By Kim Eun-gyong
Contributing Writer
This is the 10th in a series of articles about the history of English education in Korea ― ED.
In 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese government forced Korea into an agreement to ``invite’’ Japanese advisers to administer Korea’s financial and foreign affairs. The Japanese government’s encroachment, however, was not limited to Korea’s rights of diplomacy and finance, but took further steps, e.g., installing advisers in each ministry, despite the fact that doing so was not stipulated in the agreement.
In November 1905, Japan declared Korea a protectorate following the Portsmouth Agreement of September 1905, whereby it gained recognition from Russia of its dominance over Korea. So began the government by the residency-general of Korea. The first Japanese Resident-General, Ito Hirobumi, was placed directly under the Korean emperor; the residency-general began its operation in February 1906.
In June 1907, Gojong secretly dispatched a delegation to the Second International Peace Conference held in The Hague to appeal for the acknowledgement of the wrongs Japan had committed against Korea, in particular the protectorate treaty. Infuriated, Japan forced Gojong to relinquish his throne to the crown prince, his mentally fragile son, and Sunjong was enthroned in July 1907.
In 1907, the two governments entered into a new ``agreement,’’ in which the Korean government surrendered full authority of all internal governmental affairs to the Japanese resident-general. The previous way of ``governing through advisers’’ was abandoned, and Japan began the ``vice-minister government,’’ where a Japanese vice-minister took the second-in-command position in every ministry. Finally on August 29, 1910, Korea was annexed and became a colony of Japan.
The five years between 1905 and 1910 were a transition period where Korea was systematically degraded into a colony of Japan; Japan took measured steps to divest the Korean government of its sovereign rights and to build a foundation for its colonial rule.
As the residency-general began its operation, the Ministry of Education came under the control of the office. Under Ito’s governance, Korea’s educational system was reorganized and began to take the shape of a Japanese colony. On August 27, 1906, the residency-general enforced the ordinances for normal schools, high schools, foreign language schools, and common schools, repealing the existing regulations for Hanseong Normal School, Middle School, and Foreign Language School and the ordinance for primary schools, enacted by the Korean government.
One of the policies of primacy the Japanese government adopted to aid the colonization of Korea was the spread of the Japanese language, and this policy was realized in the curriculum of common schools. In accordance with the ordinance for common schools, Japanese was introduced as a required subject, and other foreign languages were eliminated from the curriculum.
Foreign languages, which had been an elective in middle school, were removed from the high-school curriculum; instead, Japanese, an elective in the previous middle-school curriculum, was introduced as a required subject. Japanese instruction was given the highest priority in the new curriculum: the instructional hours of Japanese were six weekly hours in each grade while seven hours were assigned to Korean and Chinese classics combined.
All in all, during the residency-government’s rule, the existence of English language education in government-controlled secondary schools was negligible: first it was removed from the curriculum of boys’ high school and later when reintroduced, it survived as an elective taught two or three hours a week to a limited group of students. Foreign languages were stipulated as an elective for girls’ high schools in the first ordinance of secondary education for women in April 1908. Nonetheless, English language instruction was not offered in the actual classroom; thus, female students in government-controlled schools remained excluded from benefiting from foreign language education.
As the country was undergoing the impending crisis of losing its independence around 1905, many Korean leaders and patriots were directly involved in the expansion of public education. New schools continued to open, and for the purpose of “enlightenment” of the masses, these schools included subjects regarding Western knowledge and scientific technology in their curricula, and most of them provided English language instruction.
While the government-controlled schools deprived their students of English language education, private schools maintained independent management and were unrestricted in their selection of subjects, thus, offering a larger number of cultural subjects, such as English language instruction. Gaeseong Girls’ Hakdang, or the present Holston Girls’ Middle and High School, a U.S. Southern Methodist school, for instance, was supposed to organize its curriculum in accordance with the ordinance for common schools, but relatively free of Japanese interference, it replaced ethics with Bible studies and did not teach Japanese history or geography. Moreover, lessons of subjects that were not taught in other common schools, such as English, Western history, Oriental history, mathematics, and physiology, were provided, making the Hakdang a secondary-level educational institution.
At Boseong Middle School, which had received a substantial amount of financial support and the name itself from the royal court in the beginning but nevertheless was owned by an individual, English was stipulated as the foreign language and taught in all grades. First-year students, for example, were taught English for two-and-a-half hours a week. Japanese was not included in the curriculum but was taught along with English.
By the promulgation of the ordinance for private schools in 1908, however, Japan began to exert its control over private schools: the curricula of private schools were subject to Japanese regulation, and a number of private schools established by Korean civilians were forced to close under the pretext that they did not satisfy the requirements stipulated by the ordinance. Mission schools, which received less Japanese interference, maintained English language education.
According to the Ewha Hakdang’s advertisement of student recruitment in Hwangseong Sinmun of September 17, 1908, the subject of English was included in the curricula of the primary and secondary courses, and English literature was included in the advanced course. Many Ewha students achieved fluency in English and began to make important contributions to the development of English education in Korea, working in the field of education. In brief, at a time when government-school curricula lacked English language instruction, and the survival of many Korean-run private schools were threatened, mission schools served as an important sustainer of Korea’s English language education.
Kim Eun-gyong is an associate professor of applied linguistics and Associate Dean of the Center for International Affairs, Information and Communications University (ICU) in Daejeon. She can be reached at egkimrivera@icu.ac.kr.