Eleana
Kim’s discussion of the framing of adoptee language skills illuminates
but also challenges some important critiques brought up by Uma Narayan
in her discussion of Westernization. Essentially, Narayan says that in
Third World contexts, accusations of Westernization are used to
challenge certain kinds of perspectives as being less authentic or
relevant. She also says that while this is understandable given the
legacy of colonization and other exploitation by the West, it is often
used to silence criticism of harmful social mores.
Kim
discusses the prevalence of stories about taxi driver reactions to
adoptees who do not speak Korean, and what these stories and the
reactions described in them indicate about notions of what it means to
be Korean. While they indicate differing perceptions of the role of
ethnocentrism in these notions, the adoptees are still often felt to be
inauthentically Korean due to their Western cultural heritage. However,
conceptions of being really Korean by eating foods and wearing clothes
that are seen as distinctively Korean challenge this notion. It seems
from this analysis that an outward adherence to patterns of behavior
that are seen as Korean changes the adoptees’ cultural status,
regardless of how they identify themselves.
The
status of adoptees who natively speak English is even more interesting
in light of this. The Korean government, in framing globalization as
enhancing the state rather than threatening it, frames adoptees as
assets of the state in its globalization efforts. Adoptees who speak
English are thus seen as providing positive examples of Korea and its
efforts. Those adoptees who might be framed as inauthentically Korean
in some circumstances are instead considered to be Korean by virtue of
their birth parentage in this situation. This enables the government to
point to their Westernization as a good and valuable thing for the
state.
The
ways in which Westernization works in the Korean context are similar in
some ways to Third World contexts, but there are many differences as
well. How might the differences between Western treatment of Third
World countries and Korea contribute to these differences? What kind of
relevance, if any, does the perception among older adoptees that Korea
is a Third World country have to this discussion? How does a preference
for white English teachers in Korea over those of other races bring
forth problematic aspects of these notions?
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