South Korea’s Historical Constructions of “Advanced Country”

Abstract

The discourse of seonjinguk is a historically constructed knowledge system based upon the relations constructed around the concepts of seonjinguk (advanced country) and hujinguk (backward country). It has provided South Koreans with dominant interpretive frameworks of national identities and worldviews in their national developmental processes. Through the discourse analysis of newspapers, this paper aims to examine the historical transformation of the discourse of seonjinguk from the 1980s to the present, focusing on the changes of the connotation of the central concept of seonjinguk in different historical circumstances. The first section examines that the attitudes towards seonjinguk were somewhat cautious in the 1980s amidst the rise of the global neoliberal regime and its pressure on Korea to open its market. The second section analyzes that the discourse of seonjinguk in the 1990s played a major knowledge system justifying the segyehwa (globalization) discourse and the idealization of seonjinguk became notable. And, the last section explores that the concept of seonjinguk became further idealized and universalized in the process of being appropriated by conservative neoliberals in regard to Korea’s neoliberal transformations in the 2000s.