As one of the core features of modern states, universal schooling provided a tool with which to disseminate the skills and knowledge demanded by the new era of industrialization and interstate competition, as well as to impart what it meant to be a citizen. Citizenship education, in fact, or "civics," lay at the heart of the education enterprise in the modern world, reflecting the new circumstances of competing nation-states and hence prioritizing the cultivation of the population’s identification with and allegiance to a particular nation and/or the state.  An education system, then, came to be regarded as a strategic necessity if not entirely an idealistic or humanitarian one. 

This presentation explores modern Korean state making through an examination of citizen education at the turn of the 20th century.  How did the larger purpose of universal schooling and citizenship education evolve as the Korean state underwent so many dramatic shifts in form, function, and even sovereignty?  What role did the educational institutions, from the state bureaucracy to the schools themselves, play in spreading the lessons of loyalty, allegiance, and identity?  And finally, How did Confucian ethics and statecraft affect the demands of the modern schooling system?  Indeed the legacies of pre-20th century Korea extended well into the colonial era (1910-45), including the period of wartime mobilization in the 1930s and 40s, when schooling became central to the intensified, radical assimilation policy of turning Koreans into "imperial subjects."

Professor Hwang conducts research on the modern transformation of Korea, broadly conceived.  He is the author of Beyond Birth: Social Status in the Emergence of Modern Korea (2004), and co-edited, with Professor Gi-Wook Shin of Stanford, Contentious Kwangju:  The May 1980 Uprising in Korea's Past and Present (2003).  His latest book, History of Korea: An Episodic Narrative (Palgrave Macmillan) is expected to be published in 2010.  He teaches courses on Korean history and society, East Asian and world history at the University of Southern California.  He is a graduate of Oberlin College (AB) and Harvard University (Ph.D).

This seminar is supported by a generous grant from Koret Foundation.

Although South Korea is recovering relatively quickly from the worldwide recession in the wake of the U.S. financial sector crisis, it must address major structural weaknesses if it is to sustain growth over the long term. The Korean manufacturing sector is one of the world’s strongest and most efficient, but the services and (much smaller) agriculture sectors remain weak. Former senior South Korean economic policy official Byongwon Bahk argues that only by benchmarking the near miraculous success of its manufacturing sector can Korea convert traditionally weak sectors into new sources of job creation and foreign currency earnings. He will explain the necessity of, and obstacles to, inducing capital, technologies, and marketing from advanced companies in advanced countries; supporting R&D activities and education and training in weak sectors; and opening weak sectors to domestic and foreign competition.

Byongwon Bahk, a former senior South Korean government official, is the Korean Studies Program’s 2009-2010 Koret Fellow. During the past decade, he was in charge of the management of Korean macro-economic policy at the Ministry of Finance and Economy, including as vice minister. Most recently, he served in the Blue House as the senior economic advisor to President Lee Myung-bak. He received a BA and an MA in Law from Seoul National University, an MA in Industrial Engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Korea, and an MA in Economics from University of Washington.

This event is supported by a generous grant from the Koret Foundation.

This talk will examine the challenges and problems that South Korea faces on its way to full-fledged democracy. The ideological composition of Korean society, the role of political parties, civil society and media as well as the attitude of public intellectuals will be assessed.

Se Il Park is a 2008-09 visiting scholar at APARC’s Korean Studies Program, and a professor of law and economics in the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University. He is the founder and the chairman of the board of Hansun Foundation for Freedom and Happiness, an independent, non-partisan think tank based in Seoul devoted to providing innovative and practical public policy recommendations to South Korean society at large.

Park is the author of many books, including Communitarian Liberalism (2008); National Strategy for Sunjinwha in Korea (National strategy to make Korea a world-class nation) (2006); Blueprint for Tertiary Education Reform in Korea (2003); Strategy for Presidential Success: Authority, Role, and Responsibility (2002); Growth, Productivity, and Vision for Korean Economy (2001); Reforming Labor Management Relations: lessons from the Korean experience: 1996-1997 (2000); and Law and Economics (2000).

Park served as Senior Secretary to the President for policy planning and social welfare in the Office of the President of the Republic of Korea from 1995 to 1998, and was a member of National Assembly of the Republic of Korea from 2004 to 2005. He also worked at the Korea Development Institute as a Senior Fellow from 1980 to 1985. Park received his B.A. from Seoul National University and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell University.

This event is supported by the generous grant from Academy of Korean Studies in Korea.

With the collapse of Soviet Union and a lack of internal energy resources, North Korea has been in economic hardships since early 1990s. Chung will discuss how the shortage of electric power has affected not only the operations of factories but the daily lives of North Koreans. He will also examine how North Korea has attempted to rehabilitate its energy sector internally and in external relations with neighboring countries as well as in the Six-Party Talks.

Lee will evaluate North Korean nuclear technology based on his analysis of North Korea’s National Science and Technology Development Plan and of its historical background. He
will examine the priorities in disabling of North Korea’s nuclear capacity.

Joon Young Chung is a reporter at Yonhap News, a Korean news wire service, and has worked in various departments including the national desk, business desk and the North Korea desk for the past 14 years. Recently he has covered Inter-Korean Dialogue and the Six-Party Talks.

Choongeun Lee is a Research Fellow at the Science & Technology Policy Institute (STEPI) in Korea. Before joining STEPI, he worked at the Yanbian University of Science & Technology, Chinese Academy of Science, and Peking University in China. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. in engineering from Seoul National University in Korea, and Ph.D. in education from Beijing Normal University in China.

On March 18, 1871, Taewongun (Grand Prince) who held real power when King Kojong (r. 1863-1907) assumed power at the age of 12, issued a historical order that was enforced nationwide: All Confucian private academies ever built, except for the forty-seven royal-chartered ones, were to be destroyed. To justify this unprecedented repression, Taewongun argued that the academies were "the fundamental causes for the decaying nation." During the period from 1865 to 1871, over 800 academies were abolished and these intermediate organizations largely disappeared from the central scene of the Korean history and politics. Taewongun's startling regulation of private academies was rather surprising. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Choson monarchs enthusiastically encouraged and sponsored the establishment of the academies on the ground that the academy growth would contribute to country's moral reform and state-building. Why did the dramatic change of governmental policy on the academies occur? How can we resolve this historical enigma? To answer these questions, Koo situates this historical drama in a broader -structural- sociological context involving political competition between the state and nascent civil society, in association with his aim of overcoming the current historical explanations emphasizing more imminent causes of the abolition, such as military and fiscal abuses of the academies.

Jeong-Woo Koo is a visiting scholar at the department of sociology, Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University in 2007. His interests include comparative-historical sociology, organizations, sociology of education, political sociology, quantitative method, and East-Asian studies. His dissertation explores a long term political competition between state and civil society in Choson Korea. He is currently working on two projects, one on the worldwide expansion of international human rights and its impact on nation-states (with John Meyer and Francisco Ramirez), and the other on the formation of regionalism in East Asia (with Gi-Wook Shin). His publications include "The Origins of the Public Sphere and Civil Society: Private Academies and Petitions in Korea, 1506-1800," Social Science History 31: 3 (Fall 2007), and "World Society and Human Rights: Worldwide Foundings of National Human Rights Institutions, 1978-2004," Korean Journal of Sociology 41: 3 (Spring 2007).