Min Jin Lee's 650-Page 'American Hagwon' Probes Korea's Education Machine
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Nov 5
Min Jin Lee's 650-Page 'American Hagwon' Probes Korea's Education Machine
3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Nov 5
Summary
Min Jin Lee’s new 650-page novel follows the Koh family from 1992 across Seoul, Sydney and California, using their upheavals to examine how hagwons shape ambition, migration and family sacrifice.
Korea’s private academies drive the book’s central tension: parents pour in hefty sums because scarce university places and white-collar jobs make education feel like the only reliable path to security.
The story shifts when daughter Mido works at a Southern California hagwon called Fortress, turning the novel from the view of anxious parents into that of gatekeepers who profit from and question the system.
That pivot lets Lee test the hagwon model’s moral cost, as Fortress co-founder Lion—a former Princeton prodigy—comes to doubt an education culture that treats children as products for the market.
The review casts 'American Hagwon' as both an expansive diaspora saga in the vein of 'Pachinko' and a humane critique of what Korean families ask children to carry.