The Modernization Theory 근대화론

South Koreans have learned to read our country in the past and our traditions as incompetent and therefore needed to advance like the West through the modernization narrative America brought on us in the 1940s (Chung, 2005; Shim et al., 2012). Hierarchy has been attached to knowledge and value in South Korea, where we learn to distinguish what is American or Western superior to ours. When rebuilding our country after Korean War in the 1950s, there was the mission to get rid of the traces left from the Japanese Occupation and to civilize our country following the advancement theory the American scholars had brought into our country in the 1940s. Under the narrative of the US helping South Korea get advanced, the US has become the great other in forming our country’s self-identity in the modern period. (Chung, 2012; Lee 2020). During the seven decades of actively bringing knowledge from the US and residing with the US military within Korea, South Korea has voluntarily imitated America’s systems, values, habits, and lifestyles (Kim S., 2007; Kim Y., 2005). South Korea, built and lead by our elites trained with the white American knowledge, absorbed American values and culture and merged them with ours.

The modernization theory America has brought into Korea, arguing Korea advances through adapting the Western influences, not only made us depend on the knowledge from the white American bodies. It made us rationalize in getting rid of our ancestors’ knowledge and traditions and in seeing such as outdated and inferior to the ones of the West.