Revisiting education fever in South Korea as a (post-)colonial manifestation from the geocolonial historical perspective

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Politics and Policy Discourses for Education Justice in East Asia

Proposal

Introduction
South Korea has experienced rapid economic growth, recovering from the ruins after the Korean War in the early 1950s. It has recently been recognized as one of the developed countries in the world. Regarding education, South Korean students’ academic achievement in international comparative tests has been noted. Some argue that South Koreans have had “education fever” (educational aspirations), and its economic development can be attributed to it (Seth, 2002, 2012; Sorenson, 1994). It is argued that education fever has made South Korean students world-class learners (Kim & Jung, 2020). On the other hand, however, others criticize that education fever is “education paranoia” (Kang, 2008), which contributes to severe pathological phenomena. Against this backdrop, in this paper, education fever is considered as cultural formation involving the local, the historical, and the geographical. This paper thus aims to unravel the trace of education fever as a (post-)colonial manifestation in (post-)colonial times from the twentieth century.

Theoretical framework
To revisit education fever in South Korea as cultural formation entangled with Korea’s (post-)colonial history, this paper takes the geocolonial historical stance suggested by Chen (2010) in Asia as method: Toward deimperialization as an analytical framework. Chen (2010) conceptualizes a geocolonial historical materialism presupposing that “to understand contemporary cultural formation and subjectivity, it is necessary to return to the encounter between specific local histories and the history of colonialism” (p. 102) with an eye to placing the problematics of (de)colonization at the center of analysis. In other words, the contemporary cultural formation in a specific time and place can be engendered by “the dialectic articulation of the colonial, the historical, and the geographical (Chen, 2010, p. 108).” In this context, Chen (2010) asserts that East Asia countries, particularly Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, has remained trapped in the triad of colonization, imperialization, and Cold War, and that decolonization, deimperialization, and de-cold war should in concert be pursued on both sides of the colonizer and the colonized in these (post-)colonial times. In this respect, this paper makes a theoretical and conceptual analysis of education fever as (post-)colonial cultural formation from the geocolonial historical perspective, relating to the three aspects of East Asian geohistocial contexts: colonization; imperialization; and Cold War.

The legacy of Confucianism and its deflection through modernity
It has been argued that education fever in South Korea has to do with a long cultural tradition of Confucianism, with its respect for learning (particularly, theoretical knowledge), and its emphasis on advancement through the learning and symbiotic relationship between parents and their children (Chae, 2007; Kim & Jung, 2020). On the other hand, however, the alleged Confucian values can be seen as the result of the spreading of Social Darwinism and its postulation that knowledge is power along with the introduction of modern school system and the abolition of the caste system in the process of modernization and patriotic enlightenment movements in Korea from the late 19th century to the early 20th century (Lee, 2013; Park, 2018). In this sense, the modern origin of education fever in South Korea could be traced back to cultural colonization by both Chinese and Western thoughts and South Koreans’ appropriation of them according to sociohistorical contexts.

The repressed desire for education under Japanese colonialism
During the Japanese official colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945, the Japanese colonial regime developed a modern education system across Korea, focusing primarily on disciplining and equipping Korean students with basic skills for the Japanese imperial expansion, in a discriminatory way that restricted Korean students’ access to upper levels of academic education (Seth, 2002; Sorenson, 1994 Park, 2018). The colonial regime’s restriction on education for Korean students made middle-class families frustrated because they could not achieve economic advancement, and the access to education was equated with social status (Seth, 2012). The repressed desire for getting higher status through academic education was likely to be one of the factors in igniting education fever and deepening distrust in vocational, technical education after liberation from the Japanese colonial rule. Given the historical context, the outburst of education fever in post-independence Korea could be explained by the effects of Japanese colonization and imperialization.

The introduction of the U.S. progressivism for egalitarianism and democracy
After its liberation from Japan, Korea was incorporated into the order of the Cold War, divided into South Korea and North Korea, with South Korea caught up in pro-Americanism and anti-communism. The U.S. military government and pro-American intellectuals in South Korea made efforts to introduce American progressivism in education on the levels of policy, curriculum and teaching practice as a means of making democracy take root (Hwang, 2015; Park, 2017). However, the democratic educational reform did not succeed as intended due to ideological barriers set by colonial residues (Adams, 1956). That said, the U.S. educational progressivism, along with the idea of compulsory, universalistic schooling, reinforced the belief in the possibility of upward mobility through education (Seth, 2002; So et al., 2012). The geohistorical embedded in education fever after the Korean War could be viewed from the aspects of the Cold War and the U.S.-centeredness.

Discussion and conclusion
Kim (2005) regards education fever, one of the most representative of South Korean topics, as needed to be theorized for the centering of decentered South Korean educational phenomena in postcolonial curriculum studies. This paper further makes an attempt to unravel the trace of education fever as the geocolonial historical entanglement in South Korea. With this regard, this study can contribute to broadening and deepening a postcolonial understanding of educational phenomena in South Korea in relation to multiplying points of reference out of East Asia (Chen, 2010). However, more historical empirical research on educational fever in South Korea and comparative research on educational aspirations in other East Asian countries needs to be conducted in future research, given that educational aspirations can be universal particularly around East Asia as well as unique to South Korea.

Author

• Dugyum Kim, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities