Curriculum, Crisis, and Epistemic Governance in South Korea

Offering an illuminating exploration of power dynamics and colonial legacies within South Korean education, this timely book examines how the South Korean state governs through curriculum reform, turning public participation into a moralized and technical project of national development.

This book draws on archival documents, policy reports, and extensive interviews with curriculum committee members to reveal how crisis narratives, future-oriented discourse, and OECD expertise shape contemporary educational reform. Across six chapters, the author shows how democratic procedures become administrative rituals, how citizens are mobilized as ethical subjects of reform, and how participation serves to refine—rather than challenge—developmentalist state power. Further, the book traces this dynamic from Cold War nation-building to recent curriculum revisions, illustrating how moral language, expert authority, and bureaucratic coordination work together to foreclose political alternatives.

With theoretical frameworks and critical perspectives that speak to broader Asian and transnational contexts, this book is a vital resource for scholars and academics of education policy, postcolonial studies and comparative studies. It will also be relevant to educators and policymakers interested in curriculum reform, democratic governance, state power, and the shifting relationship between expertise and public participation.