Korean Educational Exceptionalism and the Past: The Education in Korea SeriesMartin Gehlmann

ASIEN – Nr. 174/175 (2025) pp. 44–74

Abstract:
South Korea’s remarkable educational performance is sometimes attributed to an enduring cultural zeal for learning, widely described as ‘education fever’. Yet despite this narrative’s prominence in public discourse and official publications, little research has been done on how and when the idea of a historically rooted educational exceptionalism first emerged in state-sponsored accounts. This study addresses this gap by analysing the Education in Korea white paper series, published by the South Korean Ministry of Education from 1962 to the present. The article systematically compares the historical chapters and ministerial forewords across all thirty-eight volumes of the series, tracing shifts in terminology, narrative emphasis, and rhetorical strategy. The analysis shows that a nationalist reinterpretation of the history of education began to take shape in the late 1960s and gained momentum in the 1970s and 1980s. During this period, premodern educational traditions were increasingly portrayed as the foundation of Korea’s rapid postwar modernization, producing a retroactive projection of contemporary educational achievements onto the past. I argue that the notion of Koreans’ historic educational zeal crystallized in the late 1970s as an expedient nationalist explanation for the country’s economic growth, prompting a broader reinterpretation of Korea’s educational history as inherently exceptional.

Keywords: South Korea, education, history of education, education fever