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Spatial trajectories of North Korean L2 English learners: transformed attitudes towards English across spaces

ABSTRACT An increasing number of North Koreans have migrated to other countries in the past two decades, with South Korea receiving a significant number of these escapees each year. Research examining young North Koreans’ adjustment to South Korean schools has reported that these students struggle with mandatory English classes and the prevalent use of English in the school system, often positioning themselves as peripheral in their new contexts. Additionally, existing research on North Korean students has mostly depicted this population as a group, often in comparison to South Korean students, rather than treating them as individual learners. The present study targeting four North Korean defectors traces how the participants value and scale English language practices across different spaces and how each individual navigates the English language as an adaptation tool in their new space. The results show that individual learners’ attitudes towards learning English are markedly different, which are complicated by their perceptions of their prior English learning experience in their home country and of the instrumentality of English in neoliberal contexts.