Global Whiteness as Epistemic Coloniality: Delinking U.S. Imperialism in Korean Education Reforms Through Transpacific Decoloniality

• In Event: Colonial Discourses, Racial Capitalism, and Decolonial Possibilities

Abstract

This paper explores the national education reforms of South Korea, situating their significance in the broader context of transpacific decolonizing studies. It problematizes how the Korean postcolonial education reforms not only sought to decolonize the education system from Japanese imperial modernity but, paradoxically, recolonized the systems of educational knowledge with the U.S.-centric epistemes, which consistently persists today through the (invisible-yet-performative) global Whiteness. Drawing on research literature and reform documents, the study expands the critical understanding of U.S. educational imperialism in transnational education reforms, calling for moving beyond the still-Western-centric decolonizing scholarship. The “intimacy” between the Asian and North American continents warrants a critical examination for epistemic delinking through the entangled lens of transpacific decoloniality, U.S. educational imperialism, and global Whiteness.

Author

• Sun Young Lee, Wichita State University