Journal of Sociolinguistics 16/2, 2012: 255–276 Linguistic competency and citizenship: Contrasting portraits of multilingualism in the South Korean popular media 1 Adrienne Lo and Jenna Chi Kim University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign This paper examines how metapragmatic framings of multilingual competency and incompetency have become indexes of global and South Korean citizenship in the South Korean popular media. Drawing upon depictions of multilingualism in South Korean television deurama (‘drama’), comedy skits, and popular music, it examines how the locus of modernity and cosmopolitanism is moving away from the U.S.-oriented overseas Korean (gyopo) and towards the figure of the elite transnational returnee (saldaon saram). It argues that as the transnational circulation of people, media, and ideologies accelerates in the age of globalization, intra-ethnic discourses of linguistic mockery will also intensify. ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ()[Mandarin]                       . ,  ,                         . ,    ,        ,       . [Korean] KEYWORDS: Linguistic competency, citizenship, multilingualism, television, media, Korean American, South Korea INTRODUCTION In South Korea, globalization has brought about a transformation in the structure of citizenship. Beliefs in the racial/ethnic/linguistic homogeneity C  Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2012 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA