In South Korea, curriculum is revised, made public and implemented under a system known as a nation led curriculum. The South Korean national curriculum was completely revised 10 times between 1946 and 2015. At present, a complete revision is underway to replace the current 2015 national curriculum which is called the 2022 revised national…

In this paper, we interrogate the current state of multiculturalism and multicultural education in South Korea and offer a possible theoretical framework that is lacking in the field of multicultural education. We provide three principles of multicultural understanding grounded in Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics to inform multiculturalism in…

The Republic of South Korea is a nation that has seen dramatic changes in its economic and educational systems over the course of the last 50 years. These circumstances present unique views of citizenship and the roles that teachers and teacher educators play in this process. This study presents two case studies, one a classroom teacher and the…

The idea of cosmopolitanism is emerging as an explicit aim of the Korean educational system. Over the course of its 5,000-year history, Korea has been characterized by a largely homogeneous population. In recent years, however, it has begun to face the challenges of a multicultural society, and thus the notion of cosmopolitanism plays an important…

The purpose of this article is to examine recent changes in the geography national curriculum in South Korea through the lenses of three curriculum components that often find themselves in competition--subject content, educational processes and national/social purposes. In recent years, the prevailing national and social aims outlined for the…

The Republic of Korea (hereafter, Korea) has historically affirmed that the country is ethnically homogeneous and this belief is often expressed in the nation's government compiled and issued textbooks. However, this dogmatic view does not correspond to the trends of globalization with mass global migration. International organizations also urged…

This article provides a brief picture of social studies education in the United States, China, and South Korea. It begins with a brief account of the K-12 curriculum structure and history of social studies education in each country in the 20th century. It then turns to a contemporary look at the social studies, the national curriculum standards…

The concept of national identity has evolved during the last half century within the Korean social studies curriculum. There have been seven curricular revisions since the first national curriculum was released in 1955. Each time the concept of national identity was changed with the biggest changes to this concept within the last two iterations of…