Influence of foreign ideas in the making of national education system: The case of Japan’s education planning for colonized Korea

After 1945, Japan and Korea discarded their former education system and accepted the one that emulated American education, but many aspects of their pre-1945 education were revived in the subsequent period. Apart from larger political forces of the post-1945 Japan and Korea, it can be assumed, the pre-1945 Japanese and Korean educational elite’s attitude toward the American educational ideas had also influenced such revival. Then, what were the attitudes of the pre-1945 educational elites of Japan and Korea, who would form the core of post-1945 ministries of education, toward the foreign educational idea like?; did they like it?; and how much did they know about it? By looking into the dispositions of the personnel who worked for the Ministries of education and other educational elite in both countries until 1945, this writer attempts to show how much they knew about, and how receptive they were toward, the American educational model. This investigation can further our understanding as to why and how foreign educational ideals are rejected and accepted by the central educational administration of Japan and Korea during the post-1945 era.