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ABSTRACT
This article considers a conflated ontological space where national projections named Koreanness are conjoined through national educational reform discourses associated with excellence and equality. It focuses on the shifting educational reform narratives that made appeals to notions of crisis before and after the IMF (International Monetary Fund) occurrence of 1997 in South Korea. Using Foucault’s concept of biopower and Lyotard’s concept of performativity, two representative Korean language newspapers (1995–1997 and 2005–2007) are analysed. The article concludes that the appeal to a sense of crisis through references to globalization (1995–1997) and the IMF (2005–2007) was utilized to elaborate the ontological shift in Koreanness-as-race from blood-tie (biology-as-nation-race) to label-based codification (biology-as-biopolitical species). The shifting nature of Koreanness elaborated here may ultimately offer suggestions for scenarios beyond its geopolitical realm, provoking reconsideration of convenient binaries, economic reductionism, and the frequent naturalization of biological rationalities in educational research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 The K-12 school system is characterized partially by a dual ladder system as there is a vocational track. However, overall it is often described as a single ladder system like the US school system.
2 The Education law was established in 1949, but due to the Korean War (1950–1953) and subsequent bare-bones Korean national treasury, its practical application with the meaning of free education to elementary education (6–12 ages) was initiated in 1959 and to secondary education (12–15 ages) was started in 1985, but a nationwide determination to free and compulsory education was in 2001 (‘Compulsory’, Citation2017).
3 There were middle school entrance exams until 1971 and nationally the policy of standardizing high schools was enforced in 1975 (C. H. Park, Citation2006). These policies were enacted to reduce excessive competition for educational credentials.
4 Hangeul is the name of Korean language. The Hangeul Day is to commemorate when the Korean language was first created and distributed to the people in 1446. This commemoration is a politics of inspiring a sense of national pride and, at the same time, a technology of making human being-as-nation recognize and confirm boundaries of who you are, from which the notion of nation-race is reaffirmed.
5 Until the late 1980s, Korea was known for military dictatorial regimes. They are referred to as the Park, Chung-Hee (1961–1979) and Chun, Doo-Hwan (1979–1988) regimes. Their political strategies of sustaining military dictatorships were slightly different, but anti-communism was a common reference point for attempting to make people obedient to the regime.
6 The seventh national curriculum allowed partial and constant amendment in order to keep consistency on educational policies and at the same time to reflect historical and sociocultural changes and subsequent needs. In effect, the basic principle of the current 2015 revised national curriculum relies on the seventh national curriculum. This is why this article focuses on the seventh national curriculum.
7 The translated term, ‘equality’, not ‘equity’ is selected as its discursive meaning in the equality-based discourse focuses more on differences in historical and sociocultural backgrounds than on individual abilities (Ha, Citation2005; Jang, Sohn, Byeon, & Park, Citation2002).
8 This paper explores inscriptions and operations of the IMF occurrence of 1997, not its causal relationship. Thus, economic terms are deployed to understand a series of changes in sociocultural practices.
9 Conceptual operations refer to ways in which crisis has been utilized as politics, strategies, and tactics.
10 The Hankyoreh is famous for its foundation process. It is known that the newspaper was established through individual fundraising in Korea in order to protect independent editorial rights that had been undermined under the military dictatorships.
11 In a Lyotardian sense, ‘a narrative’ means space where a myth is generated, different from Foucault's term, ‘discourse’, space where particular meanings are constructed, technologies are operated, and understandings are multiplied. Lyotardian approaches focus more on dissensus in what knowledge/truth/justice is, while Foucaultian approaches pay more attention to technologies of making, sustaining, and propagating a system of reasoning that is believed to be a consensus.
12 In the early 1990s, many other countries who had a trade relationship with Korea criticized national protectionism in several fields, such as agriculture and entertainment. With the new focus on globalization and as trading with foreign counties became active, economic pressures for the open market, specifically claims for repealing national protectionism, were excessive.
13 ‘Mind for the information age’ is a translated expression. In the early 1990s, ‘[nurturing] mind for the information age’ was discussed as a key competency and a slogan with references to globalization. The information age was often employed to characterize the upcoming twenty-first century mainly for the purpose of emphasizing the importance of Information Technology (IT). The translated term of mind for the information age roughly means adaptability to the information age – in other words, a readiness to learn practical and generic usage of information and communication technology skills like computer literacy.
14 The Japanese forced occupation is clearly related to colonization. After the end of Japanese rule (1910–1945), the southern area named South Korea was governed by the US military for three years. This period was a part of ideological confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union and, further, characteristics of the US military government were completely different from Japanese imperialism. However, its territorial occupation and political interventions are in part regarded as quasi-colonization particularly in the equality-based discourse.
15 Studying ahead to prepare for the one or two grades above is generally called seonhaenghakseup. This type of studying is forced by parents and becomes popular in order to hold an advantageous position in academic achievements, school records, and eventually school admissions.
16 Foucault (Citation1984) defines it as ‘a form of history which can account for the constitution of knowledges, discourses, domains of objects, etc., without having no make reference to a subject which is either transcendental in relation to the field of events or runs in its empty sameness throughout the course of history’ (p. 59).