A Review of Historical Research on the Chosǒn Period and its Relation to Korean History Education

Abstract

This study analyzes the trends and results of historical research on the Chos?n Period and its application to secondary school Korean history education.BR After the liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, Korean historians began an academic struggle to substantiate and theorize the history of Chos?n, whose image was studded with heteronomy, partisanship, and stagflation - namely the colonial view of history - by the works of Japanese governmental scholars. Strenuous efforts produced meaningful outcomes systematizing the internal development of a full dimensional social constitution, including its political, economical, social, and ideological sphere.BR Meanwhile in the 1990s historical perceptions derived from colonial modernization theory and post-nationalism aroused and caused controversy in the academic field, plunging the existing systematic understanding into confusion.BR But the secondary level Korean history education establishes the Chos?n period as a fully matured medieval society in Korean history, and its later and last stage is considered to be a period in which this medieval structure was in a process of being agitated and devolved. The image of Chos?n period have been formed and taught in a way that its ‘modern’ elements have been internally self-generated.