Global Citizens and their Complicated Neighbors: Incorporating North Korea in South Korean History Education

• In Event: Highlighted session: Inclusion, representation, and education

Proposal

Previous cross-national studies of history education have indicated a worldwide shift in the teaching of history that looks beyond nation-state based history instruction in favor of a curriculum and textbook that impart knowledge of diverse identities, cultures, and global issues. Behind this worldwide trend is a de-emphasis on nationalism and greater emphasis on the rise of individual human rights in a globalizing world, implying a teleological inevitability of nation-states that will adopt this post-national history education model. In South Korea, however, the construction of national identity in history education continues to be a key function of its civilizing mission alongside the post-national model that promotes "progressive" ideas of universalism because of the uncertainty over inclusion of North Koreans within South Korea’s place in a globalizing world. This article analyzes the domestic politics of history education in South Korea, with particular attention paid to the controversies surrounding the nationalization of history textbooks and the tensions that those controversies laid bare. In 2015, the administration of President Park Geun-hye announced plans for its own history textbook to “correct” ideological bias in the private history textbook market. Questions of nationhood, ethnicity, and identity—between the ROK (Republic of Korea) national (those who subscribe to the political, economic, and social values of South Korea) and the Korean minjok (an ethnically bound Korean identity inclusive of North Koreans)—took bitter shape in history textbooks, where portrayals over historical events were revised and disputed to underscore competing visions of what constitutes Korean modern history and who is Korean. It is against this backdrop that we highlight the South Korean textbook controversy not just as a counterexample to transnational convergence in history education but as a paradoxical exception wherein the promotion of national identity is inextricably bound within South Korea’s calculus of the global citizen. Indeed, the textbook controversy questions a conventional understanding of history education as decisively national or global rendered visible by the complicated and fraught histories of Asian societies.

Authors

• Hyungryeol Kim, Seoul National University

• Stephanie Kim, Georgetown University