Simple Yet Complicated: U.S. History Represented in South Korean History Textbooks

• In Event: Roundtable Session 29
  In Roundtable Session: Decolonizing Official Knowledge and Social Studies Curriculum in Iran, Africa, Asia, and the Americas

Abstract

How to teach about the US is critical in South Korea because of South Korea’s extensive, intensive and complex relationship with the US in its modern history. Framing history/social studies textbooks as a social construction designed to create a public memory of a national history and history of the Other, this paper examines how the US is constructed in South Korea’s social studies textbooks, and what kind of perceptions and ideas South Korean youth are encouraged to take up with regard to the US. Findings are discussed with a guiding question of how to teach about us and them in a globalized era when increased cross-cultural understanding and more accurate versions of shared individual and institutional pasts become important.

Authors

• Yonghee Suh, Old Dominion University

• Sohyun An, Kennesaw State University