- 제목: South Korea’s Developmentalist Worldview: Representations and Identities in the Discourse of Seonjinguk
- 저자: Kim Jongtae
- 출판정보: Asian Journal of Social Science, vol. 42, no. 3-4: 383-408.
- 논문초록

The non-West is not only the object of the Eurocentric notion of development, but also the main contributor to its global hegemony. South Koreans, for instance, make a Eurocentric hierarchy between countries according to the criteria of their developmental discourse, the discourse of seonjinguk (advanced country). This paper examines the main features of the discourse of seonjinguk in contemporary Korea, focusing on the representations and identities of countries reflected in its basic concepts. Through the analysis of newspaper editorials, it shows that the discourse constructs a world dichotomized by idealized seonjinguk and marginalized hujinguk (backward country). In this discursive framework, the West is generally referred to as seonjinguk in relation to the belittled non-West. The identity of South Korea tends to be constructed as a country near seonjinguk or “on the threshold of seonjinguk” (“seonjinguk munteok”), which provides both senses of superiority over hujinguk and of inferiority over seonjinguk. This becomes a main discursive source that keeps Korea still under the project of modernization, with the achievement of the status of seonjinguk as its historical national mission.