The Making of Divided Higher Education Systems in Korea: A Comparative Analysis on the Rise of Seoul National University and Kim Il Sung University, 1945-1948

From the presence of Seoul National University in Seoul and Kim Il-Seong University in Pyongyang, we clearly see a case of a divided higher educational system in Korea. This paper addresses a series of questions concerning the educational origins of the divided education system at the university level. Recounting both the traditional and revisionist views on the nature of socio-political movements against the Seoul National University (hereafter, SNU) Plan, this paper makes a claim that, not the imposition of American imperialist intervention, but a division within the variety of scholarly organizations among Korean academics and professors, who failed to keep their promise of Grand Unity, was conducive to the division. The two universities were created in October 1946 within just two weeks of each other. Hardly different were the rationale and procedures behind the making of these two Supreme Universities . Moreover, seen from the composition of the leading faculty members of each university, they were born as an identical twins. A built in contradiction concerning university autonomy was the moving force behind the keen disputes about the SNU Plan which did not permit any form of self-government of faculty members. A legendary tradition of self-government among professors first became the de facto legitimate practice during the struggle for the freedom of academy in the history of the Japanese Imperial Universities. It was, however, maintained to protect the vested interests of professor privilege and prestige which were never shared with other professors in private universities or colleges. Newly appointed professors, who were mostly graduates of imperial universities and were members of the progressive political parties and leaders of various scholarly organizations wanted to inherit a progressive element of university autonomy, while reform-mined bureaucrats who were graduates of American universities and members of the rightist political parties wanted to remove any reactive element of faculty autonomy which in fact led to the vicious Japanese tradition of school sectionalism. Contrary to the claims made by the revisionists, it was not the movement against the SNU Plan but the Plan itself that failed. The rise of SNU was a compromise between the two competing groups. This group competition facilitated the division. Key members of the former group who were opposed to the SNU Plan went to Pyongyang to actively participate in the making of Kim Il-Seong University and became the backbone of it. Some of the legacies of imperial universities still remain at SNU.