Recent Trends in the History of Science in Modern Korea

Abstract

This article reviews the scholarly works on the history of science and technology in modern Korea, published from 2008 to 2014. It is remarkable that a number of young scholars has entered this field by publishing research on the history of science and technology in Korea during the Japanese Occupation era (1910~1945) and the Park Chung Hee regime (1962~1979), partly in response to the growing number of literature on those periods by historians in general. Those works are helpful for general readers interested in those periods, not just historians of science and technology, in that they meticulously trace the growth of individual scientists and scientific community in Korea. It should be noted that, however, there remains a potential danger that those works could be misread as overlooking or even endorsing the oppressive systems underlying the growth of scientific enterprise, as they are rather focusing on local dynamics and tensions than raising direct question about the system ― colonial or authoritarian developmentalism ― itself. Thus it remains as a challenge what could be asked as a “big question” about the history of science in modern Korea, which might change our current un-derstanding of the topic, from those new case studies.