The Saemaeul Movement (or the New Village Movement) exerted a great influence on the Korean society in the 1970s. It was first started by the Park, Chung Hee Regime under the name of the New Village Cultivation Project. His regime launched the movemen...
The Saemaeul Movement (or the New Village Movement) exerted a great influence on the Korean society in the 1970s. It was first started by the Park, Chung Hee Regime under the name of the New Village Cultivation Project. His regime launched the movement by providing iron bars and cement to all the villages in the country in October 1970. Since then, it underwent many transformations in its ideals, projects and organization and then continued to affect the Korean society throughout the 1970s. Its initial venue for renovation was rural villages, but it gradually expanded its scope into all the sectors of our society, including cities, factories and schools. At the same time, it extends the simple village renovation to 'the whole national transformation' in the areas of politics, economy, society and culture.
While approaching to Saemaeul movement by the aspects of nation building and production, this study tried to deal with the Saemaeul Leadership Training Center, which was run as a educational institution to support the movement. The Park Regime called the movement as one which seeks to 'create a new person' and described that the new person was 'a person who tries to transform himself or herself with new values, new ways of thinking and new ways of living. In other words, the regime sought to recreate each and every South Korean who are suitable for his intention by means of the movement. Therefore, the training center run by the Park Regime was an educational institution which sought to raise "guided and prefabricated" spontaneity on the part of the public.
The Saemaeul Leadership Training Center was an institution to nurture leaders who will lead the movement. The regime called the center as 'a human furnace' that is the alma mater of the movement for producing Saemaeul leaders. The regime treated Saemaeul leaders as the mainstay of the movement, and wanted to promote Saemaeul movement through them. This meant that the regime not only regarded the 'leaders' as the mainstay of the movement, but also attached importance to educate and train for bringing along 'leaders'. It was through these enlightened and trained leaders who got education in the center that the regime intended to renovate villages under the auspice of the government.
This meant that leaders were necessary who were obedient to the regime and were willing to devote themselves to the national cause. The center sought to reform the mentality of trainees through lectures, and so on. The lectures were for the most part given by guest speakers like special aides to the president and tailored topics like Korean democracy and country's modernization were talked about. They criticized the existing Korean democracy as being an irresponsible and identity-lacking one. Arguing that the nation needed a Korean democracy that could set up discipline and order and that revive a truly Korean democracy with 'our spirit', they said the movement is indispensable as a base to realize the democracy. In addition, they asserted that modernized mentality preceded modernized country. In this way, every person in the country was the subject of transformation. All in all, the movement represented 'the national drive to revolutionize the minds of all the people in the nation'. By the way, lectures were not the only means to force the transformation of national mentality.
The education in the center emphasized the motto, 'Living is Education.' Tightly set schedules aimed to regulate the physical and behavioral aspects of the trainees. The schedule and educational programs of the center homogenized them irrespective of their age, schooling background, occupation, and so on. They were required to show unified behaviors in everyday life as well as education. They became psychologically uniform through the course of the daily routines of the morning roll calls (early rising, pledge of allegiance and calisthenics), morning meetings and singing songs. Furthermore, their participation in the movement was reinforced by small-group workshops and success stories. Ultimately, the center sought to convert the trainees into obedient and voluntary participants, or 'new persons' through strict discipline.
The educational goal of the center was to produce 'leaders' with internalized volition through the course that emphasized mentality reformation and discipline. In other words, the trainees were expected to become 'leaders' who can discipline themselves and are willing to obey the national order voluntarily without any violence or coercion. The reason is that new leaders finishing the program were supposed to return to their villages to push ahead with the core policy of the Park Regime, the Saemaeul Movement. The necessity of the leaders was raised as a channel to connect individuals. Residents were to 'play their own roles' in order to make the movement as 'a nation-wide campaign'. For that purpose, the leaders were necessary to facilitate the self-consciousness and volition of the residents and act as 'enlightened messengers' to convey national objectives to people.
All these indicate that the ultimate aim of the Saemaeul Movement was not only to develop villages, but also to cultivate subjects who were productive and obedient. The Park Regime tried to build up a system where constant mobilization was feasible by disciplining individuals through the mechanism of the Saemaeul Movement. This disciplining of people in South Korea by means of the movement lends us an insight into the strategy employed by the Park Regime to rule the public. To summarize, the Park Regime wanted to transform people into 'self-disciplinary new persons' who could regulate themselves to comply with the national order and devote themselves to achieving national objectives in a voluntary fashion.