ABSTRACT
This paper explores the dynamic interconnection between educational institutions located in Seoul and the politicization of young people in the context of South Korean society’s so-called obsession with education. How are young people addressed and made politically aware? I will discuss two ethnographic vignettes that make the politicization of young Seoulites visible and tangible: A symposium organized by university students, which presents a bottom-up approach, and the so-called alternative school Haja-Center, which presents a top-down approach. I argue that both approaches foreground young people’s embodied citizenship, that is, their rights and entitlements as citizens of the South Korean nation-state.
