This study explores the ways in which sociocultural perspectives on English language education can contribute to teacher education the era of artificial intelligence (AI). Three key words that represent the relationship between sociocultural perspectives and English teacher education—context, interaction, and social practice—can each be linked to the key concepts of criticality, multimodality, and action research. Teachers of English need to be ready for the forthcoming changes in the AI era, for which they must be equipped with a critical ability to focus on issues and needs in the Korean context. This ability can be applied in teaching students various types of interactions, especially those involving the use of computers, and will create opportunities for teachers to conduct research of their own and cultivate a professional teacher identity. This study concludes by recommending substantial changes in the current pre-service and in-service English teacher education programs in accordance with these key concepts.

South Korea is a regional Protestant superpower with a successful mission history. It has the largest Christian congregation in the world: Yoido Full Gospel Church built by Paul Yonggi Cho. As of 2009, it dispatched more than 20,000 missionaries abroad. However since the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games and the breakdown of the Cold War in 1991, evangelical Protestantism in the country has been steadily declining. Moreover, its social credence is continuously lowering as a result of controversy such as hereditary transmission of pastors, clergy’s sex scandals, financial dishonesty, and privatization of the church. Because of this, Protestant Christianity in South Korea is in some real sense viewed as controversial. The purpose of this paper is to examine the sociocultural change in South Korea in the midst of neoliberal globalization in order to build the socalled ‘missional church,’ a collection of missional believers acting in concert together in fulfillment of the missio dei. The‘missional church’ is faith communities willing and ready to be Christ’s people in their own situation and place. The paper consists of the following sections. The introduction focuses on the emergence of the ‘missional church’ along side with the recent crisis of Korean Protestant Christianity. The first section describes some new cultural trends propelled by globalization. The second section explores sociocultural changes within present South Korea from the sociological perspective of mission: (1) from collectivism to individualism, (2) from ‘regulation society’ via ‘task society’ to ‘fatigue society.’ The third section investigates the outer situation of the ‘missional church’: (1) class disparity, (2) change in demography and family, (3) emergence of ‘N (net) generation.’ The conclusion provides some suggestions including ‘progressive Pentecostalism’ (in Donald Miller’s words) for building the ‘missional church’ within contemporary Korean society under the turbulence and division in terms of ideology, region, class and generation.