Our Country’s Direction Towards America Built and Maintained: 1940s-Today

Many of us, South Koreans, have become blindfolded in seeing Americanness within our country because we have become so familiar to it. To understand how South Koreans came to be sentimentally close to the US and to prefer American knowledge and values, I researched where and when our country’s dependency on the US originated and how America’s presence has solidified in South Korea over time. I looked at the forces inside and outside of our country that helped the US settle down in our country’s society and what narratives were used to justify America’s long-term presence within South Korea. I investigated the second half of the 20th century in Korea for my research, starting from a period of our country rebuilding its political and cultural identities that got erased by the Japanese Occupation1910-1945, the US military government in Korea1945-1948, and the Korean War1950-1953 (See Appendix C) to the present.

Post-Korean War, while the US military dominated the Korean peninsula, the US Department of State carefully organized projects to spread and amplify American values through the locals in Korea. According to Chung (2005), the US desired to bring “gradual social change in South Korea” by making the country “advance through Westernization and removal of local traditions” (p. 68). To execute their plan, they needed to encourage Korean scholars, who had the power to “spread slogans and doctrines that justify the advancement of the Korean society” (Chung, 2005, p. 68).[1] The US invited Korean elites of various fields to come and study in the US. This tactic was placed to form groups of individuals that would later return and hold their pro-US stance and implant American values, systems, and culture in Korea (Cha, 2018; Kern, 2009). The South Koreans that went to study abroad in the US came back to our country not only with the technology they got from the US but also with sentiments of envy and longing.

“1960년대에 미국 유학을 갔다 온 사람들, 미국을 가본 사람들은 지금도 미국을 엄청 좋게 생각해요. 그런 경향이 있어요.”[2] (김어준, 2023, 59:20)

My interviewees all highlighted how South Koreans, until this day, have sentiments of owe and thankfulness to the US for their support during and after the Korean War. My parents emphasized how our country was under the pressure of erasing Japanese culture because it recalled Koreans’ memories of the brutal occupation, as well as living through a period of seeing loads of foreign products for the first time, which raised curiosity and envy amongst Koreans. Youn-jin Kim (2005) writes, “Under the tense structure of Cold War between the US and Soviets and the hostile confrontation that escalated more than ever, South Korea’s survival depended on its intimate and friendly relation with the US” (pp. 19-20). As such a narrative directed our country, South Koreans, especially those who had been to the US, became emotionally attached to America; they considered themselves part of America and felt the need to support the US (Chung, 2005). Our country’s envy and longing lead to individual’s desires of following America, and further, of becoming one of those Americans they experienced themselves. Not only did South Koreans get America’s systems and values but also learn “to think like Americans and to act like Americans” (Kim Y., 2005, p.25). Yim Chun Sung (2009) writes that South Korean society grew to connect emotionally and to share sentiments with the US beyond being familiar. The consciousness of many South Korean individuals, including myself in my teenage years, have desired America as we learned to gain power in our country’s society with American values. As multiple interviewees said, South Koreans mimicking and showing off their American-ness are often shown in our country’s popular media and in real life. In a society that has respected America as the most advanced model, South Koreans began to recognize knowledge from America as power. The modernization theory America had brought into our country in 1940s made South Koreans to prefer American values over Korean traditions. As many interviewees pointed out, our country has absorbed America over the past 70 years that American culture has now become part of us, and its evolution is shown through the content our country produces.

Curious about why such positive reactions toward America formed within South Korean public opinion, I researched the relationship between our country’s press and the US. South Korean journalists and editors were among the numerous bodies that went to the US for education and training. In the 1950s and 1960s, the US Department of State created many business projects of inviting leading figures from the Korean press to study in the US and sending several American scholars in the journalism field to South Korea to teach and train our local journalists and editors. Along the movement of the bodies traveling between the two countries to bring the knowledge of American journalism to South Korea, “The atmosphere to support a deeper understanding of the US and alliance with them were created amongst the South Korean journalists” (Cha, 2018, p. 247). The dedication and loyalty amongst our country’s journalists towards the US last until today, leaving South Korean public with the wonder – for whom is our country’s press writing?

There were forces in Korea that hindered South Korean public gaining knowledge - the knowledge that would allow South Koreans to see the reality they were in, the knowledge that would let public opinion to roar. Between the 1940s and 1960s, the US military and the Rhee administration forced the South Korean press that questioned the excessive number of the US military bases or criticized their harm to South Korean society to close their business down (Cha, 2018; Kim, 2005). Under national media control, our country’s press did not and could not show their “interest in how Korean culture and lifestyles were facing changes and conflicts” (Kim, 2005, p. 19).

Kim Yong Ho (2011) writes about how South Korean researchers were only allowed to access information provided by the US during the second half of the 20th century when the information coming from the Soviets was banned in South Korea due to the clash of ideologies. The pro-US South Korean elites lead our country’s society, helping America build its duplicate within our country (Chung, 2012). Since the 1960s, the US Embassy and US Cultural Centers in South Korea have kept our local elites within their boundaries and continuously met up with them to remind the solidarity between the US and South Korea (Chung, 2005, 2012). Our local elites helped reproduce positive perspectives towards America and the hostility towards America’s political opponent such as North Korea and China, as the US had hoped (Choi et al., 2021; Kim Y., 2005; Uhm, 2011). 

While the controlled conditions of years after the division produced perspectives framing America positively, the United States Information Service Korea USIS Korea distributed American films across South Korea in the 1950s and 1960s. “The number of American films spread as propaganda [from the 1950s] until 1961 counted four times more than the films that the Korean government during Rhee Syngman’s term was putting out” (Kim D., 2005, p. 167). As discussed in the previous chapter, American popular media was the most used channel to familiarize South Koreans with the US and continues to have a solid presence in our country’s film market.

아는 만큼 보인다 - is a Korean saying, one can see as much as they know. How could we begin discussing what Americanness within our country is doing to us, or how we are making it stronger ourselves, when we have lived the past seven decades practicing to not see or distinguish America from us? The younger generations of South Koreans, like myself, are born in a space where Americanness floats like air. We learn to crawl, walk, and run on and towards the American knowledge our previous generations have gotten from the white elite bodies of the US, before learning the history of the American presence within our country. When I shared my findings on how the US had controlled Korea since the 1940s with my interviewees, they expressed how surprising it is to learn about America’s deliberate moves to make our country stay close to them over the past seven decades. In common, all interviewees pointed out the absence of content covering America’s influence on South Korea and its consequences in our country’s classrooms. The following were a few reactions from my interviewees:

“No, they only teach us that Rhee Syngman was our country’s first president, but not much about what he did or the US or their intervention on us. Teachers are careful with handling the modern period or criticizing America because they fear getting their ideology asked.” (H. Ryu, Personal communication, 11 March 2023) 

“My history teachers were so passionate, they wrote and drew on the blackboards in class teaching us all the way from the Bronze Age to the modern - but we had to wrap up the modern history in a hurry because by the time history teachers handled the modern period, it was the end of winter, and the school year was almost over. … But we didn’t have any content in our history classes learning about America’s control or intervention in Korea. We learned about the US military helping us during the Korean War and Rhee Syngman being our first president. … I had my parents telling me at home that we would have been able to get rid of the pro-Japanese forces within Korea if we did not have Rhee Syngman, or as people say, we fastened the first button of the shirt wrong, but not while I was at school.” (Y. Ha, Personal communication, 10 March 2023)

“When I used to teach at middle schools – and that was already in the early 2000s – if we said anything political in classes, parents would call the school and ask us what kind of ideology we are teaching the kids. So as teachers, we learned not to add any political tones. We just handled the content in the textbook as it was and did not add anything additional. … When I was growing up, I did not learn anything about the relation between the US and the Soviets in depth. Or the details of Rhee Syngman. After I grew and read some additional books, I realized that the materials written in our school textbooks were beautified.” (K. Cho, Personal communication, 12 March 2023, 23 April 2023)

Spending more time in American classrooms than I did in classrooms back home, I learned to read my country’s past and present through the words and perspective of the US. Although my interviewees and I each grew up and studied in different environments, we were all similar in being unaware of how deep America and its narratives have come to penetrate our country’s society through various tactics. In many ways, South Koreans, throughout the generations, have been blindfolded when it comes to seeing America within our country and ourselves. America has been part of our country over seven decades; many projects and groups of forces were involved in making the American presence merge into the South Korean society. Following the modernization theory America fed our country, South Korea ran after the US; South Koreans chased the advancement white American knowledge had emphasized - to disregard what is old, and to adapt to the American culture and values. What came along with the adaptation and familiarization was our public’s sentimental closeness to America, especially amongst the bodies that went to America to get training that later became key figures in anchoring our country to the US. The positive image of the US that has been taught and embedded in South Korean society, together with political and economic conditions that are tied to the US, hinders us from detaching ourselves or to refusing the American influence. But what does our country’s closeness with the US – that used to be dependency for a long time – do to the current South Korean individuals? How does the saturation of America within our country affect us, especially at this time when we are putting out Korean content to the outside world?

[1] The US Department of State had its task forces constantly making reports in the 1950s and 1960s that highlighted how “the US needs to encourage South Korea to go through a gradual social change… through the intellects” (Chung, 2005, p. 68).

[2] Rhyu Si-min says, “Those who went to go study or travel in America in the 1960s still think so positively about America. There is such a tendency to do so.” (Kim Eo-jun, 2023, 59:20)