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Min Jin Lee’s ‘American Hagwon’ examines education and family
Min Jin Lee’s latest novel, *American Hagwon*, traces the Koh family over nearly thirty years, moving from Seoul to Sydney and California before returning to Seoul. John and Helen prioritize their three children’s education, paying for private after-school academies called hagwons. Their seemingly comfortable life in South Korea is upended by a personal betrayal and the financial crisis that hit Asia in the late 1990s. The novel is the third in Lee’s Diaspora Quartet and follows *Pachinko*.
The story shifts perspective when the youngest child, Mido, takes a job at a hagwon in Southern…
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