The following is a post I did on my blog while reading an article from Korea Journal:

Brief Intro:

The modern Korean educational system discarded tradition in favor of worship of the West, (Korea Journal academic paper whose title is noted below)

I sure as heck can’t tell if this guy actually put any thought into what Korea’s “traditional” educational system was like, but a ton of what he says about the despotic nature of Americanized education fits with the Confucian-oriented system Korea used for hundreds of years.

Throughout this piece of crap article, the guy implies that either some mythical “traditional Korean system” or the communist system established in the North was the “natural” way to go, but he never gets an inkling about how those systems actually worked.

The biggest bonehead moment came when he wrote:

Of course, criticism of the influence exerted by the American Educational system on Korean pedagogy was not totally lacking. The Joseon Gyoyuk Yeonguhoe (Korean Research Society of Education) under the U.S. military government emphasized the features and tradition of Korean education. Fed up with the introduction of completely American educational theories [introduced by Korean profs who studied in America he described just before this], members of the society, led by scholars who studied in Germany, introduced German and European pedagogy.

That’s almost laugh out loud funny…

The guy tries to cover this by saying what was needed was a critical evaluation process in which these foreign systems were adapted to Korean norms instead of being "forced" on Korea in total by pro-American “lackeys”.

(He even uses the term lackeys)

and concludes:

it is no exaggeration to say that Korea has become a country in which American educational policy has been transplanted intact.

I think there are a lot of expat teachers who would disagree on that point……

A close 2nd bonehead moment comes late in the piece:

[color="red"]Regrettably[/COLOR], however, progressive pedagogy has all but withered to death since the collapse of the Eastern European socialist bloc.

Regrettably a failed system failed to be established and fail in South Korea….

The downfall of Eastern Europe, a region that was once thought to be an alternative to Korean capitalism, deprived that region of power to act as an ideal for Korean education.

No [strikethrough]explitive deleted[/strinkethrough] poo?….

Anyway, here are notes on my reading this article from the Korea Journal:

Reflections on the Formation of a Dependent Educational System and Ideology in Korea

by a prof at Pusan National U. who graduated from Korea University - the Harvard of Korea…

Abstract

Korean educational history following liberation has been marked by dependence on the Unites States.

1st sentence. Key word = dependence. Right now, you should have an educated hunch where this will go…

Around the time of liberation, pro-Japanese groups were allowed to keep their positions.

2nd sentence. Ding! Ding! Ding! The path ahead is clear and vibrantly marked…

Place your bets using all your money - if you see the “At least Kim Il Sung got rid of his bastard pro-Japanese lackeys” — you know you are not reading a conservative academic writing a paper.

“Inquiry learning theory,” which originated in the United States, was also blindly introduced.

Key word = “blindly”

You might could say I am being rather nitpicky considering the kind of language I use, but I’m just a podunk country boy here in Georgia blogging…….This is an “academic” paper…

Some pushed for critical education, or “concientization,” and popular education, followed by group research activities, while resisting American influence.

Key phrase = “popular education” Insert some Marxist term for the working masses.
[indent]However, due to the downfall of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe, this research trend began to decline.[indent]

That’s interesting. This is just the abstract, so I’m curious about how this will work out, because we just jumped a whole lot of time if we are moving ahead to the collapse of Eastern Europe. I’m not sure what he would mean by research trend, because under Park Chung Hee, education was censored heavily - I think for most of the time - and research into communism was limited and the influence underground…

Along with globalization, Korean education has been shaped by neoliberalist (DING DING DING) educational policy, which aggressively pursues marketization.

OK. This is the end of the abstract. We know absolutely this is going to be almost a no-holds-barred, full leftist critique for how bad the US has been for Korea —- in this look through the social institution of education. I say “almost” no-holds-barred, because it will remain academic-type language, as opposed to Hanchongryon-type propaganda, but they are sitting right next to each other.

The Article

When Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, it faced two different roads: one was to establish a democratic and unified nation-state, ridding itself of the fetters of colonialism that it was previously unable to break, and the other to remain bound by the new fetters of influence from another foreign power.

Hmmm…

I can think of a few other alternatives.

I might cast a look around at the long list of other former colonies from the 1950s-1990s, and I might conclude a likely path barring “another foreign power” applying “fetters” would be ———- descent into strongman chaos - or - highly dysfunctional oligarchy. South Korea actually had a series of strongmen. And the debate is whether the US influence helped or hindered the spread of democracy.

With one question in there being, “Do you really want to argue the US should have had MORE control of the Korean government? — setting up and removing factions until a real democratic regime arose?”

People of the Bruce Cummings variety, of which I give a safe bet this author is one, would say that democracy was flowering rapidly in the first weeks after Japan fell, but the US coming in killed it.

I find it hard to believe, however, that a nation that had never known democracy before was well on its way to establishing one, and that they would have succeeded - when SO MANY other former colonies failed - if the US had just stayed out…

Another alternative, one tied to real history, would be that the Soviets, who had been looking or a warm water port and coastal area in Manchuria and northern Korea for some time, would have set up Kim Il Sung as leader of the whole of Korea.

The most urgent task the country faced at the time was eradicating the vestiges of Japanese colonialism. Another important task was eliminating the remains of feudalism that had been used to reinforce colonial rule.

i.e. following Russia and Kim Il Sung’s play book of setting up “people’s committees” dominated by communists who would empower the masses by taking money, land, and influence away from the Koreans who had money, land, and influence left over from the collapse of the Japanese Empire.

It just happened to be a nice coincidence — wink-wink-nod-nod —- that taking away all this wealth, and getting rid of potential rivals of influence, left Kim Il Sung the master of North Korea on a level South Korea’s strongman Syngman Rhee could only dream of…..

Neat how that works, no?

As is widely recognized, education has been greatly influenced not only by political and economical factors, but by the intervention of foreign forces.

This is absolutely true. But, if you start to look at it different ways, it might not sound so bad…

Meaning — before the late-1800s, Korean society had kept its centuries-old traditions in education - namely - study of the Confucian classics and China-centered or copied institutions. This had served the Kingdom of Korea well for hundreds of years, but in the mid to late-1800s, when the Western industrial powers made their way into Asia, Korea was shocked to learn that China was actually a very weak nation, and part of that weakness was the lack of an educational system favoring industry, economics, and trade.

So, what could Korea do? They did like many poor nations in the world at that time - they allowed nations like the US to establish universities - like Yonsei.

The question is - do you consider setting up such institutions a colonial effort? Or, do you consider it a natural condition given Korea’s lack of expertise in modern education? Or both?

Of course, a question that should be screaming for an answer here is: did North Korea not also adapt a “dependant” educational system - a Marxist one along Soviet-lines? Or, is the alternative this guy has in mind returning to traditional Korean education focused on the local hakwons and the National Confucian Academy in Seoul?

(Which, of course, Korean society had taken that system directly from Chinese society…….Maybe the guy has some native-grown Korean educational system unconnected to “fetters” of other societies I don’t know about ….)

He actually takes a step in the direction laid out above a little later on:

Well-selected core members of the teaching profession evaded looking squarely at the limitations of cold-war ideologies, declined to acknowledge and respect the mode of living inherent to the nation and national traditions, and deliberately attempted to weaken national consciousness.

The highlighted part is the one that annoys me the most, because I can see it blindly accepted by others (Korean or not) because it is such good ear candy…

However, as I noted above, Confucianism was a borrowed thought system that became a cornerstone of Korean civilization. Buddhism too was an import - in both China then Korea.

I really hate it when post-colonialists (in Korea and beyond for sure) — try to create a picture of the “normal” world as one in which — cultures were not influenced by other cultures — where thought systems were not routinely examined and bits and pieces and whole chunks adapted to “native” conditions.

He later argues for a cherry picking of outside ways and turning them into Korean ones —- but, who is going to be the judge of when someone is being a “lackey” and someone is making something brought from abroad Korean?

In a later section of the paper, the author tries to argue briefly that Chinese-centered institutions were not a centuries-long phenomenon:

In fact, South Korea has suffered from the idea of “serving the great” (sadae) And inferiority complex from the latter years of the Joseon dynasty.

“Latter years of the Chosun Dynasty”, you say? horseshit… Incorporation of Chinese government structure, and the start of implanting the Confucian heart of that system - and encompassing the whole of the society and its norms and taboos, began in earliest recorded Korean history, well back in the Three Kingdoms period.

He goes on elsewhere to muck up even more what a “native” Korean educational system might have looked like when he writes:

Japanese colonial habits, such as the emphasis on maintaining order, regarding obedience as a virtue, and demanding uniform collective actions did not disappear with ease.

Uh…

The bedrock of Korean society, especially in its Confucian-centered education - did emphasize obedience as a virtue, an orderly society where the grass (citizens) were swayed by the wind (government power and its leaders).

And if you focus on what Confucianism had around it, you explode this next part:

This neoliberal view of education sees social constituents as a means for competition rather than as human beings and subordinates them to the interests of the economy and industry, as revealed in the terms “human resources” and “human capital.” The educational policy of developing countries, in line with the human capital theory, can be said to have served to deepen the subordination of the masses by expanding the profits of local subordinate corporations and multinational businesses rather than contributing to removing socioeconomic inequalities and promoting improved living conditions for the masses.

Even if we agreed that capitalism ends up subordinating the masses to corporations and solidifies socioeconomic inequalities and poor conditions for them, how is this different from either traditional Korean society or the great reformed society up in North Korea?

Confucianism taught a disdain for commerce. It was an agricultural system. It was also NOT full of Socioeconmic “equality”. It was a pretty restrictive society with clear social divisions - a strong stratification - and lack of social mobility - where the Yangban (Confucian-educated elite) ruled supreme in an Asiatic version of feudalism.

So, if you know much about Confucianism, what it taught, and how it was used to justify Yangban rule, you could have made the mistake of thinking this next quote is talking about that system - rather than the neo-liberal system the US forced on South Korea:

Such an educational theory came to define man’s autonomy
and critical capabilities as unnecessary for social development, and fostered the idea that the cultivation of students’ autonomy must be reserved for the sake of social development. This was eventually utilized as a form of education to produce submissive subjects, and served a totalitarian educational system.

Confucianism or capitalism? You decide…

He even goes on to claim that the use of slogans like “loyalty” and “filial piety” was based on Japanese-colonial era control of the masses. That might be true. But, how the heck could he fail to extend the discussion to how those are exactly a couple of the highly defined terms at the heart of Confucianism???

So, if Confucianism, the traditional Korean way, was wrong, what else did you have?

The plight of the North Korean masses under communism - with its dire poverty, intense fear of the state, and dysfunctional economy should be known well-enough to show this guy is talking out his ass about what “alternatives” were readily available for Korea in the US had not “taken over” Korea.

Next, “Cold War mentality” mentioned somewhere above is a very common phrase in South Korean society. A guest speaker at one of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch lectures noted that — although in the rest of the world, the end of the Cold War - via collapse of the communist system in nations around the globe - came away viewing communism as a failed system and giving more validation to the model of Western industrial capitalism — South Korean society skipped right over internalizing the lessons the end of the Cold War offered.

Still locked into their own cold war with North Korea, and desiring for unification via a path of not pissing Pyongyang off, some influential core in South Korean society formulated that such things as criticizing the North or criticizing its systems and whatnot was — a continuation of a “cold war mentality” that prevented detente and eventual unification. In short, she said that the phrase was used to kill consideration why North Korea’s system failed, how it failed, how much it failed, and how it needed to change in order to grow.

Next:

Upon liberation in 1945, Korea, overwhelmed by enormous external powers, had no alternative but to accept a path of subjugation to another foreign power.

And

In the liberated Korea ushered in after hard anti-colonial struggles, a majority of the people and educators attempted to eliminate the vestiges of colonialism and establish an educational system conducive to the growth of a democratic nation-state, but were powerless in the face of the U.S. military government.

Again, the author is mind-blocking the reality of internal conflicts among groups struggling for power. And as noted above, some scholars like Bruce Cummings have claimed that those conflicts were absent for the most part and Korean society was in a frenzy of “grassroots level” organization that was quickly setting up a unified democracy.

I talked about this with a Korean prof in the US who lived in that time period, and he said it was true that local factories, schools, city halls, and so on were “spontaneously” taken over and used by Koreans as soon as the Japanese lost WWII.

I said I could picture a local factor or townhall being taken over by locals without preparation —- but I found it too hard to believe these many, many local areas could spontaneously connected into a functioning regional and then national movement —– without prior preparation - even of the ideological variety — especially if you were going to take out the “pro-Japanese collaborators” who were in charge of running things - and thus had the know-how.

Regional government operations don’t just “rise up” without significant effort in coordination and so on.

The prof agreed with me that the “grassroots” “spontaneous” organization idea didn’t hold up.

The three-year U.S. military government in the wake of liberation can be described as the epitome of the nation’s 60-year contemporary history to follow, because after that point, in some sense, Korea underwent a process of repeating or reproducing the historical experiences and structure formed during that three-year period.

That is pretty fascinating.

If you stop to think for a second, and you take a look at the success South Korea built for itself, how it became an industrial, economic power, with part of that being a well-educated society ranked high in the world — though it has its problems still ——

you might get the wrong idea that this guy is actually saying the US influence was good…

Anyway, he goes on next to say Syngman Rhee had his powerbase among the Korean Japanese-collaborators…

In response to an energetic Sovietization of North Korea under the control of the USSR, the U.S. military government’s educational policy shifted from the maintenance of the status quo to one of actual reform.

the “energetic” Sovietization up North. That’s cute….

What type of reforms did the US do, you might ask?

politically centrist educational experts or leaders needed to be removed or alienated, voluntarily or otherwise.

Next:

To carry out the minimum policy goal of preventing South Korea from being communized, the educational role of politicizing society was stressed from the beginning and political ideologies of American-style democracy were spread in multiple directions.

OK. Let’s skip repeating that a parallel development went on “energetically” up North under the man who got rid of his pro-Japanese bastards (with the help of Russian backing).

This is still annoying —- because I can think back to realities during the colonial period: namely ——— the Korean governments in exile were already split along strong ideological lines. There were already communist/socialist and anti-communist blocks. Also, many Koreans who were educated in Japan or spent time in Japan were influenced by underground communism in that nation.

To say that the “polarization” of Korean leaders was the result of US influence just can’t hold up given what we know of the political divide among influential Koreans before the end of WWII.

If system and ideology are regarded as the two pillars of education, the foundations of the two pillars can be said to have been laid during the U.S. military government. The unilateral import of the U.S. educational system did not suit the Korean situation.

There is the “u” word. I knew it had to be lurking around here somewhere.

He goes on in one part to say that the US is to blame for the tutoring system that Koreans now grill their kids with:

The formation of Korea’s educational system by pro-American forces resulted in a system that was far from providing a free education, instead relying more on parents’ paying for private tutoring than on formal outlays, thus making the poor poorer, and the rich richer.

I really can’t do much with that.

He also lays bare again his political leanings here:

Liberal democracy, which was pushed as educational ideology by the mainstream educational group at the time, was intended to forcibly incorporate South Korea into the world capitalist system cast.

Again, given South Korean society’s vast wealth, you could make the mistake of reading this as compliment to American “rule” in South Korea…

He tries to add what should have happened:

Accordingly, this ideology had basic limitations in realizing the task of national history characterized by an anti-foreign independence and played the role of rejecting independent nationalism.

Okie-dokie…

National history characterized by “anti-foreign independent” and rejecting “independent nationalism.” What an incredibly pregnant line!!

This ideology was a logic centered on anti-communism, and it helped preserve the vested interest of the ruling class and suppress the people’s movement (DING DING DING).

He is doing everything here —– except —– saying pro-communism should have been implemented. He isn’t really pointing to an alternative except some pie-in-the-sky idea of a previous native tradition, which he could actually argue for — if he meant going back to the Taewongun’s Hermit Kingdom policies of the mid-1800s.

When seen from the perspective of national unification, the U.S.-centered liberal democracy, conforming to the interests of foreign powers and the ruling class, could not become the educational ideology of unification.

Again, we clearly have a 2 ton elephant sitting right here besides us that isn’t being acknowledged :

that the alternative “unification” that he really has in mind is a “people’s movement” - as defined as what Kim Il Sung did in the North, but we all know that up in the North, “democracy” and empowerment of “the working masses” did not happen. It was a tyrannical regime much worse than the pro-Japanese bastards this guy has in mind in the South.

Incorporating the semi-feudal idea of state supremacy into education under the name of nationalism, the group attempted to legitimize the regime in power.

Oh for ****’s sake……

He has no foundation for an alternative educational system except the implicit one of North Korea he clearly has in mind, but —- you want to talk about ****ing “state supremacy”!!!!

But later he specifically, finally, gets to endorsing the Marxist line:

Some scholars critically introduced Marxism and dependency theory as theories countering the suppressive conditions of the 1980s. But they did not actively develop their discipline from the perspective of a critical pedagogy, as a majority of them failed to follow up with social practice or remained at the level of observers.

I wonder if “Juche” fits under dependency theory?

Whatever the case, most of us recognized at the end of the global Cold War that the Marxist ideas have failed miserably the world over…

I guess this guy just didn’t get it and believes Juche is dependency theory:

Progressive teachers particularly interested in democratization, self-reliance, and the humanization of education subsequently launched a drive to organize the Korea Teachers and Educational Workers Union in May 1989,

One of my favorite anti-US groups…

And that is pretty much where I gave up. There were about 3 more pages working under the heading of combating neo-liberalism — but I didn’t have the stomach for it…

Can you post the link to the article or is it where you have to register and pay to read. I like the new area and glad to see Mike added it.

__________________
Just my humble opinion!

No, it's not available right now.

www.ekoreajournal.net

The journal is published quarterly, and the lastest 2 volumes are not free online. This was in the issue before last, so, it should come available when they put up the next volume. That should be the Spring 2007 issue, but I don't have any idea when it will be out....

If you want to see a toned down, politically correct version of some of my thoughts on this article, you can check out this page at the new Korea Journal forum.

I have my fingers crossed that profs and others with more knowledge of Korean history will take up a discussion of this article.

If you are the type interested in history --- and are not bored to tears by academic style writing --- the Korea Journal has a lot of articles going back years online and for free.

On my blog - I recently added on the right side in the section called "blog roll" links to several other Korea and East Asian journals that have material in English and viewable online.

Most of them (if not all) are published by organizations in South Korea - because, I give an educated guess, they get state-funding.

This is one of the good things about Korea - that academic journals and the knowledge they present are open to the public ---- whereas in the US (and elsewhere) you either have to be a student or facualty member of a university or use a university library before you can read these journals.