The movement to promote an ethnic language in American schools: The Korean community in the New York–New Jersey area

Abstract

This paper examines a New York Korean immigrants’ movement to promote the Korean language in American schools. This movement includes the efforts of Korean community leaders to include the Korean language in the SAT II tests and to promote it to public schools as a foreign language in the New York–New Jersey area. This movement involves lobbying the College Board, school administrators and school board members, and collecting donations from Korean immigrants and the Korean government to cover expenses for the College Board’s creation of the Korean-language test and public schools’ adoption of the Korean language. Korean-language leaders have depended upon many different organizations and groups, such as Korean parents, Korean churches, Korean-language teachers, the Korean Cultural Center, Samsung, and Korean government agencies for the movement. This paper is significant because no previous study has shown a similar example of an immigrant group’s movement to promote its language in American public schools. It also contributes to transnational studies by documenting the emigrant state’s financial and technical support of its emigrants’ effort to promote the language and culture in a settlement country.