In 1960, South Korean students staged a major series of demonstrations against their government’s abuses of power. Known as the April 19th Revolution, the movement culminated in the resignation of authoritarian president Syngman Rhee. This book explores media and ideological texts of the post-Korean War years to advance a cultural explanation of that seminal event. It focuses on gendered discourse and ideology that positioned youths as the hope, exemplars, and representatives of the postcolonial nation. Intellectuals and ideologues urged youths to contribute to nation building by enacting patr ... More

In 1960, South Korean students staged a major series of demonstrations against their government’s abuses of power. Known as the April 19th Revolution, the movement culminated in the resignation of authoritarian president Syngman Rhee. This book explores media and ideological texts of the post-Korean War years to advance a cultural explanation of that seminal event. It focuses on gendered discourse and ideology that positioned youths as the hope, exemplars, and representatives of the postcolonial nation. Intellectuals and ideologues urged youths to contribute to nation building by enacting patriotic virtues in the everyday. Students also learned about anticolonial resistance as a way to cultivate their nation-centered probity for the postcolonial era. With its emphasis on upstanding youth action, patriotic education of the 1950s ironically prepared students to engage in antigovernment protest on behalf of the nation in April 19th. Not long after that landmark event, however, Park Chung Hee’s coup of May 16, 1961 effected a quick return to authoritarian rule. The Park regime refigured the emphasis on everyday patriotism in order to mobilize men and women for its controversial program of rapid and uneven economic development. Conversely, memories of April 19th formed the basis of South Korea’s student-driven democratization (1964-1987).