Why are Koreans so obsessed with education? Min Jin Lee to explore it in 'American Hagwon'

Min Jin Lee (HaeRan)

Min Jin Lee, the Korean American novelist whose sweeping epic “Pachinko” became a global phenomenon, will publish her long-awaited new novel this September, nearly a decade after her last work of long fiction.

According to publishers, “American Hagwon” will be released in the US and UK on Sept. 29. It is her third novel and will join her earlier debut, “Free Food for Millionaires” (2007) and “Pachinko” as part of what critics have begun calling her “Korean diaspora trilogy.”

“American Hagwon” follows John and Helen Koh, once comfortably middle-class in South Korea, whose lives are undone by a devastating betrayal and the 1997 Asian financial crisis. In an effort to recover and secure a future for their three children, the family leaves Seoul, first for Sydney, and eventually settles in Southern California.

The novel follows the family across continents, exploring how economic upheaval, cultural displacement and educational ambition reshape both private lives and family bonds, according to the US publisher, Hachette Book Group.

The title hinges on the Korean word “hagwon,” which refers to private learning centers where people can study almost any subject, from math and English to music and test preparation. Lee has said she deliberately kept the Korean term in the English title.

In a video shared on her social media, Lee said that she began writing “American Hagwon” nearly a decade ago because she wanted to understand why education is so important to Koreans everywhere.

Lee added, “After I wrote it, I realized that I wanted to know for myself how to live a wise life in a world that was changing far too fast for me.”

The publisher said Lee has “crafted an unforgettable, panoramic novel where the smallest of gestures can have enormous repercussions, where the bonds of family and of memory twist and fray but rarely break, and where willful self-sacrifice — for the benefit of loved ones and even strangers — is a kind of prayer.”