Page 47 - A Dissertation for Doctor of Philosophy

Spirit of Cultural Nationalism

From the 1960s, the government carried out state programs of modernization such as

aforementioned New Community Movement. In the process of state-driven modernization,

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traditional culture was ignored, neglected, and even suppressed. As Koreans entered the 1970s,

this crisis in the social and political arena surfaced. Conflicts and animosity between social

classes deepened. There was an increasing chasm between rural poverty and an urban

bourgeoisie that sought to amuse itself with the opium of commercial culture. Spirituality and

morality that cohered Korean culture withered. In this decade, modernization theorists

denounced both the elite tradition of Confucian morality and shamanism, and regarded the

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religiosity of common people as unscientific, superstitious, and irrational.

People came to realize that the autonomy of the nation and the equilibrium of life was in

danger from industrialization and following western value of capitalism. As a result, a spirit of

nationalism was disseminated throughout the society. Anthropologists started to investigate the

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folk cultures of each province. In the fields of anthropology and literature, nationalism played
a powerful role “in response to a need to search for the total meaning of life of the nation and the

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Ki-Young Shin, “A Socio-cultural Understanding concerning the relationship change

between the Korean Protestant church and culture,” in United Association for Ethics, 21 Segi-eui
st
Tojun-kwa Kidokkyo Munhwa (The Challenge of the 21 century and Christian culture) (Seoul:
Yeyoung Communication, 1998), 150// 141-65.

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For further reading, see Oh, Myung-Seok, “Peasant Culture and Modernization in
Korea.” Korea Journal 38 (Autumn 1998): 77-95.

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Kwang-Ok Kim, “History, Power, Culture, and Anthropology in Korea: Toward a New
Paradigm for Korean Studies,” Korea Journal 40 (Spring 2000), 58.