is based on this fieldwork. Her email is [email protected].
Notes
1 These names are pseudonyms to protect their identity.
2 Ahn Cheol-soo was a third candidate without party affiliation, who gave up his candidacy November the 23rd not to draw potentials voters from Moon Jae-in. Park Geun-hye won the election, however, after her involvement in a corruption scandal, she was discharged and Moon Jae-in took over as president in 2017.