Curriculum Theorizing as Post-Colonial Text: Post-Orientalism and Young Chun Kim’s Life’s Work in South Korea

Abstract

Research on post-colonial curricula in non-Western countries continues to expand, with contributions from many scholars around the world. Many of these authors argue that post-colonial theories and the implications of those theories can help elucidate how colonial hegemony and ideology have affected the dominant discourse regarding curriculum studies discourse in non-Western nations. Despite the efforts that have been made, the field of curriculum studies in South Korea lacks context-relevant post-colonial perspectives and practical approaches to developing new post-colonial knowledge based on its own language, culture, history, and epistemologies. This article explores the life’s work of one Korean post-colonial curriculum scholar. Based on a document analysis and an in-depth interview process, the following discussion conceptualizes three themes related to post-colonial curriculum studies: (1) production of indigenous qualitative research texts, (2) identification of new curriculum phenomenon from the local, and (3) creation of new concepts and languages for international curriculum research. This analysis can inform how curriculum scholars in South Korea and other non-Western regions approach post-colonial curriculum research in a specific nation.

Keywords

postcolonial studies qualitative research Korean studies Asian studies socially responsible qualitative research

Introduction

I await a Korean curriculum scholar whose theory is respected and accepted in the Western academia as does Paolo Freire’s (Y. C. Kim, 1997, p. 215).

Within the social sciences, knowledge production remains under “the theoretical power houses in the North/West” (Takayama, 2016, p. 71). However, abundant ammunition is available to fuel postcolonial discourse problematizing this continuing legacy of epistemological domination by the West. One example is post-colonial research, which has become a key topic within the field of curriculum studies over the past three decades (Asher, 2009; Coloma, 2009; Paraskeva, 2016; Zhao, 2020). The types of analysis, critique, and conceptualization used in this discourse are central to understanding the lasting influence of knowledge production and dissemination that is still dominated by Western epistemologies, theories, and methodologies. To this end, non-Western scholars have participated in the proliferation and development of post-colonial curriculum studies in regions of the world including Africa (Shizha, 2013), Central and South America (Paraskeva, 2016; Sussekind, 2014), and Asia (J.-H. Joo, 2008; J. Park, 2017; Takayama, 2016, 2017). These non-Western scholars have worked to advance the field of post-colonial curriculum studies (Asher, 2009; Bristol, 2012; Coloma, 2009; Hudson, 2003). Many have argued that by exploring post-colonial theories, as well as their implications, it is possible to elucidate how colonial hegemony and ideology has affected and continues to affect the dominant discourse of curriculum studies. Another important issue is the colonial legacy, which continues to affect colonized educational structures and practices (Asher, 2009), as discussed by scholars in Asian countries such as China (Zhao, 2020), Japan (Takayama, 2016), South Korea (J.-H. Joo, 2008) Hong Kong (Choi Tse, 2007; Kan, 2011), and Singapore (Moosavi, 2020).

In this context, Asian scholars have actively engaged in important discourse. For example, one Taiwanese scholar published Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization (Chen, 2010), critiquing the continuing influence of colonial power from historical, economic, and educational perspectives. This work was in response to “the hundred years of Western consolidation and imperial expansion that were built on different historical experiences, languages, memories, and genealogies of thought” (Tlostanova & Mignolo, 2012, p. 32).

Within this discourse, some scholars have criticized the epistemological domination by the West, and some are openly resentful. For example, wa Thiong’o (1994) suggested not using English and used this approach himself. With regard to epistemological percpectives, Paraskeva (2016) used the concept of “epistemicide” to critique the domination of epistemologies of the West—thereby excluding the other. The West has determined what counts as appropriate research topics and knowledge. Who judges whether a research topic is relevant or irrelevant? Generally, when a research topic is outside “the purview of colonial apparatus,” it is conceived as “nonexistent, subhuman, or, at least, irrelevant” (Darder, 2016, p. 13) Paraskeva (2016) argued that postcolonial researchers are engaging in powerful action by finding new research topics and developing them as a new discourse within the field of curriculum studies.

What can a scholar do when he or she believes that decolonization is not a metaphor? Spivak (1993) argued that critiquing, resisting, and developing strategies for decolonization are all difficult to theorize because these actions only apply to situations or places from which the strategy has been developed. This could be why colonial forces still have so much power even within those who were previously colonized, due to the cognitive learning processes behind postcolonial theories. For example, a reader situated within a previously colonized setting who reads Spivak’s (1993) Outside in the Teaching Machine would not be comfortably guided toward a new stage of consciousness or existence, due to the continuing forces of colonialism. Therefore, Paraskeva (2016) argued for “transforming our labor into a living praxis [emphasis added] of global cognitive justice” (p. xiii). By doing so, we may create space “in which [we] (re)imagine and transform the rigid, disembodied, fractured, and reductive ideologies that plague our teaching and our lives” (Paraskeva, 2016, p. xiii). The question remains: where can we find examples of spaces that have been created for emancipatory epistemologies that allow us to (re)imagine new ways of living as curriculum scholars? This will be the focus on the following discussion.

This article conceptualizes research practices used within the field of post-colonial curriculum studies, taking a Korean scholar’s life’s work as an exemplar. It utilizes a document analysis of his life’s work and an in-depth interview process to conceptualize three dimensions of post-colonial curriculum studies that characterize the field in a non-Western country. This analysis is likely to serve as a foundation enabling further theorization of post-colonial curriculum research in South Korea, and will provide exemplary possibilities for scholars who are conducting post-colonial curriculum research in non-Western regions.

Historic Review of Young Chun Kim’s Exploration for Postcolonial Curriculum Studies

In South Korea, research on post-colonial curriculum studies has lagged other countries, but has begun to emerge within the last three decades. Early efforts involved critiquing the domination of Western theories and philosophies in Korean curriculum studies and the lack of efforts to include Korean philosophies (Lee, 2006; M. Park, 2005; Ryu, 1997). To build on this kind of theoretical discussion, Korean researchers have been engaging in post-colonial studies for the last two decades. Examples include a study on the characteristics of Korean modernization by Japanese colonization (B. Y. Kim, 2004), an investigation into postcolonial instruction and learning in literature education (Choi, 2008), an analysis of geography textbooks (Y. C. Kim, 2010), an examination of ideological reproduction in world history textbooks (J.-H. Joo, 2008), and an introduction of postcolonial theories into South Korea (Hong, 2010). However, there has been little discussion of indigenous postcolonialism in the context of developing Korean post-colonial curriculum discourse and theorizing new concepts and ideas based on Korean history, culture, language, and epistemology.

Young Chun Kim endeavored to build an academic community of post-colonial curriculum studies as a serious curriculum discourse in South Korea. Kester referred to Kim as a leading scholar and theorist with a Southern or Eastern perspective whose works “disrupt [the] normalization and overrepresentation of [Western theories]” (Kester et al., 2020, p. 12). Kim et al. have produced Korean texts over the past three decades criticizing post-colonialism in South Korea, but his article Post-Colonialism and the Reconceptualization of Korean Curriculum Studies (Y. C. Kim, 2005a) announced the emergence of post-colonial curriculum studies in South Korea on an international stage. In it, Y. C. Kim (2005a) analyzed the last 50 years of Korean educational studies based on three characteristics: “curriculum of translation,” “curriculum of abstract theories,” and “curriculum of domestication.” He argued that Korean curriculum/educational studies have “fallen prey to American concepts and methodologies, …. [failing to] establish its own creative and research culture” (Y. C. Kim, 2005a, p. 60). He made a few suggestions for working against the Western influence in school education and academic culture. The thematic areas he identified included “analyzing Korean school curriculum,” “developing postcolonial curriculum,” “centering decentered Korean phenomena,” “demystifying validities of US curriculum theories,” and “self-reflexivity.” Upon retrospective analysis, Y. C. Kim’s (2010) work can be considered post-colonial curriculum research. He also published an article in Curriculum Inquiry titled “Transnational Curriculum Studies: Reconceptualization Discourse in South Korea” and attempted to introduce the topics of postcolonialism and multiculturalism into the fields of education and curriculum studies for Western scholars.

Kim was not the only scholar working in this new movement. Some of his students and other junior Korean scholars working in South Korea and the U.S. joined him in acknowledging the importance of this new academic project and contributing to these efforts. Examples include Jaehong Joo (Chinju National University of Education), Seungho Moon (Loyola University Chicago), Dongsung Lee (Jeonju National University of Education), Sangwon Jung (Chunchon National University of Education), Jae-seong Jo (Chinju National University of Education), SungEun Min (University of Georgia), and Seongho Choi (University of Wisconsin-Madison). Among them, Jaehong Joo took a leading role in the development of the postcolonial discourse of curriculum studies in the South Korean context. J.-H. Joo and Kim (2010) co-authored several articles on postcolonial curriculum studies wherein they discussed the value of postcolonial studies within the discourse of international education context, theoretical, and conceptual examinations of culturally diverse education in South Korea, a theorization of methodological strategies for postcolonial multiculturalism in South Korea (Y. C. Kim et al., 2013), a critical examination of Korean curriculum studies aiming to identify key themes representing major components of postcolonial curriculum research (J.-H. Joo & Kim, 2017), identifying new research areas of curriculum studies in South Korea from postmodern and deconstructive perspectives (Y. C. Kim & Joo, 2009), and critical examinations of prominent figures of postmodern curriculum studies and implications for Korean curriculum studies (J.-H. Joo & Kim, 2010). These articles have provided Korean curriculum scholars with a valuable theoretical foundation for postcolonial studies as well as ideas for possible future research topics in South Korea and beyond.

The efforts made in postcolonial curriculum research by Kim et al. continue to cross national boundaries. For example, Y. C. Kim et al. (2013) published Elusive Images of the Other: A Postcolonial Analysis of South Korean World History Textbooks in Educational Studies, in which they examined how Eurocentric and colonial formation and practices are (re)produced in world history textbooks throughout the nation. This work is of historical significance: it elucidated the development of post-colonial studies in South Korea, and is arguably the first work of its type by Korean scholars published in an international journal. It served as a catalyst for the development of post-colonial curriculum theories, by describing the conceptual themes used in post-colonial curriculum studies: “construction of Subject/Other,” “discourses of inclusion/exclusion,” “silencing of voices,” and “narratives of re/colonization.” Based on these conceptual advancements, the authors earned the Best Article of the Year Award from the Journal of the American Educational Studies Association.

Young Chun Kim has also been working to spread academic awareness and address the cultural considerations necessary for postcolonial curriculum studies. He has presented at many academic events such as conferences, invited lectures, and workshops. The following discussion explores and documents these academic activities, with the goal of creating an official record of how Korean postcolonial curriculum studies have developed over the past few decades. Many of Kim’s lectures focused on how Korean curriculum studies should move forward in terms of overcoming the colonized academic culture. Examples include Korean Curriculum Studies as Imprisoned Reasoning: Emancipating Essay for Reterritorialization and Flight (2006), Postcolonialism and Curriculum Inquiry (2006), and Qualitative Inquiry, Difference, and Postcolonialism: “Bad Shadow Education,” Reinterpretation of the Hatred (2018). In 2013, Kim gave a keynote speech, “Current State and Future of Qualitative Inquiry in Korean Educational Studies: Postmodernism and possibilities of small stories” at the conference celebrating the 60-year anniversary of Korean Educational Research Association. This conference was attended by more than 500 professors, graduate students, practitioners, and policy-makers gathered, making it the largest academic conference of educational researchers ever held in South Korea. Kim’s keynote speech urged Korean researchers to begin to think about the meaning and value of raising historically, culturally, and ethnically relevant and specific questions toward a new Korean research culture.

Kim has also organized many conference sessions and seminars on the topic of postcolonial curriculum studies. One example is a session called “Difference, White Mythologies, Empire Writes Back, and Post-colonial Curriculum Studies” that Kim organized for the 2019 Annual Conference of Korean Association for Qualitative Inquiry. The overarching theme of the session presentations was strategic, practical, and theoretical approaches for entering the international academic field of postcolonial studies, which has long been dominated by researchers in the West. The session presentations include Criteria of Postcolonial Analysis for Korean school curriculum (Jaehong Joo), What makes South Korean students smarter than Western students?: Analyzing Gifted Education Hakwons (Jae-seong Jo), Whose Concepts and Ideas are we Using in Education and Social Science in South Korea? (Jung-Hoon Jung), and Shadow Education as an Emerging Focus in Worldwide Curriculum Studies (Sungho Choi & Young Chun Kim). Another notable academic event related to this topic was the Forum of Qualitative Research for Graduate Students in Chinju National University of Education, South Korea; this is a biannual local forum that Kim founded for college professors and graduate students in the field of qualitative studies. At its 8th forum in 2020, Kim presented an essay entitled, under the era of post-colonial curriculum studies: Who leads the trend in the East Asian Context? He referred to the work of three leading scholars in theorizing a framework for postcolonial curriculum studies in East Asian contexts and discussed their main features and strengths. Kim has also presented keynote speeches and invited lectures on similar themes.

More recently, Kim has taken another path in his scholarship of post-colonial curriculum studies by charting a new curriculum studies discourse. Informed by his fieldwork over the past 15 years and critical analyses of the international scholarship of private supplementary tutoring, commonly known as shadow education, he argues that interpretations of East Asian educational/curriculum phenomena have often been misled, specifically those regarding the SE of East Asian educational phenomenon and learning culture. For example, SE has often been associated with negative images such as “evils of private tuition” (Foondun, 2002), accusations that shadow education exacerbates “educational fever” (Seth, 2002), and images of it as an “invasive species” (Bray & Kobakhidze, 2015). Kim re-evaluated SE from the standpoint of students and learning culture through his studies such as Better than schools: Portraits of South Korean Elementary Students’ Lives in Private Supplementary Tutoring Institutes (Y. C. Kim, 2008a),Hakwon Does Not Die; Fathers Die: Secrets of Korean Education That Obama Did Not Know (Y. C. Kim & Kim, 2012), The Top 7 Hakwons in Korea (Y. C. Kim & Kim, 2015), and Analysis on Curriculum and Evaluation at Elementary Hakwon Education (Y. C. Kim et al., 2008). The results revealed the characteristics of hakwon education curriculum in Korea: importantly, they also demonstrated that existing perceptions and judgments about SE are highly biased, and are not based on realities including student perspectives and the changing learning culture in South Korea.

Building on his previous findings and experience, in 2016 Kim published a book that is arguably the climax of his academic efforts on SE. Shadow Education and the Curriculum and Culture of Schooling in South Korea was Kim’s first English book on the topic. In it, he demonstrated that the Western perception of shadow education is incomplete, and possibly biased, by providing abundant details of Korean students’ lives, their learning processes, and their development, all of which cannot be understood without considering shadow education. In their book Shadow Education as Worldwide Curriculum Studies (Y. C. Kim & Jung, 2019b), Kim and Jung theorized “shadow curriculum” as a new curriculum concept. The success of that book earned them an invitation to the International Encyclopedia of Education, which will be published in 2022 by Elsevier. In a third book, Theorizing Shadow Education and Academic Success in East Asia: Understanding the Meaning, Value, and Use of Shadow Education by East Asian Students (Y. C. Kim & Jung, 2021a), the authors further advanced the theory of shadow curriculum by theorizing new concepts such as “trans-boundary learning culture” and “students as nomadic learners.” With contributions from qualitative researchers from Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea, the book provides indigenous perspectives on the phenomenon of shadow education. In 2022, Kim et al. founded the Asian Qualitative Inquiry Association as a center for the development of Asian and postcolonial research discourse.

Research Methods

This section begins by describing the research methods used for this study, and then explores issues related to writing and self-reflexivity for non-Western researchers in postcolonial research. I used a combination of qualitative research methods including a document analysis and a life history interview process. For the document analysis, I used content analysis to identify the main themes and ideas in the various works of Young Chun Kim; among these, we selected 33 articles (8 in English and 25 in Korean) and 20 books (3 in English and 17 in Korean) on post-colonial studies. We also collected more than 300 pages of emails, notes, and memos. For the life history interview process, we conducted five in-depth interviews from 2020 to 2021 (15 hours total). These interviews were particularly useful for gathering additional data such as Kim’s personal experience, episodes, scholarly commitment, and his own retrospective evaluation of the works produced over the last three decades. Interviews also served as opportunities to clarify possible hidden or (mis)understandings of his texts that we may have failed to grasp.

The document analysis revealed three main postcolonial curriculum research themes of Young Chun Kim: (1) production of indigenous qualitative research texts, (2) identification of new curriculum phenomenon from the local, and (3) creation of new concepts and languages for international curriculum research. As a means of peer review, we had these three research domains verified by Korean professional researchers working in the field of curriculum studies, and Young Chun Kim verified them himself in January 2022. It should be noted that these three domains are not the whole picture of Kim’s lifelong scholarship, and a more complete assessment and interpretation of his works will require translating those that were published in Korean into English. This will enable other theorizations of his Korean-language work, which will in turn advance post-colonial cultural studies in contexts other than Korea.

For non-Western scholars, writing a post-colonial text for international journals is risky. Readers are likely to notice at least two interconnected challenges: the dualistic binary of West and the Rest, and the reference points. For example, the purpose of this article is to decolonize the field of Korean curriculum studies from its lasting reliance on the curriculum research of the West. Therefore, readers might find the references to theories by non-Korean Western scholars to be contradictory and ironic (Lorde, 1984). However, the conventions of writing require a discussion of major figures and theories in the field (Richardson, 1990), particularly in the social sciences (Bazerman, 1987). An article by a non-Western scholar that does not reference literature from the West is likely to be dismissed academically. Consequently, Kim and other non-Western scholars must begin by citing the works of Western scholars—as in the present article.

The life history interview process revealed that Young Chun Kim based many of his ideas on Western postmodern postcolonial theories, after being trained in an American university. He is aware of the contradiction in his work and admits that his post-colonial research products have been grounded within the theories and concepts that he borrowed from the West and non-Korean scholars. However, Kim does not want to strengthen the binary between the West and the Rest; he wants to promote “hybridity” (Bhabha, 1994) within postcolonial curriculum research by excavating and theorizing non-Western curriculum research that has been silenced and ignored in mainstream international discourse. For example, his use of “post-Orientalism” (A. Y. Kim, 2010) is borrowed from Said’s Orientalism. Kim uses the term to represent the divide between West and East, with symbolic significance for the production of indigenous and local curriculum knowledge. Kim explained to me that his use of “post-Orientalism” is an act of “research as praxis” (Lather, 1986) to promote creation of non-Western curriculum research and hybridity within international discourse. Kim continues to draw from Western theories and literature, but he hopes to foster a transnational social science community featuring mutual respect and understanding.

Therefore, I am not suggesting that it is necessary to entirely abandon Western ideas, or even to make a sharp distinction between Western and non-Western ideas. Instead, I question the continuing tendency in academia both in the West and in South Korea to consider “West as Method” (Chen, 2010), wherein the use of Western experience and perspective is the most valuable, if not single, reference point (Chen, 2010; J.-H. Joo, 2008; Takayama, 2016). My task here is to use the Korean context “as an imaginary horizon for comparison” (Chen, 2010, p. 223). In doing so, my objective is to contribute “to multiply frames of reference in our subjectivity and world-view, so that our anxiety over the West can be diluted, and productive critical work can move forward” (Chen, 2010, p. 223). Complete rejection of the West or non-West is not beneficial to international knowledge production, because knowledge production is “inherently hybrid” (Popkewitz, 2000, p. 174). Yet, I dream of a day when I, and other non-Western scholars, do not need to begin by citing Western scholars in order to legitimatize our own academic work.

Analysis of Young Chun Kim’s Post-Colonial Curriculum Studies

This section explores Young Chun Kim’s postcolonial scholarship and its three main themes as introduced above: production of indigenous qualitative research texts, identification of new curriculum phenomenon from the local, and creation of new concepts and languages for international curriculum research. The findings may be used to inform ways to conduct non-Western educational/curriculum research and thereby foster the pluralization of knowledge production across historical, cultural, linguistic, and epistemological differences.

Production of Indigenous Qualitative Research Texts

Kim’s desire to produce indigenous qualitative research texts of curriculum and educational phenomenon in South Korea emerged upon his return from the U.S., where he had obtained his PhD from Ohio State University under the supervision of Patti Lather and Douglas Macbeth. He wondered, “Why is not there much Korean educational theories and discussions to explain and to understand Korean schools and classrooms in Korean curriculum studies?” (Y. C. Kim, 1997, p. 316). He recalled his Ph.D. oral defense in June 1995, when he was asked “What do you want to do once you return to South Korea?”—to which he replied, “Rather than being a consumer of the knowledge produced by Western scholars, I will conduct Korean indigenous curriculum research, and in doing so, I will conduct contextualized empirical research that explains Korean schooling, culture, and practices” (interview on November 20, 2019). He followed through on his promise: his early postcolonial curriculum research focused on producing academic texts including indigenous narratives of South Korean educational/curriculum phenomena, which had never been explored previously.

Other post-colonial scholars have argued for the necessity and importance of producing indigenous texts. Spivak (1993) emphasized the significance of such efforts and built on the work of Guha, who had left enormous amounts of texts about burials of the living with the dead so that she could make subaltern theorizations. When producing indigenous academic tasks, it is necessary to consciously and purposefully approach a site; this will enable conversations, stories, customs, traditions, epistemologies, and worldviews to emerge. This task cannot be completed without including indigenous texts related to local people and society (Weber-Pillwax, 2001). Within this domain, Kim’s works have explored research topics such as the culture of schooling (Y. C. Kim, 1997), curriculum practice in schools (Y. C. Kim et al., 2009), Korean teachers’ lives and professional development (Y. C. Kim, 2005b, 2005c, 2013), and multicultural education (Y. C. Kim, 2011; Y. C. Kim et al., 2012).

Kim’s work provided important academic contributions by produced Korean narratives, but even more importantly, he also interpreted his results in ways that made them postcolonial as discussed below and summarized in the Table 1.

Table 1.

Kim’s Postcolonial Analysis of Three Research Topics.

Research theme	Analysis of Western text	Kim’s analysis
Hidden curriculum	Crowd, praise, and power (Jackson, 1968)	• Obedience toward seniors, students’ academic success and failure, gender discrimination (Y. C. Kim, 1997)
Teachers’ lives and professional development	Classroom management as the most challenging aspects of first year of teachers’ school lives (Bullough, 1989; Lortie, 1975)	• Age-based organizational culture (Y. C. Kim, 2005b, 2005c, 2013) • Difficulties and dilemmas of teaching students under shadow education (Y. C. Kim & Kim, 2012)
Multiculturalism	Black students and Latino students’ academic achievement, language diversity etc. (Banks & Banks, 2010)	• Difficulties of cultural adaption toward Korean traditional values and virtues. • Learning gap between Korean students and immigrant students from South Asia (Y. C. Kim, 2011)

First, Y. C. Kim (1997) conceptualized the concept of hidden curriculum based on Korean narratives in Tales of Four Schools: Classroom Life and Instruction of Korean Elementary Schools: Reconstruction of the Lost Image of Korean Education through Qualitative Inquiry. This book revealed what was actually happening in school classrooms in Korea; Kim analyzed Korean school culture under three main themes: obedience, manifestation of success and failure, and gender discrimination. His work was motivated by Jackson’s (1968) Life in Classrooms and the concept of hidden curriculum, but Kim’s analysis differed greatly from that of Jackson, who reported that the culture in American classrooms revolved around crowd, praise, and power. Kim’s book is now widely read by Korean educational researchers, teachers, and student teachers.

Another topic under this theme involves constructing the narratives of Korean teachers’ lives. Kim clarified the characteristics of professional development and identity among Korean teachers, as well as the challenges they face, in a series of articles and books (Y. C. Kim, 2005b, 2005c, 2006). His two volumes of Starry Night: Korean Teachers’ Lives and Their World (Y. C. Kim, 2005b, 2005c) are particularly notable: Volume I (315 pages) introduces and discusses the canonical texts of the West, and Volume II (625 pages) focuses on the various images and voices of Korean teachers, including the “amphibolic voice,” “tangled voice,” “agonizing voice,” “sad voice,” “educational voice,” “marginalized voice,” and “enthusiastic voice.” Volume II includes indigenous narratives and meanings of Korean teachers, making it very different from classic Western works such as First Year Teacher: A Case Study (Bullough, 1989) and Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study (Lortie, 1975). For example, Kim reported that the biggest challenge faced by Korean teachers is bureaucracy and a rigid organizational culture, which differs from the biggest challenge faced by American teachers, which is classroom management (Bullough, 1989). Kim found that teachers who have higher expectations from students sacrifice their educational beliefs due to peer pressure and the hierarchy of the school bureaucracy. Y. C. Kim (2010) argued that “without knowing about teachers’ individual, social, and cultural lives, it is not possible to formulate suggestions that might lead to curriculum improvement” (p. 541).

Another of Kim’s contributions within this theme is producing the stories of multicultural education in South Korea. Much of the multicultural discourse in South Korea has focused on translating and applying the theories and approaches of the West, such as those from James Banks, Carl Grant, Christine Sleeter, and Gloria Ladson-Billings, but Kim took another path by incorporating elements from both multicultural education and postcolonial studies. Two of his works, The Darkest Eyes: The Life Histories of Five Children of Korean Multicultural Families (Y. C. Kim, 2011), and Teaching Korean Multicultural Students: Stories of Four Brave Teachers and Students (Y. C. Kim et al., 2014), are considered exemplary studies that are deeply informed by a postcolonial perspective (J. Joo, 2021). Kim focused on the challenges faced by multicultural students and their mothers; these mothers are marriage-based immigrants living in South Korea. Because they immigrated for a different purpose, they face challenges that differ from those of immigrants to Western countries such as the U.S. (Banks & Banks, 2010).

One of Kim’s most significant contributions is his research approach: he deconstructed his findings from a post-colonial perspective (J. Joo, 2021). He was specifically interested in the problem of the language to be used for research: most multicultural education research has been conducted in Korean or English—or using interpreters, without requiring the researchers to know the mother tongues and cultures of research participants. This was the case for Margaret Mead when she studied Samoan culture; she misinterpreted the jokes of native peoples as truth (Shankman, 2013). Kim told me that this is “the fundamental limitation of my and our abilities to understand multicultural families in South Korea. The problems of interpretation and representation can best be addressed by the subjects. That is what I wanted to say to Korean teachers and researchers” (Interview, December 25, 2020). Kim’s work has encouraged Korean researchers in the field of multicultural education to question what they have taken for granted in terms of research methodologies, research topics, and their own positionalities (J. Joo, 2021). He emphasizes that any research on multiculturalism in South Korea should be conducted by those with a rich understanding of the language, culture, and history of the research participants (Y. C. Kim, 2011). This requires self-reflexivity among qualitative researchers in working in South Korea, including Kim himself.

Another problem that Kim has raised related to multicultural education research in South Korea is its inclusionary approach: it is intended to help immigrant mothers and their children successfully adjust to the Korean culture, language, and schooling—without much acknowledgement of the importance of keeping their own language and culture. The title of his book The Darkest Eyes (Y. C. Kim, 2011) borrows from Morrison’s (2007) book The Bluest Eye. Morrison was commenting on how in the U.S., blue eyes are considered ordinary and the standard—representing discriminatory racialized ideals. This is also the case for dark eyes in South Korea. In his book, Kim described a mother with yellowish eyes due to her Dutch heritage; she felt she needed to stay home because her eye color differentiated her from other Koreans. After giving birth to her first child, she was relieved to see that her baby’s eyes were dark like those of most Koreans. The book encourages Koreans to think about their own biases, presuppositions, and racism embedded in their unquestioned, ordinary gazes, as well as their words, gestures, and behaviors. Importantly, Kim also deconstructed his own subjectivity as a multicultural education researcher, specifically admitting that he has been Westernized and has admired Western culture, language, and appearance (J. Joo, 2021). He argues that we can only understand subalterns in the Korean context by being aware that we are also another kind of subaltern. In the final chapter of his book, for example, he provides an example of a son whose mother was from Vietnam; the son travelled from Korea to Vietnam to better understand his mother’s life before writing her biography.

Identification of New Curriculum Phenomenon From the Local

The second domain of Kim’s postcolonial curriculum research is developing research topics from the local, in this case South Korea. He told me that at many conferences and invited lectures, “many Korean curriculum researchers fear rejection from the West. They do not think that researching ‘Korean phenomenon’ is valid” (interview, November 10, 2020). Kim is not the only one to raise concerns about such academic colonialism—how what “counts” as valuable research topics is determined by the West. Other Korean curriculum scholars have noted that the field of Korean curriculum studies has been led by professors who were trained in North America and continue to focus on curriculum research topics that are considered valid in the West (M. A. Kim, 2007; S. B. Park, 2001).Y. C. Kim (2016) wrote, “whose practices, values, schools, and research have been omitted and ignored in our Westernized curriculum cultures?” (p. ix). Anderson-Levitt (2014) made similar comments in Significance: U.S. Blind Spots in Judging Research, noting that “what counts as important” and “what counts as interesting” is judged by U.S. reviewers and readers in international academia (also see Lamont, 2009; Paraskeva, 2016).

Kim rejected the submissive tendency among Korean curriculum scholars to limit their research to “what counts as important” in North America and entered into new territory that is not acknowledged within the mainstream discourse of international curriculum studies. The very act of finding new research topics and developing them as new discourse is a powerful act of postcolonial research (Paraskeva, 2016). When a research topic is outside “the purview of colonial apparatus,” it may be considered “nonexistent, subhuman, or, at least, irrelevant” (Darder, 2016, p. x). But who judges whether a research topic is relevant or irrelevant? Beverly (1996) argued that working against colonized academic culture must involve pluralizing and deconstructing the cartography of existing knowledge production. Korean academia has historically been a site of cartography of Western knowledge, and Kim wanted to disrupt it by engaging with previously ignored research topics. At an invited lecture at Pusan National University on November 16, 2021, he listed six research themes for Korean postcolonial research:

(1) analysis of the historical development and representation of Orientalism in Korean education and research;

(2) critique of biased and distorted conceptualization and representation of Korean reality;

(3) production of indigenous and cultural knowledge;

(4) deconstruction of subjectivities and research culture of Korean curriculum scholars;

(5) production of new Korean research concepts and theories; and

(6) contribution of Korean knowledge for trans-national cultural studies.

Kim’s research on shadow education (SE), commonly known as private supplementary tutoring (Bray, 1999; Halliday, 2016; Stevenson & Baker, 1992), exemplifies what he meant. Korea was the “ground zero” of SE (Bray, 1999; Seth, 2002), but when Kim first began his research on SE, few Korean curriculum scholars had studied it from an insider’s perspectives. Kim believes that this was because SE has not been considered as an important curriculum research topic in the West, despite its huge influence on Korean students’ learning, learning culture, and academic success, as well as its influence on school curricula and instruction and educational policies in South Korea. Kim is arguably the first to study the phenomenon of SE from a curriculum studies perspective. Since 2008, he has led many studies on SE: curricula, instruction and evaluation, students’ learning experiences, and its proliferation and subsequent changes to learning culture.

Kim’s interest in this research topic was sparked by a conversation with a boy he often saw in his apartment elevator. He asked the boy where he was going. “I am going to hakwon,” replied the boy [hakwon is school-like tutoring institute in South Korea]. Kim asked the boy, “Isn’t it hard for you to go to hakwon and study after school?” Contrary to what he expected, the boy said, “No, it is a lot of fun actually.” At that moment, Kim confronted his own beliefs and realized he had held a biased perception about SE. He saw the possibilities of investigating SE from a curriculum perspective, and started to bring this Korean phenomenon into the field of curriculum studies, first in Korea and then internationally. During his research on SE, he noticed that “Korean students evaluate these institutes as better places of learning than school” (Y.C. Kim, 2010, p. 544), and “even though most Korean students attend hakwon every day, this national phenomenon has never been researched in curriculum studies, perhaps because it has never been discussed as an important theme in international curriculum discourse” (p. 544). It is important to note that while South Korea is one of the countries in which SE is most prominent, most international SE discourse has been led by Western scholars such as Mark Bray, David Baker, and others (see Y. C. Kim & Jung, 2019a, 2019b). Kim believed that, as a Korean scholar, he could and should study it from a Korean perspective.

Kim began by bringing this largely understudied phenomenon into the mainstream curriculum discourse in South Korea. He has since published journal articles and books that can be categorized into three main themes: “description and analysis of SE” (Y. C. Kim, 2008b, 2016, 2018a, 2018b, Y. C. Kim & Kim, 2012, 2015; Y. C. Kim et al., 2008; C.-M. Park et al., 2015),“theorizing shadow curriculum” (Y. C. Kim, 2018a, 2018b; Y. C. Kim & Jung, 2019a, 2019b; Y. C. Kim et al., 2018), and “postcolonial analysis and theorization of SE” (Y. C. Kim & Jung, 2019a, 2019b, 2021b)

In his first book on hakwon, Better than Schools: Portraits of South Korean Elementary Students’ Lives in Private Supplementary Tutoring Institutes, Y. C. Kim (2008b) explored the realities of students’ learning experiences at hakwon, and what makes hakwon better than hakkyo (public schools) in helping students attain academic success. His subsequent books, Portraits of South Korean High School Students’ Academic Learning in Private Supplementary Tutoring Institutes (Y. C. Kim & Kim, 2012) and Understanding Pedagogical Secrets of Seven Leading Private Supplementary Tutoring Institutes in South Korea (Y. C. Kim & Kim, 2015), explored why Korean students considered these institutes to be better places of learning than schools (Y. C. Kim et al., 2008). Kim used comprehensive analyses of the phenomenon of SE and the experiences of students enrolled in SE, along with longitudinal analysis of Korean students’ lives, to argue that SE qualifies as an international curriculum research topic.

After conducting research on SE in South Korea, Kim noticed that studies about SE were conducted predominantly by non-Koreans such as Bray, Baker, Dawson, and Wiseman. He was shocked that SE discourse was dominated by non-Korean researchers, most of whom were not curriculum researchers, and that they were considered to be the key figures in SE scholarship. From this point onward, he devoted himself to contributing to international SE discourse informed by curriculum and Korean perspectives. His article, Shadow education as an Emerging Focus in Curriculum Studies (Y. C. Kim et al., 2018), was the first international journal article to discuss the value of SE from curriculum perspectives. Since its publication, Kim has continued to publish articles and books on SE in English.

Throughout his journey researching the SE phenomenon, Kim faced challenges from mainstream curriculum researchers—many of which he anticipated. Although his scholarship was based on original fieldwork, many curriculum scholars insisted that SE was not a worthy topic for curriculum studies. His work was met with skepticism from the public and academia, and many of his journal article submissions and research grant applications were rejected. As one reviewer noted, “this is not a research topic for curriculum studies” and “praisal account of private tutoring is not what professors of public institutions shall do.”

It has been common for his work to be more harshly critiqued within Korean versus Western academia. Over time, his work has gained greater acceptance and has been published in numerous Western journals including Curriculum Matters, Journal of Curriculum Studies, and European Journal of Education, as well as by Palgrave Macmillan. He was recently invited to contribute a chapter to the International Encyclopedia of Education, which will be published in 2022 by Elsevier. Yet some Korean journals have continued to reject his articles on SE without grounded criticism.

Y. C. Kim (2008a) recounts having received many negative emails from educational scholars and teachers when he published Better than schools: Portraits of South Korean Elementary Students’ Lives in Private Supplementary Tutoring Institutes. One email asked, “how dare you, as a professor of teacher education institution, publish such a book that denigrates public education and instead applauds SE?” In an interview, Kim noted, “I knew it from the beginning. Yet, I did not, will not, give up trying” (Dec 25, 2020). Studying Korean issues often leads to many challenges and rejections from the mainstream, even within the nation itself. Therefore, forging new academic paths required determination and courage. His most recent work focusing on post-colonial curriculum research for international academic contexts and the internationalization of SE curriculum research continues to break new ground.

Creation of New Concepts and Languages for International Curriculum Research

The third domain of Kim’s postcolonial curriculum research is the creation of new curriculum concepts and theories based on local curriculum research, through which Kim aims to advance the “internationalization of curriculum studies” (Pinar, 2014). He told me that through this work, “I really wanted to show that I, and non-Western scholars, also have the ability to create knowledge which may inform those in the West. I am not a mere consumer of the knowledge the West provides” (Interview, December 10, 2020). Although a non-Western scholar could advance a worthwhile program of research based on Western knowledge, Y. C. Kim (1999) made the decision to follow his own path early. In the first chapter of Tales of Four Schools, he recounted how he dropped to the floor of the Ohio State University’s library questioning if he had to consume all the Western knowledge held within asking himself, “until when should I spend my time and energy obtaining their knowledge” (Y. C. Kim, 1997, p. 34). Instead, he decided to make his own way, not as a form of self-indulgence or willful ignorance of Western knowledge, but out of a commitment to new knowledge. By producing new curriculum concepts, Kim aims to show that some dominant understandings about education, especially about Korean education and educational culture, are partial and misleading. By providing empirical, conceptual, and theoretical lenses to better understanding the Korean context, Kim hopes that researchers in other nations can reassess their theories and perceptions about Korean education, and more importantly, about what counts as knowledge and what counts as interesting.

Postcolonial theorists (Briggs & Sharp, 2004; Paraskeva, 2016) and curriculum scholars (Gough, 2007; Pinar, 2014) have discussed the importance of producing indigenous or local knowledge. Kim’s work contributes to the reconstruction of marginalized knowledge that rejects being the “inferiority of the other” (Quijano, 2000). Creating new curriculum knowledge is an approach that breaks away from the colonial tradition of curriculum studies in South Korea and provides a new vision for the field. In this vein, J.-H. Joo and Kim (2017) argue that “to be truly decolonized, we need to get away from importing knowledge by which we might be brainwashed. Rather, we must empower ourselves with abilities to study local traditions and cultures and produce our own knowledge to theorize on” (J.-H. Joo & Kim, 2017, p. 238). In a personal communication with Kim, he said, “What they [scholars in the West] believe they know may not be valid for us. We must conduct ourselves by a different logic by which we should be able to tell them what we see, experience, and understand can be different from theirs.”J.-H. Joo and Kim (2017) argued that the production of indigenous knowledge is a way to make sure that silenced voices are heard, which might challenge Western epistemologies and worldviews. As Lorde (1984) convincingly asked, how would one whose worldview and epistemology is confined by the tools given by the West be able to live and act with his or her own praxis? Where Lorde wrote of the need to “dismantle” colonized perspectives, I suggest we need to “recuperate” the indigenous perspective, epistemology, and worldview, moving beyond recording Korean texts onto discovering new research themes in the field. To challenge “epistemicide” (Paraskeva, 2016), scholars must be able to show that they can also produce theories and concepts that can aid their research, and perhaps those in other nations and regions.

There are many new terms, concepts, and ideas that Kim has created including Ungnyo curriculum (Y. C. Kim, 2005b), post-schooling (Y. C. Kim & Jung, 2019b), trans-boundary learning culture, and students as nomad (Y. C. Kim & Jung, 2021b). Among them, the concept of shadow curriculum best represents Kim’s creation of a new curriculum concept. Based on empirical studies conducted in South Korea and informed by international scholarship on SE, Kim theorized SE as a new curriculum concept and defined it as a “supplementary curriculum out of schooling provided by educational business industries that is intended to improve academic success among individual students in formal education” (Y. C. Kim & Jung, 2019a, 2019b). His first English book on this topic, Shadow Education and the Curriculum and Culture of Schooling in South Korea, provided alternative interpretations of Korean students’ learning, achievements, and educational culture, which has frequently been denigrated, with education in South Korea described as an “educational arms race” (Halliday, 2016, p. 150), “education fever” (Seth, 2002), and “invasive species” (Bray & Kobakhidze, 2015, p. 476). In the book, Kim challenged the existing understanding of Korean education culture, arguing that students’ learning may be misunderstood because many Korean students willingly devote their time and efforts to learning, and SE often functions as a “nerve sedative” to mitigate Korean students’ anxiety. Notably, the SE space cannot be disregarded discussions about Korean students’ learning, achievements, and even development.

In the creation of new curriculum/educational knowledge, language matters. That is one of the reasons why the phenomenon should be studied by local scholars. Y. C. Kim (2005a) argued that “the language of U.S. curriculum theories profoundly influences our ways of seeing and determining what and how we can see/not see in Korean education” (p. 66), thus “regulate[ing] our academic boundaries.”Ungugi (1986, p. 9) argued that “bullets destroy a colonizer’s body but language is the means of controlling our minds.” For Kim, working with language is a necessary approach for postcolonial research:

I ask Korean researchers that we obligate ourselves to formulate concepts and theoretical expressions to represent the indigenous meanings of a phenomenon [which] can only be conducted by Korean scholars. When Korean scholars successfully accomplish this task, they will become the originators of a new Korean curriculum language, both indigenous and reflective of our in-depth knowledge of Western curriculum scholarship. As the phrase, “the Empire writes back” indicates, we will increase our own independent power to create new Korean curriculum theories, providing both a competing language and a complementary curriculum language. (Y. C. Kim, 2005a, p. 67)

For example, Kim critiqued the use of the term, hagwon (), to refer to private tutoring institutes in Korea. Since it is a Korean word, Y. C. Kim (2016) wanted to correct it as hakwon, as this is closer to its Korean pronunciation. Another example is his theorization of the curricular concept based on The Birth Myth of Dangun Wanggeom in Korea:

Ungnyo [a bear woman who was a bear that became a woman] was the mother of the founder of Korea, described in the 2003 B.C. Korean myth called “Dangun (King of Korea).” She was a wild bear but became human after enduring 100 days of cold and hunger, praying in a dark cave. She represents the power of endurance, production, and creation. Also, it is a symbolization of Koreans’ abilities to create something new from nothing on the planet. (Y. C. Kim, 2005a, p. 66)

In addition, Kim emphasized the hongikingan ideology—an ethical and existential viewpoint that seeks to benefit all people. This indigenous notion of curriculum has been ignored or underappreciated not only by Western readers, but also by many Korean readers. Kim has relentlessly worked to center Korean culture and history in the discourse of curriculum studies. Theorizing outside the Western context can “constitute a moment of cultural resistance […] to decolonize curriculum studies, ushering in, perhaps, a postcolonial curriculum studies” (Y.C. Kim, 2010, p. 548). This sentiment has also been powerfully argued by Ashcroft et al. (1989) in Empire Writes Back. Kim has worked to create curricular concepts with a Korean perspective and by studying Korean educational phenomena. By developing curricular concepts based on the Korean language and context, Kim has long worked to fight against epistemicide.

Conclusion: Young Chun Kim’s Scholarship for Difference

This paper discussed how postcolonial curriculum research can be conducted by using a Korean post-colonial curriculum scholar as an example. Representation by a specific perspective and theory is always challenged by approaches based on different languages, cultures, and methodologies. Kim’s epistemological perspective has informed his scholarship focused on characteristics of Korean schooling and education, Korean curriculum theories, and his discussions about postcolonial theories. Kim’s scholarship is deeply influenced by the concept of difference (Deleuze, 1994) and his research mission is to challenge the meta-narrative and promote non-standardized, non-Western curriculum research by drawing on the history, culture, language, and experiences of the local.

At least three main implications stem from Young Chun Kim’s postcolonial curriculum scholarship. First, Kim’s research and scholarship trajectory could provide a possible guideline for post-colonial curriculum scholars in non-Western countries. In terms of postmodernism and post-colonialism’s shared mission to promote knowledge production based on diverse interpretations, this article can provide a possible way of doing so. Second, Kim’s works can be appreciated as a step toward tribalization for non-Western scholars to produce local curriculum knowledge informed by their history, culture, and practices. Third, this article can promote transnational curriculum research with mutual respect and acceptance despite historical, cultural, and epistemological differences.

Footnotes

Author Note

This manuscript has not been published or presented elsewhere in part or in entirety and is not under consideration by another journal.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by BK21 Education for Social Responsibility Research Program of Pusan National University funded by National Research Foundation of Korea.

Ethical Approval and Consent to Participate

The study participant provided informed consent, and the study design was approved by the appropriate ethics review board. I have read and understood your journal’s policies

ORCID iD

Jung-Hoon Jung

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