[New Books] American Hagwon, Volumes 1 and 2

[Financial News] Min Jin Lee, whose Pachinko portrayed the lives of ethnic Koreans in Japan, explores Koreans’ passion for education in the new novel American Hagwon. It tells the story of a Korean family’s struggle to survive and grow as they move between Korea, Australia and the United States in pursuit of a better future.
In 1992, John and Helen, a married couple who returned from Australia to Seoul’s Daechi-dong neighborhood with their three children, set out to migrate again after experiencing events including the 1997 IMF Crisis. After passing through Sydney and settling in California, the parents endure grueling work in a world where their education and work experience count for little. The children seek their own futures, with private academies at the center of their lives.
The private academy appears both as a battleground for competition to enter university and as a communal space where immigrants share their anxieties and care for children. Following the ways the parents’ devotion and the children’s ambitions diverge, the novel reexamines the meaning of success and asks about the value of learning that sustains life beyond grades. Translated by Jeong So-young, the two volumes were published simultaneously.
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