ABSTRACT
In many societies, the compulsion to invent traditions frequently arises to satisfy a need to quickly adapt to changing social conditions.1 In modern times South Korea, the need for inventing certain traditions seems, initially, to have resulted from Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, and the accompanying ideological void which followed. In North Korea, a policy of state-sponsored history and cultural reconstruction was implemented from its founding. In South Korea, after the Korean War, and following a decade of chaos, the implementation of a policy of cultural and historical restoration directed by official government guidelines, also became perceived as necessary by the military regime headed by president Park Chung Hee, who assumed power with a coup d’état in 1961. In general, Korea’s strong authoritarian, hierarchical Confucian culture
became reinforced by the evolving, and revolving, totalitarian regimes of both nations. The South Korean regime promoted a nationalistic policy asking the population to identify with the country through a “sense” of exceptionalism, common history, and tradition. Official and semi-official state agencies were charged with constructing and propagating “a shared national past” to the general Korean public. A variety of “state-cultural policies” and movements were retrofitted, but styled after former Japanese models, with the goal of mobilizing and directing the general population.2
