Negotiating human rights: citizenship education in South Korea

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how human rights education (HRE), a global movement and citizenship education model based on universal personhood rather than nationality, is presented and negotiated in relation to national citizenship discourses in South Korean middle school moral education and social studies textbooks. Using qualitative methods of textual analysis, I identify four recurring approaches consistently used in textbooks to educate students about human rights: (1) distinguishing between universal human rights and national constitutional rights, (2) emphasizing duties to the national community, (3) accommodating both global and national identity through a discourse of achieving harmony and (4) demonstrating continuity between universal and national moral values. These findings contribute to the existing empirical literature on Korean citizenship education by investigating the interaction of global and local citizenship narratives.

KEYWORDS:

• Globalization
• human rights education
• Republic of Korea
• textbooks
• citizenship

Introduction

Over the past few decades, education scholars have documented the rise of post- or supra-national models of citizenship education (Fairbrother, 2003; Law, 2004). These models move beyond the historical, traditional focus of educating the masses into solely national citizens with a national identity. That is, while traditional citizenship education encourages consensus around national collective ideals and interests, post-national citizenship models seek to pass on a sense of world consciousness and membership in a global polity, often by highlighting transnational values such as human rights, peace, cultural pluralism, and environmental responsibility.

One such supra-national model is human rights education (HRE), which involves educating people about the inherent rights they are entitled to simply by virtue of their being human (Duffy, 1994; Gearon, 2003). The central focus and point of departure is a framework of basic and fundamental rights that derive from nature itself and thus are inherited by all as members born into the same human family. By teaching that commitment to humanity must supersede all other commitments and that what individuals must identify with first and foremost is their human identity, HRE challenges the exclusive claims of the traditional nation-state on citizens.

Despite the rise of such globalized models of education, the extant literature consistently demonstrates the continuing influence of the nation-state in shaping citizenship education (Kennedy, 2012). Cross-national studies show the persistence, not the waning, of nationalist emphases in educational curricula (Lerch, Russell, & Ramirez, 2017). Rather than a replacement of national discourses, national and global citizenship narratives have been found to co-exist, complement one another, and/or create tensions (Lo, 2007). Furthermore, global elements can be superficially adopted or selectively appropriated for nationalistic and exclusionary ends (Frey & Whitehead, 2009). That is, supra-national educational models are negotiated by nation-states in relation to existing national citizenship frames and “there are ongoing, calculated attempts to combine homogeneity and heterogeneity and universalism and particularism” (Robertson, 1995, 27).

In Korea, HRE was first officially incorporated into formal educational policies in the mid-2000s. Scholars have documented various aspects of HRE in Korea, including its historical development and emergence (Kang, 2002), legislation (Jung, 2020; Yang, 2013), educational policies (Jeon, 2008), teacher training (Yoo, 2012) and school practices (Yoo, 2013). At the level of the intended curriculum, scholars have also examined human rights content in curricula and textbooks across subjects and over time (Moon & Koo, 2011). However, few studies explicitly examine the interaction of HRE with Korea’s traditional citizenship narratives. Most studies focus on documenting HRE-related content or adopt a pedagogical perspective, highlighting the need for improved textbook content to better influence student learning, attitudes and behaviours (Choi, 2014).

This paper addresses this limitation by examining how global and local discourses are negotiated in Korean middle school social studies and moral education textbooks. It focuses specifically on HRE, a citizenship education model characterized by legal-political and identity elements of universalistic rights and universal personhood that fundamentally question traditional citizenship frames confined to the national domain.

The nation, citizenship and education

Over the postwar decades, conceptions of rights and citizenship have dramatically changed and expanded. In the early period, notions of citizenship were confined to the national domain, the identity of the individual was primarily linked to the identity of the nation, and persons were seen as having rights as citizens of a particular nation-state (Boli, 1976). The scale or boundaries of citizenship was invariably defined in national terms and citizenship was understood to emphasize membership in national political communities (Anderson, 1991; Huntington, 2004). Mass schooling became central to the process of transforming the masses into a homogenized national citizenry by promoting the development of a national consciousness and the suppression of sub-national regional and ethnic loyalties (Weber, 1979; Wright, 2004).

Recent comparative studies on citizenship education show that while older models of citizenship education and traditional civics content persist, the presence of global concepts and universalistic values have gradually increased in the curriculum over time and in many nations (Davies & Issitt, 2005; Meyer, Bromley, & Ramirez, 2010). Human rights education (HRE), one supra-national educational model that teaches about universal personhood, has quickly become a global reform, adopted and implemented by governments in state-sponsored schools all over the world (Addo, 2000; Claude, 1991; Kang, 2002). HRE raises many profound issues about what it means to be human and consequently carries much higher risks for states than other, more standard educational domains by generating social opposition and encouraging popular dissent (Cardenas, 2005). By empowering citizens to defend and promote their human rights, HRE challenges the authority of the state over its own people, attempts to impose limitations on the arbitrary exercise of power, and seeks to hold governments accountable to certain ethical norms of behaviour. Given HRE’s core premise that citizenship is not a product of the nation but inheres in the individual, persons now have the choice to invoke membership claims other than national membership. Individuals can seek public recognition of their group affiliations and identities and/or invoke their world citizenship in supra-national political institutions. Diversity rather than unity or community becomes the overriding value in any society. Multiple citizenships, multiple identities, and multiple loyalties are possible and legitimate. Sub-national, multicultural, transnational, and cosmopolitan identities become valid. International laws, institutions, regimes, and norms can be interpreted as being morally superior to those of individual nations (Cole, 2005; Goodliffe & Hawkins, 2006).

However, despite the rise of such globalized citizenship frames, existing research highlights the persistence and dominance of national citizenship frames and the various ways states reconcile and negotiate the two, reflecting what Robertson (1995) terms a process of “selective incorporation” or “the very widespread tendency for nation-states to ‘copy’ ideas and practices from other societies – to engage in varying degrees of systematicity, in projects of importation and hybridization” (41). For instance, Michaels and Stevick (2009), in their study of post-socialist Slovak textbooks, found that discussions of universal values such as equality and human rights are depicted as constituting a global democratic identity, but that textbooks fail to ground these same values within the national context, keeping at bay their legal-political implications such as affirmative action and state-sponsored minority education policies. In other words, the nation-state employs varying “strategies of glocalisation” characterized by varying degrees of importation (Robertson, 1995, 41).

Human rights education: concepts and debates

While there are many variations in the way HRE is theorized and conceptualized, scholars and practitioners generally agree that HRE encompasses content (education about human rights), participatory pedagogies (education through human rights) and action-oriented components (education for human rights). In other words, HRE is not only about cognitive learning, but using participatory methods in the learning process and encouraging learners to actively bring about social justice (Flowers, 2017).

In addition to these broadly shared elements, HRE scholars have proposed various models and approaches for HRE over the past few decades. For instance, scholars have theorized various models and frameworks based on different constituencies, age of the learner, content of the programmes, participants’ level of engagement and national context (Tarrow, 2014). Tibbitts (2002), for instance, differentiates between a “values and awareness” approach, an “accountability approach” for professionals and a “transformational” approach for students and community members.

In addition to this conceptual literature, a large body of research has also explored the theoretical underpinnings of HRE as well as its implementation in practice in both formal and non-formal educational settings. Major debates have focused on the validity of the international human rights framework itself on which HRE is based, arguing that HRE imposes universalizing, hegemonic Western values and demeans local, existing value systems (Keet, 2012). With regard to implementation, case studies find that HRE has only a minimal presence in the curriculum in many country contexts, is often misunderstood and resisted by local actors (such as teachers) and at times becomes coopted by state interests. Still others demonstrate how non-state actors have disrupted and changed state educational policies regarding HRE (Tibbitts & Katz, 2017). Lastly, as HRE has broadened in scope from its roots in popular education to encompass the formal education sector, major debates have centred around the role of state actors in the implementation of HRE and what it means to have HRE sanctioned by member states (Cardenas, 2005; Tibbitts & Katz, 2017).

Human rights education in Korea

Previous research has documented how human rights concerns were adopted in formal schooling in Korea (Kang, 2002; Moon & Koo, 2011). Korean civil society groups led initial efforts to introduce HRE in the early 1990s, which primarily focused on addressing violations of students’ rights such as corporal punishment, confiscation of personal belongings and other practices prevalent at the time. However, it wasn’t until the 2000s, under a more favourable political climate, that human rights NGOs advocating for HRE were able to voice their demands. Following the first horizontal regime change in modern Korean politics with the election of Kim Dae-jung in 1997, sufficient domestic political support coupled with transnational advocacy strategies resulted in the establishment of a National Human Rights Commission in 2001. Two years later, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, based on recommendations made by the Commission, planned to introduce more human rights content in the next national curriculum guidelines (i.e., the 2007 revised curriculum). Thus, the introduction of human rights-related topics in the Korean curriculum is a relatively recent development in Korea’s modern history. Similar to other countries, human rights NGOs, such as the Sarangbang Group for Human Rights, pioneered efforts to introduce HRE in formal schooling in Korea, and these efforts, coupled with transnational advocacy, political regime change and the establishment of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, resulted in the incorporation of HRE. Since that time, there have been two additional revisions of the curriculum in 2009 and 2015.

In the most recent national curricular guidelines for social studies and moral education, for instance, they both include a unit on human rights specifically. The guidelines provides a broad statement about how human rights are to be understood and specifies in bullet points three related themes that are required to be taught in each textbook. The social studies curricular guidelines, for instance, includes a section titled “human rights and the constitution”, noting that students should “understand that human rights are fundamental rights that all human beings should be guaranteed”. The guidelines go on to specify that students should understand, “based on an understanding of the relationship between human rights and the constitution, the types and contents of basic rights guaranteed in the Korean constitution”. Lastly, students are to “develop an attitude to actively respond to human rights and labor rights violations that occur in daily life by exploring cases of human rights and labor rights violations and remedies” (Ministry of Education, 2015, p. 38).¹

Such changes have become an important topic of research among scholars in Korea. Choi (2014), for instance, found that human rights lessons in middle school moral education textbooks include discussions of international human rights documents, the concept of human rights, and knowledge of human rights institutions in Korea, pointing out that some areas need further improvement. Similarly, Kim (2018) found that human rights-related topics in moral education textbooks included discussions having to do with gender equality, discrimination, responsibility, respect and respecting differences. Park (2017) examines minority groups in the context of human rights discussions in social studies textbooks at both the lower and upper secondary levels and finds that they are limited to women and the disabled, disregarding other disadvantaged groups. Koo and Park (2019) adopt a more pedagogical perspective, noting that social studies textbooks devoted little space to grounding human rights principles using concrete examples in South Korean society and that this reduces the chances to change student attitudes and develop learner sensitivity to human rights.

While the existing literature demonstrates the inclusion and nature of human rights content in the curriculum, few studies provide an understanding how global and local discourses are negotiated in citizenship education. One study by Cho and Park (2016) found between-subject variation, with Korean language textbooks emphasizing national identity and social studies texts emphasizing more globally-oriented social justice elements. However, more research along these lines are needed to specify the varied ways global and local discourses are reconciled at the level of the intended curriculum. That is, how do South Korean textbooks negotiate and reconcile the universality of human rights with topics where human rights discussions could possibly undermine traditionally nationalistic goals and agendas? How are these seemingly antithetical tensions presented to students and in what forms do they co-exist? By answering these questions, this study seeks a better empirical understanding of how post-national conceptions of citizenship such as HRE interact with traditional narratives in South Korean citizenship education.

Aims and scope of this study

This study conceptualizes HRE as a distinct field of educational theory and practice, but also recognizes that many of the goals and contents of HRE overlap with other educational models² due to shared, cross-cutting values (such as inclusion and non-discrimination) and universal frames of reference (Tibbitts, 2017). However, since this study focuses specifically on how global and local discourses are negotiated, it does not seek to analyse every instance in which human rights are mentioned or used to frame related issues that might be considered as being subsumed under HRE (for example, peaceful coexistence or diversity). Rather, the scope of this study is limited to an analysis of human rights content where they are discussed in relation to or in contention with national narratives and discourses.

In addition, while HRE has been seen to encompass all forms of education, including the formal, non-formal and informal sectors (Mihr & Schmitz, 2007), this study focuses on the formal, public education sector where national narratives are particularly strong and thus the interplay of the global and national are especially intense. Governments voluntarily sanction HRE in state-sponsored education while also having to inculcate future citizens with a sense of national loyalty and membership, making the formal sector an important and appropriate site to explore the research questions.

Data and methods

To answer the research questions, I analyse a total of ten textbooks consisting of five moral education and five social studies textbooks published in line with the most recently revised 2015 national curricular guidelines and currently widely in use in public schools throughout the country. Textbooks “participate in creating what a society has recognised as legitimate and truthful” (Apple, 1990, p. 5) and thus provide a rich source of cultural content to investigate how different societies come to incorporate norms and ideas.

I focus on textbooks used at the middle school level, which is mandatory in Korea, and although textbooks are privately published, must be officially authorized by the Ministry of Education through a rigorous screening process. All textbooks are therefore highly standardized in terms of structure and content, facilitating comparison. For each subject category, I randomly selected five publishers for each subject and included those textbooks in my sample (n = 10).³

This study does not seek to quantify patterns over time which has already been conducted in previous research on citizenship themes in Korean textbooks (Moon & Koo, 2011). Rather, I seek to decipher the complexities of how HRE is presented to students, and thus employed thematic analysis, identifying recurring topics, ideas and patterns of meaning, an approach widely used in qualitative textual analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). To explore how textbooks present and negotiate HRE, I used an inductive approach where coding and theme development are directed by the data (rather than theory-driven). The text was approached both semantically and latently, noting explicit content as well as concepts and assumptions underpinning the data. This process involved generating codes to identify textual expressions that might be relevant to answering the research questions, synthesizing codes and generating initial recurring themes, reviewing and refining themes against the text, and finally defining/naming themes. Throughout the coding process, I discovered subject-specific variation and thus organized each theme as applying to either social studies textbooks or moral education textbooks. Throughout the results section that follows, I indicate the number of textbooks in which I identified similar themes and note which subject to which the respective theme applies. I convey the main findings using a narrative approach (Creswell, 2003), weaving together major themes, sub-themes, specific illustrations, and textbook quotations while contextualizing the analysis in relation to the existing literature.

Results

The findings suggest a number of key approaches South Korean textbooks consistently use to educate students about human rights in relation to national citizenship discourses: (1) distinguishing between universal human rights and national constitutional rights, (2) emphasizing duties to the national community, (3) accommodating both global and national identity through a discourse of achieving harmony and (4) demonstrating continuity between universal and national moral values. The number of textbooks illustrating each theme are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. Themes and total number of textbooks illustrating each theme.

Theme	Social studies textbooks (n = 5)	Moral education textbooks (n = 5)
(1) Distinguishing between universal human rights and national constitutional rights	5	0
(2) Emphasizing duties to the national community	0	3
(3) Accommodating both global and national identity through a discourse of achieving harmony	0	5
(4) Demonstrating continuity between universal and national moral values	0	5

Distinguishing between universal human rights and national constitutional rights

Human rights constitutes a major topic in all of the social studies and moral education textbooks analysed, taking up entire units and chapters, as stipulated in the national curricular guidelines. Extended discussions are devoted to the definition, origins, and history of universal human rights and related references to international declarations and organizations are commonplace. However, textbooks still make a clear distinction between universal human rights principles and those guaranteed under the national constitution. In all of the social studies textbooks, units and chapters use titles such as “human rights and the constitution” or “human rights and basic rights”, explicitly emphasizing a distinction between (and implicitly, an effort to reconcile) universal human rights and constitutional rights. While human rights are described as natural, inviolable and universal, the sole means through which such principles are realized and guaranteed are through the national apparatus of the state. As the following excerpt in a social studies textbook demonstrates, human rights are considered universal, but those that are guaranteed are confined to those rights specifically recognized in the national constitution and are distinguished as “basic rights”:

Today, democratic countries guarantee basic human rights through the constitution. These human rights guaranteed in the constitution are called basic rights. Our constitution also states ‘the state has a duty to confirm and guarantee the inviolable, basic human rights of persons’, clearly stating the importance and inviolability of human rights. (bold in original text) (Mo et al., 2017, p. 13)

The same textbook even provides a rationale for why human rights are distinguished from these “basic rights”, unequivocally stating that constitutional law is the “supreme” law of the land and takes legal precedence over universal human rights:

Then why does the constitution guarantee human rights as basic rights? The constitution is the country’s supreme law through which all other laws and policies are legislated and enforced. Also, all national organs must exercise authority according to the rules and procedures set forth by the constitution. Accordingly, by stipulating human rights in the constitution, it is recognised that the state’s core duty is to guarantee the basic rights of the people and that violations of the human rights of the people can receive redress. (bold in original text) (Mo et al., 2017, p. 13)

The text even provides definitions that help students distinguish conceptually between human rights as natural rights and basic rights as applying only to national citizens:

Concept box: Human rights and basic rights

The concept of human rights emphasises the ‘natural rights’ that humans possess before nation-states were established and the concept of basic rights emphasises ‘citizen rights’ that are guaranteed by the constitution. (Mo et al., 2017, p. 13)

These same ideas are reiterated in all five of the social studies textbooks in the sample. Although one social studies textbook explains that the primary motivation for guaranteeing basic rights through the constitution is to guard persons from unjust intervention or violations by the government, the primary message here is that the state’s supreme legal standard is the constitution, not anything else. International laws, institutions, regimes, and norms are not seen as morally superior. In other words, rights are protected and guaranteed, not because they inhere in humans universally, but because they are recognized by governments as part of the legal authority of the national constitution:

Basic rights. Most countries today guarantee the people’s human rights through the state’s supreme law of the constitution. The basic human rights guaranteed in the constitution are called basic rights. The reason for guaranteeing basic rights through the constitution is to guard the people’s rights and freedoms from unjust intervention or violation by the state. (Kim et al.,2017, p. 14)

Another social studies textbook generalizes this situation to other countries, giving students the impression that this is historically and generally the case, not just in Korea:

Human rights, as heaven-given rights, is a philosophy of thought that emphasises that any human should be guaranteed equality. Human rights thought became the driving force of popular revolution that overthrew absolute monarchy and opened an era of modernity. As a result, documents such as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen appeared in the process of the French Revolution. Afterwards, human rights were stipulated in each nation’s constitution, according to which the state was charged with the duty to guarantee the human rights of individuals. (Koo et al., 2017, p. 12)

The following text makes it clear that constitutional rights are selectively adopted from a wider menu of human rights and specifies those constitutional rights in more detail:

The meaning of basic rights. Among human rights, the rights that are stipulated and guaranteed by the constitution are called basic rights. Our constitution acknowledges human dignity and value, the right to pursue happiness, and thus clearly expresses the values it pursues.

The types of basic rights guaranteed by our constitution. Basic rights, based on their nature, can be categorised into civil liberties, political rights, right of claim, social rights, right to equality. (Koo et al., 2017, p. 14)

Although this emphasis on the primacy of national law is consistent across social studies textbooks, some passages convey mixed messages, suggesting that international law, along with the constitution, can also protect human rights:

The various faces of human rights violations. Human rights violations are violations of human rights committed by governments or other citizens. Although the constitution, laws, and international law protects human rights, human rights are violated in reality. For example, surveillance of the daily lives of citizens by the government without any just cause is considered a human rights violation. (Koo et al., 2017, p. 18)

Overall, however, by making clear that only constitutional rights are what really matter, textbooks seem to evade the question of whether or not the nation-state is held accountable to sub-national or supra-national ethical norms of behaviour. In other words, human rights are affirmed in the abstract, but in practice, they place no added restrictions on government behaviour and only those rights recognized by the nation-state are to be legally protected.

Emphasizing duties to the national community

The examples in the previous section demonstrate how human rights discussions in social studies textbooks are redefined in national terms. Another way in which textbooks, particularly in moral education textbooks where ethical norms and values are discussed, negotiate human rights principles is by emphasizing duties and responsibilities in addition to asserting one’s rights. In three of the five moral education textbooks analysed, rather than a sole focus on individuals as rights-bearing and empowered, there is an equal emphasis on human rights as a duty, and specifically, as a moral duty:

We must not violate the rights of others. As I am able to enjoy my human rights, others should be able to enjoy their human rights. Thus, we cannot violate the freedom of others or discriminate against others. In this way, securing human rights is our moral duty. (Lee et al., 2017, p. 170)

In other passages, this emphasis on duties is linked to broader national goals. One moral education textbook singles out an article from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that focuses exclusively on “duties to the community” (Article 29)⁴ in a lesson entitled “The significance of Article 29 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. By drawing on the text of an externally legitimated international document, the authors justify the claim that human rights means fulfiling one’s obligations to their local community just as much as asserting one’s rights. Human rights are like “two sides of a coin” and only knowing about rights is only half the story:

Those who created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights exercised caution so that people would not assert only their rights and neglect duties to their community. The basic spirit of human rights is asserting one’s rights while also pursuing one’s obligations to others. Since all people are given meaning as a person within a community, performing one’s duty and claiming one’s rights must always be the same. Only asserting my rights is only one half of human rights. It is necessary to emphasise fulfilling one’s duty to others by being considerate of and empathizing with others. In other words, in order to understand human rights, we must understand that human rights are like two sides of a coin consisting of rights and duties. (Byun et al., 2017, p. 176)

While some recent studies on citizenship in Asian countries such as Taiwan (Hung, 2015) have suggested the recession of Asian, Confucian values in the curriculum, the above finding demonstrates that Confucian values of duties to the community are intentionally emphasized to counterbalance narratives of human rights. In other words, states embrace universal ideas by promoting local traditions.

Confucian values of communitarianism remain deeply embedded in the South Korean civics curriculum and reflect the pervasiveness of Confucianism as a cultural value system in contemporary Korean society (Helgesen, 1998). Scholars of Confucianism in Korea demonstrate that values such as familialism, harmonious relations and fraternal responsibility are extended to broader social relations in the civic sphere where the state is envisioned as a large, harmonious, Confucian family, or family-state (gukka) and society as an extended family (Kim, 2014). One outcome of this more communitarian view where individuals and communities are seen as mutually constitutive is an increased recognition of the individual’s obligations at both the interpersonal and community levels and the lesson that one needs to go beyond the self to pursue the common good (Walzer, 1983).

Accommodating both global and national identity through a discourse of achieving harmony

In the findings above, rights-only discussions that might be seen to have a de-nationalizing effect, weakening the nation-state’s claims on citizens, are supplemented with equally serious discussions of the duties and obligations of individuals towards their community, which in a sense might be interpreted as reconstructing the nation. In this way, moral education textbooks both deconstruct and reconstruct the nation simultaneously, negotiating the presentation of new, “modern” ideas with that of older, traditional ones.

A similar but slightly different way in which moral education textbooks negotiate human rights is by employing a discourse of “harmony” or “balance”. In all of the moral education textbooks analysed for this study, human rights are described as a core value of global citizenship, but they also point out that global and national identities need not be mutually exclusive. Rather, the goal should be to strike a balance between two, achieving a sense of harmony. For example, one textbook emphasizes that being a global citizen doesn’t mean having to forgo a national identity. Those without a national identity are likened to “a rootless stem” that cannot bear fruit, suggesting that possessing a Korean identity is normal, healthy and essential.

To be a global citizen, we must be ready to pursue universal human values of human rights, freedom and equality.

The desirable identity. Being a global citizen doesn’t mean we have to give up our identity as a Korean. As a rootless stem has no fruit, keeping our Korean identity is very important. (Lee et al., 2017, p. 202)

The values of global citizens. We do not lose our Korean identity by becoming global citizens. Our identity is rooted in the traditional values handed down to us by our forefathers. (Lee et al., 2017, p. 202)

Furthermore, text descriptions apply the traditional Confucian ideal of harmony as a way of integrating human rights with traditional values. That is, to become a true global citizen, a harmonizing of national and universal values is required:

While keeping the values rooted in our Korean identity such as hongik in’gan,⁵ gyungchun ae-in⁶ etc., we must try to harmonise them with the universal values we must pursue as global citizens. It is through this kind of effort that we can actively participate in solving the problems of the global community and become true global citizens. (Byun et al., 2017, p. 208)

This emphasis on achieving harmony between global, universal values on the one hand and national, traditional values on the other suggests that one way of negotiating the tension between global and national identity is to advocate co-occurrence rather than primacy. Too much insistence on global values might devalue national identity, but placing too much weight on national values may run the risk of appearing chauvinistic.

It’s also worth noting that this language of harmony and balance is a cross-cutting theme in moral education textbooks across time and across topics. For example, previous moral education curricula have included as substantive themes harmony between freedom and equality (in the 1987 national curriculum), harmony between self-development and national development (1987), harmony of citizen ethics and traditional ethics (1997), harmony of individual liberty and community consciousness (2007), and most recently, harmony of private and public interests (2009) (Ministry of Education, 2020). Through this brief analysis of past national curricular guidelines, we can see a consistent pattern in which a logic of balance/harmony is employed particularly for themes that compare and contrast the self with the collective, as well as the modern with the traditional. This logic extends into the present curriculum, in analogous discussions of national and global identities/citizenships.

Demonstrating continuity between universal and national moral values

In the passages above, the Confucian values described in moral education textbooks are seen as unique to Korean culture, distinct from global values, since the emphasis is on the importance of maintaining a Korean identity. In other passages, however, moral education textbooks express the continuity of global and national values, where the two are seen as similar and mutually reinforcing.

This observation was seen in all of the moral education textbooks analysed in this study, where discussions of human rights are not linked to legal issues or do not directly touch on matters that might challenge national sovereignty. For example, in one moral education textbook, the constitution is described to simply affirm the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Efforts to secure human rights. The 1948 UN Declaration of Human rights states that ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’ Our constitution also states that anyone should be guaranteed basic rights to be free and treated equally to live a decent life. (Lee et al., 2017, p. 170)

The context of this discussion introduces human rights as an abstract, global, moral value, removed from the specific context of the nation, making human rights a less threatening topic of discussion. Here, human rights as an ethical norm is fully embraced, whereas descriptions of human rights in social studies textbooks presented earlier qualifies human rights, limiting rights to those recognized by the constitution. In social studies textbooks, human rights become relatively more sensitive issues from the perspective of the government because they are tied to the specific organizational structure of the state, raising questions about legal entitlements, national human rights violations, and government accountability.

To provide some context and examples of what these issues, violations and entitlements might be, major issues framed as human rights violations that have drawn attention in South Korea in recent years have included women’s rights (for example, the criminalization of abortion), policies on North Korean human rights, and worker’s rights (for example, restrictions on labour unions and freedom of association). Others have included government restrictions on freedom of expression (for example, criminal defamation laws) as well as group rights, particularly discrimination against LGBT persons (for example, criminalization of same-sex acts in the military), racial and ethnic minorities, foreigners, refugees (for example, rejection of non-North Korean asylum seekers) and migrants. More recently, concerns with digital sex crimes (passing bills to make digital sex crimes easier to prosecute) and privacy rights (raised in response to the government’s public health measures to protect against the spread of the pandemic) have drawn considerable attention as human rights issues that demand redress (Choo, 2013; Kang, 2010; Kim & Bae, 2018).

The central point here is that none of these specific, controversial issues in Korea are mentioned in any detail in the context of illustrating or affirming human rights as morally legitimate. Specific examples, instead, are drawn from human rights violations that occur in other countries that have little relevance in the Korean context. For example, in a section titled, “Cultural Diversity and Universal Moral Norms”, one moral education textbook discusses how the practice of honour killing (taking the life of another person because they bring dishonour to the family or community) cannot be tolerated because “such a culture departs from universal moral norms that respect human dignity and ensures the protection of human rights” (Lee et al., 2017, p. 190). Sensitive issues in the Korean context, such as discussions of minority rights, or the controversial National Security Law⁷ as a national violation of human rights, are absent across all ten textbooks. One could easily imagine, for instance, a textbook discussing a politically controversial issue familiar to Koreans, such as failed attempts to repeal the National Security Law, and encourage students to consider it from a human rights perspective. This tendency to focus on “global” examples, disconnected from controversial issues in Korean society, makes human rights discussions less concrete, decoupled from the everyday, social justice struggles of citizens, and thus at the same time do not question or override national prerogatives.

Similarly, in a discussion of human rights and other global citizenship values, Korean traditional values and global values are seen as being similar:

Also, we can find examples of how our forefathers pursued peace in our history. Thus, the spiritual values of our Korean identity are not so removed from the values that must be sought by global citizens. (Lee et al., 2017, p. 202)

Here again, the discussion contextualizes human rights values within a global context, encouraging students that all cultures should be respected as equal or that human rights are important values in order to maintain peaceful coexistence in the world. Thus, textbooks vary in how they frame human rights principles and this variation occurs between school subjects. Cho and Park (2016), while their study does not focus on human rights, also suggested this type of between-subject variation, where Korean language textbooks emphasized national identity and social studies textbooks (which, in their study, included both moral and social studies textbooks) emphasized more social justice elements. My findings, however, demonstrate an even more fine-grained distinction between moral education and social studies textbooks. When human rights discussions are abstracted to the general, international level, largely disconnected from the specific, domestic context (in moral education textbooks), universal human rights are fully embraced and global and national values are perceived as being similar. In contrast, when human rights discussions are more closely tied to the national context (in social studies textbooks), human rights are qualified and global and national values are viewed as different. To summarize, then, these findings suggest at least two strategies at work. The first is that global and national values co-exist, but convey mixed messages via different subjects. Second, global moral values are permitted as long as they are decoupled from national legal-political issues (i.e., a strategy of abstraction).⁸ This second finding resonates with findings of previous studies (Michaels & Stevick, 2009), but is distinct in that Korean textbooks employ the language of morality (rather than civic identity) as a key framing tool.

Discussion and conclusion

The findings from this study suggest that the ways in which textbooks present and negotiate HRE in Korea are indeed varied and complex. Human rights and nation-centred themes are carefully presented so that textbooks affirm universal human rights while minimizing potential threats to state legitimacy. When human rights are discussed within the national context, linked to practical matters of legal recourse, the universality of human rights are qualified as constitutional rights. In contrast, when human rights are discussed as abstract, moral principles, detached from the state organizational structure, individuals are presented as more empowered. Additionally, and ironically, human rights can be used as a discourse to strengthen the traditional and the national. Human rights principles can be selectively adopted to emphasize traditional values such as obligations towards one’s community and harmonizing the global and the national. Furthemore, mixed, contradictory messages are conveyed via moral education and social studies textbooks.

The finding that state-sanctioned textbooks employ strategies of appropriation, nationalization and selectively adoption of human rights principles is not new. However, how and in what ways this occurs varies considerably across countries and in this sense the approach used in Korean textbooks is distinct. In Slovak history textbooks, for instance, human rights are appropriated as a means to cast nationalist movements as democratic and therefore, more legitimate (Michaels & Stevick, 2009). Bavarian textbooks, on the other hand, nationalize human rights through the language of religion (Engel & Ortloff, 2009), reflecting historical legacies. In civics textbooks in Argentina, human rights are framed as resulting from a history of activism and resistance (Suarez, 2008). In contrast, HRE in Korea regarding its legal-political dimensions are reframed as constitutional rights and are generally not tied to specific nationalistic movements or events. Thus, in the Korean case, human rights are embedded in national laws, rather than used as a means for legitimating national, cultural and history legacies.

Another distinct strategy in Korean textbooks is the appropriation of human rights discourse to redirect the focus of the text from universal human rights to the importance of fulfiling one’s duties to the national/local community. An equal emphasis on duties and obligations differs from studies of civic education textbooks in other countries such as the United States where concepts associated with traditional liberalism, i.e., rights and freedoms, are dominant and discussions of duties and obligations are either absent or marginalized (Gonzales et al., 2004). Also, in contrast to the recession of Asian values in the curriculum of some Asian countries, such as Taiwan (Hung, 2015), these findings demonstrate that local Confucian values in the Korean curriculum persist and remain central elements. Furthermore, Korean textbook discussions of rights and duties are also distinct from countries such as Israel where the distinction between rights and duties are used to reinforce exclusion and difference within the same nation. For instance, rights are discussed in order to secure more privileges for Jews, while discussions of duties are only applied to non-Jewish Palestinian citizens (Nasser, 2013). This suggests that the origins of discussions of duties to the community are more historical and cultural in Korea rather than being tied to and reflective of the changing domestic socio-political context. Thus, the Korean case differs in important ways from other case countries, both Western and non-Western.

The changes we see in Korean textbooks today have only taken place over a short period of a decade, and reflective of this short time frame, HRE is still undergoing a process of intense negotiation and contestation in the way human rights principles are being presented to students, at least at the level of the intended curriculum. This negotiation process may reflect the view that states are fundamentally resistant to incorporating HRE because of “rising demands [from educated citizens] for justice and accountability” (Cardenas, 2005, p. 364). Thus, these four strategies may reflect pressure from above to depoliticize HRE as much as possible, distancing it from its original transformative, justice-oriented mission. They also suggest that HRE in Korea, while originally pioneered by NGOs to facilitate democratization and active citizenship, has become diluted from its emancipatory mission into a superficial form of HRE in the process of being incorporated into formal schools as a state-sanctioned reform. Thus, the findings from this study also have practical implications for the development of HRE in citizenship education in Korea. Various stakeholders, such as educators, policymakers and NGOs, may consider adopting or pushing forward a more comprehensive HRE agenda that moves beyond simplistic discussions of HRE in textbooks by supplementing current efforts with more participatory, student-centred, educational pedagogies that foster active citizenship.

Finally, these findings contribute to previous studies on HRE in Korea, which have focused more on identifying and describing the level and types of human rights content included in textbooks. They help us understand how global models such as HRE are negotiated at the level of the intended curriculum in Korea and that human rights concepts are re-interpreted, hybridized and adapted strategically to reflect local circumstances.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rennie J. Moon

Rennie J. Moon is an Associate Professor at the Underwood International College at Yonsei University. Her research has focused on topics related to globalization and education, citizenship education and higher education systems in Asia.

Notes

1. The three themes to be explored in this unit are as follows: (1) Understand the importance of guaranteeing human rights, and explore the types of basic rights guaranteed by the Korean constitution, and the content and limitations of basic rights restrictions. (2) Analyse cases where human rights are violated in everyday life, and investigate remedies by state agencies. (3) Understand workers’ rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and investigate cases of violations of labour rights and remedies (Ministry of Education, 2015, p. 39).

2. Some examples include peace education, Holocaust education and education for intercultural understanding.

3. There are a total of 9 publishers for middle school moral education textbooks and 8 publishers for social studies textbooks.

4. Article 29 states that: (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

5. In this textbook, Hongik in’gan is defined as ‘the founding ideology of Gojoseon (old Korea) concerned with the welfare of the human race. Our nation’s supreme ideology in politics, education and culture. (Lee et al., 2017, p. 202)

6. Respecting God and fellow humans.

7. A controversial, South Korean law enforced in 1948 that criminalizes comments or propaganda deemed “pro-North Korean” or “anti-government”, seen by some as outdated and abusive.

8. Understanding what actors (textbooks publishers, individual authors) and processes (national curricular guidelines) shape the way in which information is presented (for example, through a strategy of abstraction as described here) requires further research into the textbook production process.