This study systematically reviews the history of school meals policy in Korea, aiming to provide clarity of the reconstruction process of publicness. Its basic assumption is that school meals policy indicates the nature of publicness which is the prod...
This study systematically reviews the history of school meals policy in Korea, aiming to provide clarity of the reconstruction process of publicness. Its basic assumption is that school meals policy indicates the nature of publicness which is the product of complex relations among related social agents, such as state, family, children, farmers, and food firms. In this study, the history of school meals policy was categorized into four periods: foreign aid period(1953-72); experimental period(1973-92); expansion period(1993-2003); and transformation period(2004-present). Each period shows the different feature and the extent of three dimensions of publicness, i.e., civility, public interest, and publicity. It is suggested that if the history of school meals policy is considered more seriously it could help us identify the change of publicness from state publicness through competition between state and market publicness and finally to life publicness. Moreover, recently universal free school meals policy makes a great contribution towards the expansion of life publicness by universalizing public interest. There needs to be more environment friendly school meals policy in order to continue reconstructing school meals relations by life publicness.