[MORNING CALM TALES] Half-dreaming through early-morning English in 1990s

Throughout the 1990s, the insatiable thirst of Koreans for mastering English was unmatched, eclipsed only by the frustration that accompanied their quest for fluency. It manifested in the vast sea of language institutions, academies and university programs, and in the staggering multimillion-won industry of English books, cassette tapes and glossy self-study materials. At the time, I was teaching at ELS, one of Seoul’s top English academies, a place where that national obsession played out day after day in packed classrooms. In the late summer of 1991, ELS management hatched an audacious plan — to introduce early morning classes. The rationale was simple: Certain language learners, particularly salarymen, would welcome the opportunity to study English before work. After 12 hours at the office, evenings were an exhausted blur, so why not shift the burden forward, into the still-dark dawn? Instead of dragging themselves through conversation drills at 9 p.m., students could arrive fresh — at least in theory — at 6:30 a.m. and leave at 8:10 a.m., just in time to catch the subway to

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