This study investigates the teachers’ perception about the possession of and rewarding
mechanism for cultural capital using interviews with secondary teachers in Seoul. Major findings
are like these. First, while perceiving the differences in overseas trip and stay between
Kangnam and Non-Kangnam or among classes, teachers don't know the differences in
high-brow cultural activities and readings. Furthermore, teachers feels the differences in
high-brow cultural activities and readings are resulted not from socio-economic background but
from individual characteristics, and schools can help to reduce the gap. Second, students’
high-brow cultural activities can be rewarded by some teachers and their friends. Especially,
these teachers have a lot of high-brow cultural experiences. But most of these rewards are
given through indirectly method and most teachers don’t give any reward. Third, most teachers
give rewards to good personality rather than high-brow cultural activities and readings which
have been used to main measures of cultural capital. Forth, this study shows the reasons of the
lack of rewards for high-brow cultural activities in Korea. These are the characteristics of
Korean teachers and school field, objective and minimalist approaches of teachers in teaching
and evaluation.
From theses findings, this study suggests the necessity of renewal of definition and measures
of cultural capital in Korea.