Becoming Precarious Subjects

Abstract

This chapter considers the consequences of the subjectivities of English explored in the previous chapters, exploring how they contribute to the condition of extreme precarity of contemporary Korean society. Through Korea’s neoliberal transformation, work and life has grown significantly insecure. In particular, unemployment of the younger generation has reached a historical high, and fear of failure leads this generation to continuously invest in accumulation of marketable skills and to forgo life itself so that they may survive in the fierce competition in the job market. Through an analysis of how criteria for good English in the white-collar job market have been constantly raised and renewed over the decades since the 1990s, this chapter argues that subjectivities of English promoted in neoliberalism may groom workers to be precarious subjects by aligning their hopes and expectations about life and labor with the insecure and uncertain conditions of work under the neoliberal economy.