Entering into global academia: U.S. academic hegemony and former Korean elite athletes’ faculty appointment in higher education

Promoting global citizenship and multiculturalism in higher education: the Korea International Cooperation Agency’s global volunteering in the Asia Pacific region (Promoviendo el multiculturalismo y la ciudadanía global en la educación superior: el voluntariado global de la Agencia de Cooperación Internacional de Corea en la región de Asia Pacífico)

“…As mentioned above, the common elements of social and cultural development illustrate a continuum of social change through which individuals engage with their publics and take on specific social agent roles and social responsibilities to contribute to the societies to which they belong, thus helping promote a more just and democratic society (English et al, 2022). In a broader global context, members of global civil society promote multiculturalism and respect diversity, equity and inclusion as core values of educational institutions, social agencies and cultural organizations (McCoy et al, 2015; Nam & Jiang, 2021; Nam et al, 2021; Winkle-Wagner & McCoy, 2016). Nevertheless, the current study found that Korean educational policymakers and leaders perceived their college student volunteers as displaying a strong sentiment of patriotic national identity and cultural competence, which may have produced micro-aggressions.…”

“…From these viewpoints, the case of Korea from the 1960s through the 1990s is a prominent example of a country in which the government heavily invested in education and focused solely on developing a global market economy. The government endeavoured to transcend the nation’s global image as one of the world’s most poverty-stricken nations in the aftermath of colonization under Japanese rule (1909–1945) and the Korean War (1950–1953; Nam et al, 2021).…”

“…Yet, the Korean government has considerably invested in educational development by adopting a neoliberal approach from the US. They have focused on fostering human capital and knowledge economy within the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), as well as in the broader area of business through professional and vocational training programmes in higher education (Cho & Palmer, 2013; Nam et al, 2021). From a cultural standpoint, the Korean primary and secondary education systems are not directly patterned on that of the decentralized curriculum in the US.…”

“…Further, students in secondary education demonstrated extraordinary performances in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, placing sixth in maths, seventh in science and eighth in reading among OECD states, based upon the most recent results, from 2018 (OECD, 2021). Meanwhile, numerous students perceive graduation with high test scores and a college admission from a top-tier university as success, expecting to gain white-collar employment in business industry and administration (Nam et al, 2021; Park, 2011).…”

“…The Cold War of the mid-1940s through early 1990s saw global politics significantly influenced by the United States and the Soviet Union, and by their political-ideological and political-economic principles, such as liberal democracy and capitalist market economy, on the one hand, and socialism and communism, on the other. One such arena of influence in the same period was the growing global concern about post-colonialism and neoliberalism, with leading Western capitalist and social welfare nations developing bilateral or multilateral hegemonic structures and impacting numerous nations politically, economically, culturally and educationally (Baylis et al, 2014; Nam et al, 2021). Despite these power dynamics, the advanced nations launched global volunteering programmes to promote social and cultural development for global citizens, seeing this as a key part of their political, social and educative role in contemporary global society.…”