American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee
American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee What happens when education stops being about learning and becomes the family’s entire survival strategy? American Hagwon follows the Koh family across Korea, Australia, and Southern California as financial collapse, migration, ambition, and sacrifice reshape everything they thought success was supposed to look like. At the center are John and Helen Koh and their children, each forced to negotiate the gap between personal desire and family obligation. The strongest part of the novel is its scale. Min Jin Lee is interested not only in one family, but in the systems surrounding them: schools, money, immigration, class, racism, work, religion, and the enormous pressure placed on children to succeed. The hagwon setting is especially effective because it turns education into something larger than grades. It becomes a question of identity, sacrifice, fear, and what parents believe they owe their children. The characters are compelling because nobody is r...