Internationalisation of higher education in South Korea: Reality, rhetoric, and disparity in academic culture and identities

Abstract

The central theme of this paper is contradictions: the ways in which official agendas of internationalisation in higher education and academic identity are disturbed by the principles of inclusion and exclusion in the local context of university academic culture. The paper takes the case of South Korea to show how the national policies for the internationalisation of higher education are translated into local cultural practice inside academe. The paper examines specifically (i) what are the ‘positions’ of foreign and female academics in the specific national university context; (ii) how are they constructed by official policies of internationalisation, and (iii) how are they experienced by individuals to form new reflexive identities? Drawing from biographic notes, the paper offers an illustrative analysis of the positioned and positional identities of foreign and female academics and the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion drawn around their identities. The paper is an exploratory one, aimed at future research agendas for a larger theoretical study on internationally mobile academics in different social contexts.