Korea is ―an exceptionally homogeneous one ethnic group nation state‖ (Choe, 2006, p. 84). It is generally known that Korean people hold relatively strong nationalism as Armstrong‘s (2007, p. 272) succinctly puts it as ―few people with even a passing knowledge of Korea can fail to be impressed with the depth and persistence of Korean nationalism.‖ Even though there are a few contending views on where the strong sense of nationalism originates, it is agreed that a number of factors contribute to Korea‘s strong sense of ethnic nationalism (Lee, 1963; Shin, 2006b; Armstrong, 2007): the sense of unity which dates back 4 000 years ago by legend of which at least last 2 000 years can be traced in documents; well-defined and stable territory48; a
centralised bureaucratic state for more than a millennium; and a single ethnicity shared not only by biological heritage but also by culture and language with little variation across the state.
48 Borders of the three dynasties, Silla (57-939), Goryeo (939-1392) and Joseon (1392-910), were well defined from much earlier than those in Europe and did not drastically change over time. Crossing borders was restricted to government delegations and those who cross borders illegally were beheaded until the 19th century (Choe, 2006, p. 93).
Based on such a variety of factors, modern nationalism in Korea was able to take root at the end of Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). Japanese colonialism played a critical role not only in forming nationalism in Korea but also in developing it by provoking a sense of resistance and unity among Korean people against assimilation policy under Japanese rule in the 1930s. Japan, which also had its own version of strong ethnic nationalism, justified its annexation of Korea saying the Korean race is inferior to the Japanese race, and such racist propaganda motivated Korean nationalists to advocate and preach the distinctiveness of the Korean race to the Korean populace, suffering defeatism, through newspapers and private schools (Choe, 2006, p. 95). Until today, according to Shin‘s description (Shin, 2006b, p. 226), the presence of strong nationalism is pronounced in both North and South Korea, and many Koreans, even today, believe Korean ethnicity or Korea is immortal and eternal.
Against this background of the development of modern nationalism in Korea, the way the elite in Park‘s regime used nationalism for economic growth is interesting in a few respects. First, most of the military elites in Parks regimes, used to serve as Japanese military officers including Park. As will be explained in a latter part of the thesis, Park was also nationalistic to Japan insofar as he not only fought in a Japanese war for Japanese victory, but also voluntarily abandoned his Korean name and changed it to a Japanese name in an effort to Japanise himself. In addition, before he became a Japanese soldier, he was a teacher at a public school and at the time, the role of teachers in public school was to Japanise Korean people. After independence, Park joined Namrodang, which was a communist party in South Korea, in which the international socialist class held higher priority than South Korea as a nation. Therefore, the nationalism which was generally shared by the Korean populace did not seem to affect most of Korean military elites
under Japanese rule and afterwards. Still, when the military elite took power, nationalism became the legitimising ideology of their coup. Moreover, nationalism became the key ideology that the military elite relied heavily on in the period of post-war economic development (Armstrong, 2007, p. 273). The military elite used nationalism in two ways: first to recruit technocrats abroad and second, to mobilise people for economic growth.
First, the military elites used nationalism in order to repatriate highly skilled expatriates from abroad. The reverse-brain drain was a systematic effort led by Park and his military elites. Park‘s cash-strapped government which did not have much to offer to compensate the skilled expatriates ―appealed to their nationalism and patriotism‖ through individual persuasion (Yoon, 1992, p. 7). This state-led repatriation was successful and the military government succeeded in bringing in 553 PhDs in Economics and Science from abroad. Given that there were only 79 PhDs residing in Korea in 1965, it was a huge form of empowerment to the government. Those repatriated brains became the first elite group of technocrats and they played a leading role in designing economic and industry policies and restructuring the national economy in Korea.
Secondly, the elite used nationalism as ideology for economic growth. They called for sacrifice by people for a better future of the father land. Indeed, the link between strong nationalism and industrialisation was noted by a number of economic development thinkers such as Rostow and Hansen. According to Rostow (1959, p. 6), ―a reactive nationalist sentiment‖ against foreign threat is highly linked with industrialisation. In addition, Hansen (1976, p. 29) also argues that ―an unusual degree of acceptance of the (national) identity‖ can explain ―patriotic sanction to the motives of private gains as an underlying force in the economy.‖
In short, in Korea, the military elites who took power at first did not share the same strong sense of nationalism with the Koran populace. However, they used nationalism to repatriate brains abroad and built highly capable technocrats equipped with a high sense of nationalism and patriotism. In addition, the military elites effectively used nationalism among Korean people. Shin (2006b, p.229) insightfully summarised it as follows:
Authoritarian regimes relied on nationalist rhetoric to justify their autocratic system and to mobilize the populace for ‗national‘ goals they identified as security and development…in South Korea nationalism was instrumental to the rise of ‗developmental ethic,‘ which performed a function equivalent to what Max Weber called the ‗Protestant ethic‘ in the rise of Western capitalism [emphasis original].