| This dissertation describes the American influence on Korean---or, as Americans would say, South Korean---culture during the Lyndon B. Johnson years. During this period, 1963--68, Korea went from being impoverished into being well launched into industrialization. A primary cause of this change was money that came to Korea both directly from the U.S. (as payment for the participation of Korean troops with the allies in the Vietnam War) and from Korea's normalization of relations with its hated former colonial ruler, Japan, a rapprochement strongly urged on both countries by the U.S.; American political and military hegemony over Korea stimulated the Koreans' interest in and often veneration of American ways. Most Koreans who were able to do so adopted (and adapted) these ways to improve their own standing in Korean society. At the end of the Johnson years, the Pueblo Incident showed Koreans that America was not the wholly dependable big brother they had imagined and that Korea would have to have its own policies---and, implicitly, its own culture---and stand on its own two feet.; The dissertation has chapters examining American impressions of Korea; the American influence on Korean thought, everyday life, popular culture, and women's rights and status; and the emergence of new Korean nationalism.; The chief sources from which the dissertation gathers its information are the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library at the University of Texas, the J. William Fulbright Archive at the University of Arkansas, and Korean and U.S. newspapers and magazines of the time.; Cultural theories are used to interpret some of the information brought forward; two theoreticians whose work is explicitly invoked are Antonio Gramsci and Edward Said. |
