Seoul teacher recalls salarymen who woke before dawn to study English

An English teacher at a Seoul academy has recalled how Korean office workers in 1991 woke before 5 a.m. daily to attend pre-dawn language classes — even after 12-hour workdays — in a memoir published Friday by The Korea Times.

The account offers a firsthand glimpse into the English-learning fever that swept South Korea in the 1990s — the same cultural force that drove generations of Koreans to emigrate, including the tens of thousands who built Korean-American communities across Orange County.

ELS, described by The Korea Times as one of Seoul's premier English academies, launched the early-morning program in late summer 1991 to serve working professionals who had no energy left for evening study. At a staff meeting, academic director David Rogers unveiled the plan. "We need volunteers," Rogers said. "Classes begin at 6:30 a.m."

Jeffrey Miller, an ELS instructor, raised his hand. According to The Korea Times, he woke each day at 5 a.m. and rode the subway roughly 20 minutes from Gangnam Station to the academy. Classes ran from 6:30 to 8:10 a.m. — timed so students could finish and still make it to their desks.

The scheduling logic reflected a hard reality: Korean salarymen routinely logged 12-hour days, arriving home too exhausted to absorb an evening lesson. ELS theorized that early morning, when minds were fresh, would produce better results. The Korea Times account suggests they were right. Students arrived through still-dark streets every day without exception, displaying the kind of focus and discipline that Miller said left a lasting impression.

Morning-shift teachers earned a reward of their own: they finished by 2 p.m. instead of grinding through late-night sessions. A Wendy's that had recently opened near the academy provided breakfast sandwiches for the faculty. Miller reciprocated on paydays, bringing pastries from Paris Croissant for his students, according to The Korea Times.

The 1991 vignette sits inside a decade when English proficiency became a gatekeeping credential at South Korean universities and corporations alike. Private language academies multiplied to meet the demand, and test scores could make or break a career. For many students of that era, the 5 a.m. alarm was not an exception — it was simply the price of ambition.

The Korea Times published Miller's memoir Friday in its Global Community section as part of its ongoing coverage of expatriates who taught in South Korea during the country's economic and cultural rise.