Kyuhoon Cho

10.18399/acta.2016.19.1.004

Protestant schools modern education religious education Nationalism secularism

This article examines the changing position of Protestant schools in the modern society of Korea. The historical process of secularization enabled Protestantism to take a lead in developing modern education in Korea’s public sphere. By way of educational mod-ernization and national education, Protestant educational institutions made a great contribution to the development of modern public education in colonial Korea and post-colonial South Korea. I argue that since the late twentieth century, however, Protestant schools have transformed into a field in which the religious and the secular clash in Korea. In particular, religious education has exposed the acute conflict between Protestant churches claiming freedom of religion and students and civil society calling for liberty from religion. Apart from the development of the nation’s educational system, the socio-political transformation of contemporary South Korea has increasingly required the equal representation of religious differences in the public sphere. Protestantism, once the symbol of modern civilization, has been largely viewed as an obstacle to progress in the official education of a globalized South Korea.