Always the other: Foreign teachers of English in Korea, and their experiences as speakers of KSL

This research examines the narratives of six foreign English teachers learning and speaking Korean in Korea, the ways in which learning contributed to the teachers' self-formation, and helped them to negotiate their position in Korean society. Participants' stories were gathered via conversational interviews and internet correspondence. Data gathered serves to highlight the discourses within Korean society to which foreign teachers are subject: (1) foreign teachers generally cannot speak Korean; (2) foreign teachers learning and speaking Korean are therefore special and respectable; (3) White foreign teachers are a relatively privileged group in Korea because of their ethnicity; (4) though a foreign teacher may learn Korean, they will still be an Other in Korea. Recognizing these discourses, participants variously partly rejected and partly embraced their pre-given position in Korean society in an effort to find the most comfortable space for themselves. Learning Korean served a beneficial function in this process, as it bestowed upon them the values of open-mindedness and sophistication, helping them to distance themselves from negative perceptions of foreign teachers as a group held by the Korean majority. This, combined with the privileges afforded to ethnically White immigrants, allowed participants to find an agreeable position for themselves in Korean society.