Education and social mobility of soviet Korean youth in central Asia

Today’s Soviet Korean youth in Central Asia are descendants of peninsular Koreans deported by Stalin from the Far East Russia in 1937. Using an original data from interviews conducted in Kyrgyzstan, this study offers a historiographic analysis (Foucault) of their education and social mobility. The dataset is compared with those from South Korean students in local universities. It is argued that the emerging ‘Kyrgyzstan only for Kyrgyzs’ sort of jus sanguinis nationalism and policy of marginalization of the non-Kyrgyzs ethnic minorities (or the so-called ‘nationalities’ in Russian colonial lexicon) have forced the Soviet Korean youth to devalue their traditional belief that assigns a strong correlation between education and upward social mobility. Amidst the paradox of a globalizing yet anti-multicultural post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, Soviet Korean youth seem to have no alternatives but to embrace the existing educational system with signs of glaring corruption and social struggle. Copyright © 2013 World Congress of Comparative Education Societies.