Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

the Social Studies Curriculum (2015) alludes specifically to the reality of national
separation, the existence of North Korea, and the importance of unification
(pp. 118, 119, 140, 141, 164, 209, 295 and 311). Otherwise, students are portrayed as
belonging to a nation encompassing the whole peninsula and sharing a common
culture epitomised by the spirit of ‘Hongik Ingan’, 27 traceable to the legacy of
the earliest Korean kings. Indeed, this is spelt out at the very beginning of the
National Guidelines for Elementary and Secondary Education (Korea, Republic
of, 2015). Until 2007, the official curriculum did not acknowledge, let alone
countenance, the existence of ethnic or cultural diversity in Korean society. This
has since changed significantly (see below), but dominant visions of ‘Koreanness’
still reflect an assumption of homogeneity.
In Korea, as in China and Japan, national identity
is typically depicted as immemorially ancient,
ancestrally conferred and distinguished by an
immutable cultural ‘essence’. Curricula celebrate
and promote the achievement of technological
progress, exhorting students to excel above all in
the pursuit of scientific knowledge; but the nations
for whose sake that knowledge is ultimately to
be deployed are generally depicted as ancient,
timeless, culturally unique and homogenous.
War and Peace in the Narrating of National Histories
In Korea, as in China and
Japan, national identity
is typically depicted as
immemorially ancient,
ancestrally conferred
and distinguished by
an immutable cultural
‘essence’
An ‘othering’ of the West in the assertion of cultural uniqueness is one key
strand in official identity discourse across East Asia, coexisting (somewhat
paradoxically) with an intense emphasis on ‘catching up’ with Western powers
(Mochizuki, 2004). In the case of Korea and China, a similar combination of selfconscious
distancing and developmental envy has been evident in attitudes to
Japan (Morris, Shimazu and Vickers, 2013, Introduction). This phenomenon is
intermeshed with the ‘othering’ of supposedly inferior groups (Dikotter, 1997),
and with narratives of the recent past that locate enemies closer to home (Morris,
Shimazu and Vickers, 2013). The latter relate especially to divergent accounts
of the twentieth century wars, the subject of claims by all the major East Asian
players to special victimhood. In contemporary China, the focus has shifted
somewhat from victimhood to pride in the country’s pivotal contribution to the
Allied victory over ‘fascism’. However, for China, as (with some qualification) for
Korea, the violation of innocence precedes and ennobles the march to eventual
victory. And for Japan, China and Korea alike, commemorating the suffering
inflicted by external forces precludes much acknowledgement of victimhood
or villainy as phenomena transcending national borders. Rather than resolving
legacies of animosity, this helps to ossify them.
27 Roughly translatable as ‘broad beneficence to humanity’.
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Chapter 3: East Asia