This essay examines a shift in the newspaper discourse on South Korean pre-college study abroad (chogi yuhak)—the education exodus of pre-college students—in order to consider how South Koreans are managing the considerable social pressure to globalize their children. While in the early years of Pre-College Study Abroad (PSA) in the 1990s, there was a robust media discourse about the promise of alternative human development through PSA, as the phenomena grew dramatically into the 2000s, the discourse increasingly asserts that PSA success relies on technical preparation at home, the student’s pre-existing character, and parental assets. PSA has thus been “domesticated” in that it is understood not as a discrete education field abroad, but instead an extension of South Korea’s highly stratified and competitive education market. This shift reflects escalating social and economic anxieties, and as such, the discourse constitutes a conversation about inequality in contemporary South Korea.

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In this article, we analyze the U.S. media discourse on Chinese international undergraduate students, the largest international student group since 2009. The discourse describes a market exchange, but reveals a struggle between: on the one hand, "a fair exchange"-between excellent Chinese students and worldclass American liberal education; and, on the other hand, a "faltering exchange"-between ethically suspect and inassimilable Chinese students and a mercenary and possibly mediocre American university. We argue that this media reporting builds on long-standing seemingly contradictory images of an alluring China market and a threatening "Yellow Peril." We suggest that this media contest indexes the challenges of campus internationalization; just as the media questions real value on both sides of the exchange, so too is the campus encounter fragile and fraught.

In this article, we analyse the memoir/manuals of three 'goose' families. These are South Koreans whose children participate in pre-college study abroad (PSA). One parent (typically the mother) accompanies the child while the other (usually the father) remains at home to support the venture. Although many South Koreans aspire to study abroad, both the mothers and children of goose families have attracted wide criticism -the mothers for being narrowly instrumental and too family centred, worried only about social reproduction and mobility and the children for forsaking their nation, foregoing their filial duties and, perhaps, failing abroad. These memoir/manuals defend the goose mother and protect the PSA child against such charges. As memoirs, they depict remarkable people worthy of documentation. As manuals, they offer (at least some) guidance for mothers and families contemplating this particular family strategy. The memoir/manuals open a window to the challenges and anxieties of PSA in South Korea today.