One chilly morning in October in 2014, I attended a tour of an international school in Beijing with Hyemin – a South Korean (hereafter Korean) diplomat’s wife and mother of a fifteen-year-old girl. As with many other Korean women in Beijing, Hyemin had moved to Beijing with her husband, who had been given an overseas posting, and their daughter. Although she had had a job in Korea, in Beijing she became a housewife and took care of the daily life of her family, while her husband played the role of breadwinner. Their daughter was enrolled in Year 9 at a British school in Beijing, and 70% of the tuition fees were covered by the father’s employer as part of the subsidies granted to expatriate employees. In an earlier conversation, Hyemin told me that her family would only reside in China for three years before returning to their home country, as her husband’s appointment was for a fixed term. Hyemin added that, at the end of the three years, she would return to continue her career as a Korean language teacher at a public middle school. However, some time after our first meeting, Hyemin confessed that she had totally changed her mind about this, for reasons that will be explored later.

The school tour was arranged by me, a PhD candidate keen to learn about every aspect of the education of Korean migrant children in China.