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Public Lecture: Prof. Leighanne Yuh, Dept. of Korean History, Korea University

A comparison of textbook readers from 1895 and 1906 shows a shift from a state-centered narrative and a focus on the recruitment of “men of talent” to a focus on patriotism and civil duty for the preservation of national independence. Existing scholarship has interpreted the textbooks and corresponding education programs only in ways that promote nationalist agendas adhering to a linear model of progress and following a trajectory beginning with the Confucian tradition and arriving at Western enlightenment values. This study shows that the Confucian framework still operated as a bulwark and discursive system to help state officials and intellectuals absorb “Western” ideas; but this study also reveals how these patterns of integration played out in the realm of education. The categorizations of “Confucianism” and “Western learning” fit neatly into the slogan “Eastern Ways, Western Machines,” which was popular at the time in Korea, China, and Japan. However, this study problematizes the stark division between Western and Confucian systems, and instead explores the amalgamation of different influences. From a broadly defined Confucian framework emerged a particular form of civil morality that allowed intellectuals and government bureaucrats to discuss nationalism, citizenship, the public sphere, and other issues thought to be germane to a modern nation-state. Through the transformation of educational institutions, the discourses themselves evolved from those exclusively devoted to the production of competent bureaucrats to those that spoke to the broader public and engaged with this new civil morality.

Leighanne Yuh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Korean History at Korea University and Associate Editor of The International Journal of Korean History published by the Center for Korean Studies at Korea University. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses focusing on the Late Chosôn, early modern, and modern periods. Professor Yuh received her Ph.D. from the University of California in Los Angeles after completing her dissertation titled, "Education and the Struggle for Power in Korea, 1876-1910."

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