“Oh, What's Wrong With Your Korean?”

Reviewed by: Korean American Evangelicals: New Models for Civic Life Peter Y. Paik, Associate Professor Korean American Evangelicals: New Models for Civic Life. By Elaine Howard Ecklund, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, 211p. Elaine Howard Ecklund's study of Korean American evangelicals represents a significant contribution to the scholarship on ethnicity and religion in the United States. Based on interviews and surveys carried out at two churches in a small city on the east coast, Ecklund's findings about the religious commitments of second-generation Korean Americans are certain to take many readers by surprise. Evangelical Protestantism has achieved astonishing success in South Korea over the past century, while Korean Americans have become recognized in the United States as one of the most successful immigrant groups. The church has been a center of social life and a provider of vital services for the first generation of Korean immigrants, but what has it meant for the second generation, who have grown up in the United States and have had to contend with expectations from their parents that conflict with the values of mainstream American society? How does the practice of religion change as Korean Americans become more integrated into American ways? The answers that Ecklund gives are quite fascinating. She makes the vital point, easily forgotten in the age of identity politics, that religion can be a means of transcending one's ethnic identity and one's cultural roots. Moreover, newcomers to a diverse society can act in ways to build bridges between groups that did not exist before. Indeed, the spiritual tendencies she sees becoming dominant among second-generation Korean Americans create a sense of cohesion among them, even as they distance themselves from their elders and become more open to influences from American society. But Ecklund emphasizes that religion for Korean Americans leads them to become critical of mainstream society as well, so that they create instead a new, third space between the culture of their parents and the dominant culture of white America. The two churches that are the focus of Ecklund's study are given the names "Grace" and "Manna." The congregation of Grace is made up of second-generation Korean Americans, while Manna is a multiethnic church [End Page 149] with a significant number of Korean American members. Grace grew out of the English language ministry of a first-generation church that invited a second-generation Korean American seminary student to organize a separate service for young people. Manna, by contrast, is a multiethnic church founded by the merging of a Chinese American congregation and a Korean American congregation. The membership of Manna includes a wide range of Asian Americans - Cambodians, Indians, Vietnamese, and Filipino in addition to Koreans and Chinese, but a quarter of the church is made up of whites, blacks, and Latinos. The membership of both churches is composed primarily of young professionals and post-secondary students. While Grace serves a predominantly Korean American congregation, Manna has made the deliberate choice to become a multiethnic congregation. Ecklund notes that this choice came about not from demographic changes nor from a shift in denominational priorities. Rather, the pastors leading the merged congregations decided that building a multiethnic church was a "calling from God" (p. 41). Ecklund argues that multiethnic congregations like Manna enable their members to "negotiate" multiple and malleable identities" and "connect an appreciation of ethnic diversity to religious morality" (p. 143). The members of Manna Church uphold diversity and inclusion as key values of Christianity, leading them to criticize and oppose discrimination and exclusion in American society at large. The goal of many second-generation Korean American evangelicals is neither to assimilate into the dominant white culture, nor to retreat into their own heritage. Rather, what their faith enables them to do is to maintain a critical distance from the hegemonic mainstream while overcoming the limitations of a narrow ethnic perspective. Such a possibility often goes overlooked in standard academic accounts of ethnic or racial identity formation, and Ecklund provides a much-needed corrective to the narrow understanding of identity politics that still prevails in many scholarly circles. Ecklund's study opens up a dynamic perspective on Korean American life. Religion brings...

PurposeLimited research exists on the perceptions of police within specific ethnic minority groups. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the experiences of Korean and Korean American residents in the Metro Atlanta area regarding their perceptions of cooperation with the police, particularly in relation to hate crimes, along with their perceptions of police legitimacy and other relevant factors. By focusing on this specific population, the study aims to shed light on their unique perspectives and contribute to a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics between ethnic minorities and law enforcement.Design/methodology/approachThe authors’ sample comprised 128 Korean residents who were asked about their demographics, victimization experiences, self-rated English proficiency and police legitimacy. Multiple linear regression analyses were employed to investigate the impact of police legitimacy, victimization experiences and English-speaking skills on the participants' level of cooperation with the police.FindingsPolice legitimacy and self-rated levels of English proficiency emerged as the most significant factors in predicting the level of cooperation among residents with the police. Furthermore, individuals who have experienced crime victimization in the past were more willing to cooperate with the police compared to those who have not. Additionally, men showed a higher tendency to cooperate with the police compared to women participants.Originality/valueThe findings of this study suggest important implications for the policies and strategies aimed at enhancing the relationship between the Korean American community and the police. These implications include the need for improved language support for non-English speaking community members and the importance of building trust and fostering mutual understanding to cultivate positive police-community relations. By implementing measures based on these findings, it is recommended to promote a more inclusive and effective approach to policing within the Korean American population.

Recordings of read speech in Korean and English were made by native South Koreans and Korean Americans of varying generational status ("second-generation" American-born or "1.5-generation" foreign-born) and analyzed for differences in usage of VOT and fundamental frequency to contrast production of Korean lenis and aspirated stops and affricates. The speech was then played back to listeners of Korean heritage and judged metalinguistically regarding proficiency in Korean and other attributes relevant to the speech and demographics of immigrant speakers. Results show that second-generation Korean speakers, especially females, are not showing the collapse of VOT contrast found in the other two groups, one part of the "tonogenetic" sound change nearing completion in Seoul. Female second-generation speakers are also not using f0 to differentiate between the stops to the extent that first- and 1.5- generation speakers are. These second-generation speakers were easily identifiable as having been born in the United States, but the correlation with their generational identification and use of VOT and f0 to contrast lenis and aspirated stops and affricates is mild. It is concluded that because second-generation Korean Americans vary in their production of Korean, there is no clear sociophonetic marker for a Korean American "variety" of the language. The most proficient second-generation speakers closely resemble native speakers and do demonstrate the tonogenetic sound change, but the least proficient second-generation speakers diverge from this norm in a variety of ways. Second-generation Korean American speakers are easily identifiable as not speaking in the same way as native South Korean speakers, although this does not hinge on their use of the f0 contrast. The analysis makes a stronger case for applying new models of language acquisition, speech production, and identity formation to heritage language speakers that differ from those used for bilingual speakers.

Subject of study. Foreign language proficiency was evaluated using the optical recording of eye movements. Representation of unconscious cognitive processes in oculographic data during reading and correlation of eye movement parameters with the complexity of the text perceived by the reader were analyzed. Aim of study. The study was aimed at determining the correlation between the eye movement features of individuals reading texts in native and foreign languages, considering the peculiarities of the language and level of language proficiency. Method. The study comprised two stages. The total sample size was 63 Russian-speaking students, aged from 19 to 27 years, for whom English was a foreign language. The subjects’ level of proficiency in the Russian and English languages was estimated using the C-test method. The experimental task consisted of reading the English texts in the slides and answering the comprehension questions after a nine-point calibration procedure. Eye movements were recorded binocularly using an SMI-High Speed Tracker 1250 setup at a sampling rate of 500 Hz. The first stage was aimed at investigating eye movement features of native Russian speakers who are highly proficient in the English language while reading texts in both languages. In the second stage, the eye movement features of individuals reading texts in a foreign language at different levels of proficiency were investigated. Main results. The eye movement parameters of the individuals varied, depending on whether they were reading texts in their native language (Russian) or the foreign language (English), even at high proficiency in the foreign language. The eye movement patterns changed when they were reading texts in the foreign language (English) at different levels of proficiency. Practical significance. Based on the obtained data, the text complexity for the test subject can be evaluated. The text complexity evaluation using eye movement features enables algorithms to be designed for normalizing different texts in terms of complexity. The results of the study can be used when designing automated systems for evaluating foreign language proficiency level.

Complexity, along with accuracy and fluency, is one of the dimensions that are primarily used to measure one's language proficiency level (Larsen-Freeman, 2006). As heritage language learners tend to speak the language in home and community environments only, they have relatively limited exposure to a more advanced, elaborate language. This study aims to investigate how Korean-American school-aged children use the Korean grammatical items related to syntactic complexity based on their writing samples to draw its implications on language education for Korean heritage learners. Using a revised form of the frequency analysis method (Ellis, 1994), 407 writing samples of heritage language learners at different proficiency levels in the United States and 40 samples of native Korean speakers in South Korea were analyzed. The results showed that the use of related grammatical items of heritage language learners dramatically changed over time, showing the dynamics of language development. However, compared to native Korean speakers, the range of grammatical items which frequently appeared in Korean-American heritage learners writing samples was distinctly limited to those mostly used in oral communication. Implications for Korean education as a heritage language are discussed.

Much research has been conducted on learning English as an additional language both in the United States and around the world. However, there have been fewer studies focusing on heritage language learners (HLLs) who have already acquired English as their native tongue and are learning their heritage language as an L2, or second language (Joo, 2009). The rapidly growing number of language minority individuals who have turned their attention towards learning their heritage languages have led both secondary schools and universities to restructure their foreign language classes in order to better address the needs of HLLs (Jensen & Llosa, 2007). Who exactly are HLLs, and what defines them as such? What makes HLLs different from L2 learners? This paper will take a sociolinguistic and socio-psychological perspective on HLLs, with a particular focus on Korean Americans in the United States. How do attitude, motivation, and identity play a role in heritage language acquisition among Korean American learners? Do these socio-psychological factors affect one another in the learning process? What are the pedagogical implications for teachers and students?

Scholarly and popular commentators lament the deterioration of civil society as a result of American individualism, a decline in some part based on eroding religious participation. In this context, it is important to ask how second-generation immigrants use religious resources to understand, participate in, and potentially change American religion. Scholars stress that religion was vital for the civic integration of earlier European immigrants. However, studies of religion among our nation's newest immigrants largely focus on how religion serves the immigrant community -- for example by creating job networks and helping retain ethnic identity in the second generation. In this book Ecklund widens the inquiry to look at how Korean Americans use religion to negotiate civic responsibility, as well as to create racial and ethnic identity. She compares the views and activities of second generation Korean Americans in two different congregational settings, one ethnically Korean and the other multi-ethnic. Surprisingly, she finds that the Korean churches de-emphasize ethnicity. They look like other evangelical congregations and are concerned about evangelizing in the context of providing social services. Multiethnic churches, in contrast, use evangelical Christianity to legitimate a political and social justice consciousness that values ethnic diversity and and individualized understanding of faith in the context of a conservative Christianity. Korean Americans in both kinds of churches are deeply concerned about helping those in their local community, including non-Koreans and non-Christians. In multiethnic churches, however, Korean Americans also develop an awareness of local politics and a concern with social justice for other ethnic and racial minorities. Ecklund's work is based on ethnographic data from two congregations in one impoverished, primarily non-white city on the east coast, which provided the opportunity to compare how members of each practiced community service in the same urban context. She also conducted more than 100 in-depth interviews with Korean American members of these and seven other churches around the country, and draws extensively on the secondary literature on immigrant religion, American civic life, and Korean American religion. Her book is a unique contribution to the literature on religion, race, and ethnicity and on immigration and civic life.

This article examines the question of (return) migration among highly-skilled, 1.5- and second-generation Korean Americans and the particular social, material and cultural capital Korean Americans may acquire in Korea. Undoubtedly, Korean Americans have occupied privileged positions in Korea especially compared to other ethnic return migrants such as Korean Chinese and Zainichi Koreans. However, my research attempts to trouble a monolithic or homogeneous understanding of Korean American privilege. Using ethnographic research and by paying attention to the multifaceted and diverse experiences of Korean American returnees in terms of age, gender, level of education, class, occupation, religion and locality, I complicate Korean American ethnicity and assumptions of a “privileged” status among Korean American returnees. Such monolithic assumptions about the Korean American experience are often implicitly based on the masculine subject as the primary agent of migration and diaspora. However, attention to gender and intersectionality of Korean American returnees exposes subtle forms of pressure and aggression often obscured within narratives of Korean Americans as an elite and fundamentally masculine group. In this way, this article proffers a far more nuanced understanding of the contradictory and “double-edged” experience of Korean Americans upon return migration.

This preliminary study provides an interpretive reading of focus group interviews of four Korean American children in the Phoenix metropolitan area. It examines how these Korean American children are negotiating their ethnic identity as Korean Americans while learning Korean as a heritage language. It shows that maintaining heritage language is important to Korean American children in terms of helping them have a positive ethnic identity. This study provides a viewpoint on learning heritage language and ethnic identity from the perspectives of young Korean Americans.

Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker centers on Henry Park, a Korean American who works as a spy for a private intelligence firm, and offers an in-depth exploration of the effects of immigration, cultural identity, and assimilation on the individual. Henry is tasked with infiltrating the political campaign of John Kwang, a rising Korean American politician who represents hope for the Korean American community. As Henry navigates his dual role, the novel interrogates the pressures of the “model minority” stereotype, strained personal relationships, and cultural belonging. Through his internal conflict, Native Speaker critically examines the immigrant experience, underscoring how social expectations and assimilation impact personal identity and the complexities of living across cultural boundaries. This article examines the aspirations of three central characters in Native Speaker—Korean immigrant Mr. Park, his son Henry Park, and the politician John Kwang. By analyzing their respective dreams, this study reveals that these Korean American ambitions, while diverse in their personal goals, are unified by their entanglement with the Asian American model minority stereotype. Despite generational differences, Mr. Park, Henry Park, and John Kwang represent distinct facets of this stereotype: the self-made immigrant, the self-effacing and dutiful subordinate, and the overachieving public figure, respectively. These characters’ ambitions not only reflect their individual struggles but also underscore the broader socio-cultural pressures that shape and constrain the Korean American experience, highlighting the hidden costs associated with their pursuit of success and the model minority myth.

This study aims to investigate the use of Korean intensifiers by L2 learners based on data from a learner corpus. This study focuses on five intensifiers: maywu, cincca, nemwu, toykey, and acwu, which are found to be frequent intensifiers in Korean native speakers’ data. Based on native speakers’ data, it is known that toykey and cincca among those intensifiers are generally used in spoken language while, in general, maywu is rarely used in spoken language. Comparing the Korean Learner Corpus by the National Institute of Korean Language with the Sejong Corpus, this study examines whether L2 learners change intensifiers according to the modes of production (i.e., spoken and written language) and their proficiency levels. Unlike native speakers’ data from the Sejong Corpus, L2 learners overall tend to use far more intensifiers in writing than in speaking. Compared with higher-proficiency learners, lower-proficiency learners, in general, tend to overuse intensifiers. In using toykey and maywu, it is also found that their differences in speaking and in writing get lager as proficiency level becomes higher. These findings indicate that higher-proficiency learners perform in a more target-like way in using an intensifier, and thus suggest that the pattern of native speakers in intensifier use is acquirable.

Many Korean Americans suffer from high levels of cancer incidence and have low cancer screening rates. A significant number of Korean Americans lack adequate information about cancer screening tests. However, little is known about their health behaviors. This article examines exposure to mass media and health information–seeking behaviors for Korean Americans, and their associations with demographic characteristics influencing variations in exposure to the different health information and trust in health information sources. The authors gathered data for this study using a cross-sectional, community-based survey conducted in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area during 2006 and 2007. It was administered to 254 Korean Americans who were 40 years of age or older. This study is part of the first health-related program of research to study exposure to mass media, health and cancer information sources, and seeking preferences and experiences of Korean Americans. Results indicated that Korean ethnic media sources and Internet are important sources used regularly. Age, years of education completed, and English proficiency levels for Korean Americans significantly predicted the likelihood of their Internet use. Low-income Korean Americans with less education were more likely to seek health information in Korean ethnic magazines and newspapers, whereas Korean Americans with higher education and English proficiency were more likely to seek information online. The most trusted source of health information among respondents was from a doctor or other health care professional. Future research should be conducted to determine whether physicians are actually used as a primary source for health information.

Improving rates of colorectal cancer (CRC) screening can reduce CRC-related mortality, which is estimated to cause about 50,630 deaths in the U.S. by the end of 2018. There is a noted increasing prevalence of CRC among Korean Americans. Although CRC screening has been widely implemented, Korean Americans over the age of 50 have the lowest rates of proper CRC screening, compared to those of other Asian ethnicities. Barriers, such as language and culture, may be making participation in screening procedures difficult for those with immigrant backgrounds. Thus, this study aimed to determine whether proper CRC education can enhance awareness, knowledge, and behavior in screening among Korean Americans living in the Los Angeles Koreatown area. This study was conducted among 100 self-identified Korean Americans between the ages of 45-75, who voluntarily participated in this study through local community outreach from January to June 2018. Educational brochures were provided for those in the control group, while those in the intervention group attended an additional short educational seminar. All participants were asked to complete a questionnaire after, and data were collected on site. We found that intervention had a significant effect on awareness regarding colorectal polyps (OR (odds ratio): 22.47; 95% CI: 6.42-78.62; p-value <0.001) and fecal occult blood tests (FOBTs)/stool blood test (OR, 245.37; 95% CI: 34.55-1742.75; p-value <0.001). Willingness for CRC screening in following 6 months significantly increased (OR: 87.17; 95% CI: 19.01-399.63; p-value <0.001). Knowledge on options for CRC screening (OR: 126.63; 95% CI: 23.61-679.07; p-value <0.001) and stool blood tests (OR: 157.17; 95% CI: 18.02-1370.41; p-value <0.001) were significantly enhanced. In additional univariate analysis, we found that Korean Americans with higher level of education, birthplace in US or better general health showed better CRC awareness or knowledge. There is a significant gap in our knowledge and understanding of the contributing factors that may be leading to low CRC screening rates in Korean Americans. This study suggests that well-tailored educational seminars can overcome certain barriers to screening and improve CRC knowledge and awareness, which is critical to achieving greater screening compliance. Our findings provide important references for designing effective strategies to increasing CRC screening rates among Korean Americans.

African Americans and Korean Americans have addressed Black–Korean encounters and responded to each other predominantly in their favorite genres: in films and rap music for African Americans and in novels and poems for Korean Americans. A case in point is the intertextuality between Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing and Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker. A comparative study of the two demonstrates that they are seminal texts of African American–Korean American dialogue and discourse for mutual understanding and harmonious relationships between the two races in the USA. This paper reads the African American film and the Korean American fiction as dialogic responses to the well-publicized strife between Korean American merchants and their African American customers in the late 1980s and early 1990s and as windows into a larger question of African American–Korean American relations and racialization in US culture. This study ultimately argues that the dialogue between Spike Lee's film and Chang-rae Lee's novel moves towards a possibility of cross-racial identification and interethnic coalition building.

&lt;p&gt;In the last few decades, a rise in Korean speakers’ borrowing from English has led to a rich pool of contemporary Anglo-Korean vocabulary, also known as English loanwords. Despite the English roots of these borrowed words, their usage in a Korean context is often non-uniform and non-traditional; this process of borrowing, reshaping, and dispersing borrowed vocabulary provides insights on the dynamics of Korean society and its relationship to global English-speaking communities.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In order to investigate the variations on Korean speakers’ use of Anglo-Korean words and their potential correlations with various factors, I conducted interviews with 24 native Korean speakers in Seoul, Korea in the summer of 2018. Subjects were diverse in their age, gender, and occupation. I analyzed the r speakers with a preference of Sino-Korean words, speakers with a preference of Anglo-Korean words, and speakers with a speech mixed of Korean, Korean English, and American English.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I identified two variables as the most significant causes of diversity of speech: 1) age and 2) exposure to English. I established that 80% of my subjects over the age of 60 fell into the Sino-Korean-dominant category, and the best indicator of a subject being a translingual speaker was an increased exposure to English. In order to expand on evidence from my interviews, I historically contextualize Korean language in society alongside current ideologies related to language in Korea. In so doing, I explore the relationship between these variables and the language varieties of individual speakers. I argue that because a speaker’s age and exposure to English shapes the language variety they use and the language ideology in Korea touches individual speakers in different ways, native speakers in today’s Korea use several language varieties. These findings challenge the notion of a linguistically and ethnically homogeneous Korea and shed light on the current status of Korean English and American English in Korea.&lt;/p&gt;