Education Fever

7. Education and State Control

192 7 Education and State Control South Korea’s education was not only extraordinarily competitive and expensive, but it also was highly political. Educational systems are integral parts of modern states and play a crucial role in in¶uencing political behavior and maintaining political systems. The Rhee, Park, and Chun administrations used the educational system to enhance their control over the state apparatus and strengthen the power of the South Korean state over society. In pursuit of such objectives, the state made full use of the nation’s rapidly growing student population: it organized and mobilized students to demonstrate and display public support for government policies, promote loyalty to the state regime, and disseminate political information. None of this created the country ’s “education fever,” but it provided a degree of regimentation as well as discipline to the nation’s schools, which in turn contributed to the pressure-cooker atmosphere of South Korean education. The emphasis on military drills and political indoctrination also generated impatience among students and parents, who wanted to focus on academic pursuits. It also alienated a segment of teachers and students who resented the heavy-handed political manipulation and the hypocrisy and self-serving nature of government propaganda. mobilizing students and militarizing education under rhee The South Korean government’s educational objectives were given urgency by the social and political turmoil that characterized the post-liberation years. education and state control 193 The formation of the educational system after 1948 took place in an unstable political environment in which national security was an all-consuming concern for the new government. The main reason for this instability was the fact that the South Korean state was the product of a divided nation. From the onset , the division of the nation into two rival regimes was almost universally regarded as tragic and unacceptable. Korea was a homogeneous nation with thirteen centuries of national unity; its new division was based on an arbitrary boundary with no geographical or cultural logic to it. Families found themselves divided, and hundreds of thousands of refugees from the north living in the south created a powerful lobby for reuni¤cation. Koreans generally conceived of the South Korean state as a temporary unit that would function only as long as it took to reconstitute a united Korea. Meanwhile, the South Korean state found itself in competition with a North Korean political entity that offered an alternative version of national development. Another serious reason for the South Korean state’s instability was the weak nationalist credentials of its leadership. The majority of the of¤cials serving in the Syngman Rhee administration and most of the leaders of the opposition were tainted with collaboration. Although the bureaucrats and politicians were little different from the vast majority of Koreans, who had simply compromised with the Japanese authorities as they tried to maintain their daily lives, the political and moral authority of the state was undermined by the fact that it was commanded and served mainly by those who not only had cooperated, but also had often prospered under colonial rule. Despite the repression of leftist elements under the U.S. military regime, there were still pro-Communist and pro–North Korea sympathizers in South Korea. The Rhee administration also faced ¤erce opposition from moderate and rightist political opponents, both within and outside of the National Assembly . Many of these opponents in 1948 favored a parliamentary form of government , while Rhee and his allies favored a presidential system with broad powers concentrated in the chief executive. To undermine the Rhee government , opponents of the administration in the National Assembly secured passage of the National Traitors Act on 7 September 1948 and began setting up separate investigation machinery to eliminate those within the bureaucracy who had collaborated with the Japanese. As the majority of government of¤cials could have fallen into this category, the act was a provocative attack on the administration and a threat to the entire national bureaucracy and police. 194 education and state control Just how unstable the new regime was became apparent only weeks after the Republic of Korea was proclaimed. On 13 September 1948, the American military completed the transfer of administration to the Koreans, and on 13 October the United States began to withdraw its troops. A week later, units of the newly formed Army of the Republic of Korea, assembled in the southern port of Yôsu on their way...