Academic Dependency: Western-centrism in Korean Political Science

This paper deals with the academic dependency of Korean political science in light of Western-centrism. Contemporary Korean social sciences have been introduced and developed under the overwhelming influence of American political science since the liberation of Korea from Japanese colonial rule in 1945. This is also closely intertwined with Korea's political, economic, social, and cultural dependency on the United States. Thus, using political science in Korea as an example, the author explores the negative impact of Western-centrism and the dependency of Korean academia on American political science. To do so, he analyzes the impact of American political science on Korean political science in three ways: "Westernization of critical thinking in Korean scholarship," "assimilationist interpretation of the Korean experience according to Western theory," and "marginalization of the Korean (non-Western) experience by Western-centrism." [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]