Support or Defense? An Analysis of South Korean Educational Policies for North Korean Adolescent Refugees

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 1:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: International and Immigrant Perspectives on Educational Opportunity (Table 37)

Abstract

While a wide range of studies has shown North Korean refugee students facing long-standing marginalization in South Korea, little is known about how government policies have constructed those students’ educational problems, social position, and prospects for society. In this study, I aim to pinpoint and dismantle education policy discourses and provide insights into governmental assumptions and beliefs regarding North Korean adolescent refugees in South Korea. By employing a critical discourse analysis of educational assistance policies for North Korean adolescent refugees, teaching guidelines, mentoring manuals, and teaching case examples, I illustrate how policy discourses have the potential to perpetuate the pathologization of refugee students as subjects with limited academic possibilities through which dividing practices reinforce in-group boundaries against perceived out-group populations.

Author

• Daeyoung Goh, University of British Columbia