Teachers empowered by shame: the politics of compressed modernisation and democratisation in South Korean education in the 1980s

ABSTRACT This paper examines the formation of the teachers’ movement in South Korea, focusing on the publication of the short-lived magazine Minjung Gyoyuk (People’s Education) in 1985. Progressive teachers published this magazine to systematically critique the education practises of the time and seek a new direction for education under repressive conditions, which led to dismissals and arrests of the contributors. This incident became central to the formation of the Korean Teachers’ Union (KTU) in 1989, which emerged in the milieu of compressed growth and the struggle for democratisation. By looking at the cultural notions of shame as a source of struggle, the paper examines the complexity of political and social values inherent in the progressive movement, undergone in the process of compressed modernisation and democratisation.