Korea is probably one of the few countries, if not the only one, that observes a holiday in honor of the national language's alphabet. Hangulnal, which falls on October 9, is the Korean Alphabet Day. Each year, the government hosts events to celebrate one of the most prized possessions of the country, Hangul – the writing system of the national language. Created by King Sejong and his Royal Academy Scholars in the 15th century, Hangul is recognized as one of ‘the world's most scientific writing systems ever created by man’ (Sohn, 2001: 13). To outsiders, such pride may appear somewhat overblown, but Koreans do take great pride in Hangul.

The newly renovated Seoul Express Bus Terminal, which reopened at the end of 2019, has caused an uproar among the South Korean public. The fact that its ticket booth sign is written only in English – ‘TICKETS’ – was pointed out by one Twitter user (see Figure 1), and the message went viral among internet users. It took only a week or so for the issue to make headlines in Yonhap News – one of the major news agencies in South Korea (hereafter ‘Korea’) that provides news articles and pictures for newspapers, TV networks, and online media. The news article criticised that not only the ticket booth sign but also the sign of a nearby drug store is written exclusively in English – ‘pharmacy’.

The current paper examines how English has evolved to become valued language capital in South Korea (henceforth ‘Korea’). Since the late 20th century, Korea has experienced the phenomenon of ‘English fever’, which refers to the frenetic and at times over-zealous pursuit of English-language proficiency across Korean society (J. S. Y. Park, 2009). Researchers have examined ‘English fever’ through various prisms, including education (Park & Abelmann, 2004; J. K. Park, 2009), neoliberalism (Piller & Cho, 2013; Cho, 2015; Lee, 2016), and local socio-politics (Shim & Park, 2008). Rarely has the phenomenon been approached from a historical point of view. Considering the fact that a historical examination of language can provide critical insights into the local processes through which distinctive ideologies of language have been shaped and popularized (Cho, 2017), this paper traces the historical evolution of English in Korean society by focusing on three key periods, i.e. Japanese colonization (1910–1945); the post-independence period and modernization (1945–1980); and military dictatorship and globalization (1980-present). Drawing on the theoretical framework of global centre-periphery divisions embedded in Orientalism (Said, 1979), the analysis focuses specifically on the influence of the United States on the rise of English in Korea. In doing so, I show that ‘English fever’ is not a recent phenomenon but has its roots in historicity through which the seeds for the ongoing phenomenon of ‘English fever’ were planted in Korean society.

Most recent research on teacher identity in the TESOL field has focused on how non-native English-speaking teachers (non-NESTs) view and position themselves vis-à-vis native English-speaking teachers (NESTs), and which factors influence their construction of their professional identities. However, the perceived native speaker/non-native speaker (NS–NNS) dichotomy greatly oversimplifies a complicated phenomenon by representing it as solely linguistic and disregarding sociocultural and political issues. Beyond the question of nativeness versus non-nativeness, race, ethnicity, nationality, and cultural identity have played key roles in how teachers position themselves within English language teaching (ELT). These other factors may be critical in how others judge the capability of a teacher of English and authenticity of his/her English.

The purpose of this study is to identify the perceptions of 80 Korean university students majoring in English about sociocultural elements embedded in the Korean language and KVE. A secondary objective is to enhance students’ awareness of the connection between culture and language and some of the unique sociocultural characteristics of these two languages. To this end, all participants took part in a 3-part classroom activity in which they examined pairs of KVE and Korean sentences, translated both KVE and Korean sentences, and took part in small focus group discussions. Specifically, the study has two research questions:

1. 1) What sociocultural aspects of KVE and Korean did the participants identify?

2. 2) What reasons did participants identify for these sociocultural aspects?

Korean parents are strongly committed to investing time, effort, and money into improving their children's English competence in order to maximize their human capital in the era of globalization, a phenomenon often referred to as ‘English fever’ (Park, 2009). However, because of the Korean socio-economic structure, there is considerable disparity among families in the financial investment they can afford. Therefore, in the educational privileges and especially English learning support that Korean children receive is an inequity often overlooked by the majority of Koreans. One response to this issue is the newly emerging movement among Korean mothers called ‘maternal English education’ (eommapyo yeongeo), which has become a widely used term throughout the country.

The English language is a global lingua franca that has itself been experiencing rapid change. This change can be attributed mainly to easy access to the internet worldwide and the popular use of social media. Frequent and common online communication amongst multilingual speakers mediated in English has naturally generated a diverse semiotic repertoire. As a result, new words are constantly and rapidly evolving on online platforms across language boundaries where there is little linguistic authority in place. The forms of many new words in English are becoming more hybridised and complex than ever before and the origins of these words are often difficult to trace because of their simultaneous and multitrajectory pathways.