ABSTRACT
This chapter presents this book’s theoretical framework, extending H. L. T. Quan’s concept of savage developmentalism to theorize Korean curriculum-making as a three-level integrated system of epistemic governance. Savage developmentalism—modernity’s fundamental operating logic that masks exploitation as progress, order, and world advancement—operates simultaneously through: (1) biopolitical subject-making that produces perpetual crisis through the “salvation template” and normalizes hierarchical violence as everyday life; (2) policy apparatus structures that convert political questions into technical procedures through continuous National Curriculum Revision cycles; and (3) transpacific geopolitical relations that pre-format educational possibilities within U.S. hegemonic order. Each level makes the others appear inevitable: geopolitical subordination produces policy dependence, which generates biopolitical crisis, which reinforces geopolitical subordination. Using the example of a student taking the Suneung (수능) exam, I demonstrate how these three levels interlock to produce subjects who cannot imagine life outside savage developmentalism. This chapter concludes by proposing “material critique” as methodology—centering the actual structures of power and their embodied consequences—and invoking Quan’s notion of “real security” to reorient curriculum inquiry toward creating livable lives in the here-and-now rather than accepting the state’s endless deferral to capitalist futures.
