Movie 'Wandeuki' and social studies

Movie “Wandeuki” and Social Studies


By Eunjung Kim

University of Iowa

EDTL: 6833: 0001 History & Foundations of Social Studies Education

Professor: Dr. Gregory Hamot

Dec. 11, 2014

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I. Opening

1. Why is the movie “Wandeuki”?

The movie “Wandeuki” treats important social issues in Korea with

humorous and touching dialogues. The social issues of Korea in the

movie such as multicultural family, problems of educational system,

poverty, hardship of handicaps, illegal immigrants, and exploitation

of foreign workers are the main issues Korean society should deal

with and hence, social studies should cover in class. The issues

above need separate papers for each theme. In this paper, I will

focus mainly on multiculturalism and problems of Korean educational

system and make suggestions for the future social studies in Korea

based on the movie and related research literature.

2. The story and issues of “Wandeuki”

1) Synopsis

The movie “Wandeuki” focuses on the relationship between a high

school boy, Wandeuk, and his homeroom teacher and social studies

teacher, Dongju. Wandeuk grew up in a family with a hunchback dad

and a man who is mentally disabled and became an adopted uncle after

his dad took care of him from his work. He never knew about his mom

until his teacher, Dongju, told him his mom was Filipino and wanted 2


to see him. Wandeuk didn’t have any passion to study in school and

was confused about his identity. The only thing he could do well was

to fight. As Dongju continuously helped Wandeuk to embrace his

family and find a way to use his skill to fulfill his dream as a

kick boxer, Wandeuk changed his view on his life and family.

2) Social Issues in the movie

A. Changing Korea to a Multicultural Society as an emerging and critical issue

Wandeuk is a child from a multicultural family, whose dad is

Korean and whose mom is Filipino. His mom came to Korea to get

married to a Korean man whom she never saw before. Many women from

China, Philippines, Vietnam and other Asian countries came to Korea

because their countries’ economic hardship pushed them to make money

through marriage with Korean farmers, who couldn’t find women to

marry in the countryside in Korea. Many foreign brides have to

struggle with Koreans’ bias and discriminatory treatments. In the

movie, Wandeuk’s mom had to leave Wandeuk and his dad because people

at her husband’s work regarded her as an inferior person so, his dad

let her go and find a different life.

Another side of Korea’s multicultural society is about exploiting

foreign workers and illegal immigrants. Dongju argued with his

father because he sent one Indian female worker to her country

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without treating her injury fairly after her fingers were cut off at

work in his factory.

Korean society has been experiencing confusion, rejection, and

acceptance in order to deal with multicultural families, and

immigrant issues, which never seriously happened before in the

history.

B. Problems of Educational System as an old but essential issue

Wandeuk is a student who has low academic achievement in school.

Low performance students like Wandeuk are totally detached from

the school system and have no place to go after regular school. Most

Korean students try to go to college regardless of their will or

interest because to get a job needs a college degree. Moreover,

there is no success without going to a prestigious college in Korea

by getting a high score at the high-stakes national test. Most

students like Wandeuki’s classmates in the movie stay at school

until 9-10 p.m. to study against their free choice. Schools and

teachers enforce students to study no matter how they feel and

inculcate knowledge for the test. Dongju showed his distaste of the

educational system by saying “Hey, you (to a top student in his

class) are ignoring what I’m saying and are concentrating only your

study, OK, you go to Seoul National University (cynically). People

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at the university are smart but have no manners!” and “ There is no

free choice of staying at school or going home after school! This is

just like a boot camp.”

Under this educational system, students have no opportunities to

evaluate knowledge, and beliefs as well as no room for expressing

personal interests and opinions beside studies. Fostering critical

thinking and reasoning ability is beyond the scope of school

curriculum. School exists only for successful students at academic

tests and is unable to embrace students who don’t perform well and

have different interests. In the movie, Wandeuk wanders on streets

at night and fights at school. The school is not his place.

3) What does the movie imply?

“Wandeuki,” based on an award winning novel, was a huge hit in

Korea in 2011. The movie showed a precisely emerging issue –

multicultural family and immigrants which are not unfamiliar to

Koreans any more. It also covered the long and hard-shell issue,

test-driven educational system. It revealed very critical issues of

Korean society with a witty and touching dialogue, especially

between Wandeuk and his teacher, Dongju. People, including me, cried

and laughed at each scene during running time of the movie. In spite

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of the touching moments, there is something more telling me about

what to do as a social studies teacher in Korea.

II. Beyond the movie: Korean society and social studies education

Like the movie’s focus on a multicultural family, Korean society

is experiencing a big change in recent decades. Since the early

1990s, many foreign workers came to Korea due to lack of domestic

workers in the Korean industry (Choi, 2010). Also, international

marriage increased since the mid-1990s and stayed over 10% of total

number of marriages since 2003 (Cha, et al., 2013). According to the

data of 2014 from Korea Statistical Information System (KOSIS),

foreigners comprise over 2% of the whole population and 1% of the

whole students is from multicultural families. In fewer than 20

years, Korea has been rapidly changed from ethno-linguistically

homogeneous society to a multicultural society (Cha, et al., 2013).

This unprecedented change challenges Korean society in many ways.

It resulted in the “Education Act for Children in a Multicultural

Family” by Ministry of Education in 2006, which focused on educating

children of multicultural families about Korean culture and language

so they can adjust to Korean society and education system (Choi,

2010). The ensuing policy also supported multicultural families by

providing subsidies for multicultural preschoolers. Public media (TV

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programs and newspapers) and major companies are loading huge

attention on lives of multicultural families and immigrants and

encouraging Koreans to treat them equally like Koreans. In contrast,

there were shameful attacks using social media against Filipino-

Korean Jasmine Lee, who played as Wandeuk’s mom in the movie

“Wandeuki.” When Lee ran for congress in 2012, some people defamed

her through social media by claiming that she came to Korea for

making money and she would help illegal immigrants using her

position. There are also public concerns and biases toward foreign

workers and immigrants due to foreigners’ increasing crimes and

different cultures.

Responding to these boiling issues and biases toward

multicultural families and foreigners, research on multiculturalism

have been plentiful in the academic field. Nevertheless, there is

little change in schools and in the social studies class. For

example, social studies text books for middle school don’t include

any people’s bias or problems regarding increasingly diverse groups

in Korea. They have a few introductions to other cultures. In this

situation, students have no chance to think seriously about issues

and attitudes related to the meaning of a multicultural society of

Korea.

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Mo and Lim (2011) pointed out that the reality of Korean

multicultural education is to superficially touch on contents about

diverse groups in social studies. And they argued that the contents

of multiculturalism has been rarely included in the Korean school

curriculum. They also showed that teachers’ attitudes on

multicultural education are related to knowing about only other

culture’s food, costume, and traditions. Teachers rarely have a

profound understanding of the meaning of multiculturalism in Korean

society such as the meaning of Koreans with diverse ethnicities and

perspectives on inequalities and biases resulting from a

multicultural society.

Choi (2010) found that in the social studies curriculum,

democratic citizenship education has emphasized “we are Korean, an

ethnically homogeneous group” and argued that social studies should

play a crucial role in having students think about the meaning of

Koreans in a multicultural society.

In the future, social studies should be a place where students

can reflect the fundamental change of Korea into a multicultural

society and examine their thoughts and attitudes in class. In doing

so, they can be more informed and reasoned citizens to live

harmoniously for a democratic society.

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At this point, I want to make suggestions for the future social

studies education in

Korea.

1. Social studies should respond to Korean society’s needs and help students reflect on

the meaning of a multicultural society in Korea.

First of all, social studies should be a subject where students

can think about social changes and issues they face. Today, Korean

society is no longer monolithic. What Mouffe (1992) said regarding

forming European Union 20 years ago still gives us a good thought

for Korean society.

[T]he challenge that we are facing today is precisely that of developing

a view of citizenship which is adequate for multi-ethnic and multi-

cultural societies. We have to accept that national homogeneity can no

longer be the basis of citizenship, and that pluralism must allow for a

range of different ethnic and cultural identities. (p.8)

Also, schools and teachers need to pay attention to a demographic

change of students in 5-10 years. In the movie, Wandeuk was the only

student from a multicultural family among his classmates, but within

a decade, there should be more “Wandeuki”s in class at the secondary

level. Based on Hong’s (2014) data, approximately 80% of about

600,000 students from multicultural families in 2013 is at the

elementary level and 20% is at the secondary level let alone the 9


increasing number of multicultural students every year. They are not

invisible students any more. Majority students and minority students

should develop reasonable thoughts on how to live together. Social

studies teachers should help them to explore the concept of what

Koreans are. When students can talk about and evaluate their beliefs

and prejudices in open spheres, they can be more informed and

prepared to be better citizens and prevent social conflicts.

Multicultural issues should not become “closed areas” of our

society. Hunt & Metcalf (1955/1968) provided an insightful view on

closed areas of conflicting belief and behavior in the society.

These closed areas are not examined through reflective thoughts and

become solid prejudice and bias toward social issues. If students in

a diverse class fail to examine and establish agreement on

multicultural issues, they hold their own bias from media and false

attitudes and build interpersonal and intrapersonal conflicts. This

would result in irrevocable social disaster and cost in the future

of Korean society. Koreans must listen to Hunt & Metcalf ‘s advice

in the beginning of a multicultural society in Korea.

What kind of perspective on a multicultural society leads to

building a strong democracy and can avoid serious conflicts between

majority and minority groups in Korea? Basically, we need to focus

on what Dewey (1916) said about democracy in a diverse society. He

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said that democracy should be understood as a living together and it

is “a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated

experience” (p.31). In this sense, different groups in the society

should communicate with each other and respect each culture as

opposed to liberal assimilationist concepts, which force minority

groups to adjust to the mainstream culture by abandoning their own

(Banks, 2008). However, respecting other cultures should not

disintegrate a unity of diverse groups in the society. Jung & Kang

(2014) pointed out that forming “the public” provided by John Dewey

offers a profound approach to the concept of living with diverse

groups in Korea to build democracy. The public or communities can

be constructed through shared common interests, shared actions, and

shared values (Campbell, 1998). In social studies class, students

should explore shared interests as well as cultural diversities and

different perspectives.

In the meantime, in spite of the mindful efforts, there will be

always tricky borders and tensions between respecting diversities

and pursuing a unified community in students’ beliefs. If people

stress multicultural characteristics too much, they end up

reinforcing the differences (Hrushetska, 2013). If people focus only

on unity, mainstream groups might push minority groups to assimilate

to the main culture (Jung & Kang, 2014; Cha et al., 2013). Social

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studies should help students avoid these pitfalls by broadening the

concept of community to the global scale. Even though national

boundaries and cultural entities are still central to our group

identities, rapid globalizations also affect local communities and

nations and form the concept of global citizens (Banks, 2008). In

fact, the current social change to a multicultural society should be

understood in the frame of global flows of labor in the global

economy (Cho, 2009) and information technology, which produce

worldwide migrations and cultural interchanges (Banks, 2008). In the

age of globalization, Banks advised students as well as teachers to

develop knowledge, attitudes and skills to function as global

citizens. In this vein, Merryfield and Wilson (2013) also suggested

that multicultural and global education should foster students’ in-

depth knowledge of cultures and cross–cultural competences for

global citizens. When students have global perspectives on the

changes of Korean society and view themselves as global citizens,

they can more easily consider diverse groups as equal members in the

global society.

Dewey also provided his foresight of diversity and globalization

connecting with a strong democracy. He said that “diversity plus

common interests, then, compose the bedrock of a democracy strong

enough to cope with modernity. These require in turn the dissolution

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of barriers of class, race, and national territory” (Dewey

1916/1985, p. 93). His global perspective was drawn in the

industrial age but is still powerful in the digital age!

2. Social studies should reduce the inculcation of factual knowledge and focus more on

facilitating high levels of thinking

Like the movie “Wandueki,” Korean students have no class time to

explore their beliefs and values and related activities. They all

have the same goal for passing college entrance exam. Under this

suffocating educational system, how can teachers and students have

discussion on social issues and relevant activities if the

educational system does not allow them to do freely? How can

teachers and students feel free to explore their beliefs and

questions in class under the huge pressure of the national tests?

When I worked at Gyeyang Middle school, 7th grade students who just

came to the middle school told me that they didn’t like social

studies because words of social studies in their elementary school

were very hard to understand and a lot to memorize. From this

reality of social studies, the future social studies should have

less content and be organized around meaningful discussions of

students’ interests and social issues with related activities.

Rapid changes in technology and many sources of information in 21st

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century don’t require the quantity of knowledge in students’ heads.

Moreover, from Griffin’s (1942) view, imposing certain values are

opposite of democratic concepts. He differentiated between teaching

in authoritarian states and in democratic states by indicating the

crucial point of whether to indoctrinate fixed values or form of

knowledge. Unfortunately, The main purpose of Korean social

studies has focused on transmitting accepted values to students in

practice even though the goals of National Curriculum of Social

Studies proclaims “ Social studies education aims at educating

democratic citizens for self-development and for improving the

society, the nation and human being.”(Korea Institute for

Curriculum and Evaluation, 2013). This strong trend of citizenship

transmission in school practice could ignore reality of social

conflicts and students’ needs (Barr, Barth & Shermis, 1978).

Taba (1964) also warned about the harmful results of stressing

rote memory in class:

When the teaching strategies pay little attention to creating models for

thinking, children tend to acquire faulty or unproductive conceptual

schemes with which to organize information or to solve problems. For

example, procedures such as asking students to name the important cities

in the Balkans, without revealing the criterion for importance or

without developing such a criterion with the class, leave students no

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alternative but to guess what the teacher wants or to recollect what the

book said about the matter. Repeated experiences of this sort cause

students to adopt irrational-unproductive, and arbitrary models of

thinking and a dependence on memory rather than on judgment or

inference. (p.131)

In the same vein, Engle (1960) strongly argued that covering

knowledge would not automatically lead to reflective and critical

thoughts and decision making, which were essential qualities of

democratic citizens.

In the future socials studies class, students should have

opportunities to develop critical thinking to evaluate information

and understand causal relations of social problems so they can be

informed and prepared to deal with social issues (Rugg, 1921).

Social studies in the future should help students to have

reflective thoughts on their beliefs and values when they have

negative evidences of their beliefs and values in a democratic

society (Griffin, 1942). These are possible only when focusing

heavily on the national test followed by stressing factual

knowledge are fundamentally reduced in the educational system.

3. Social studies should have plans for students’ activities connected with communities

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This suggestion of connecting social studies with communities is

characterized by the integration of two suggestions above in a

sense of more democratic apprenticeships for students. There are

two reasons for paying attention to connecting students’ activities

with communities for the future social studies. First, as I

mentioned Dewey’s approach earlier, shared values among diverse

groups in a democratic society can be constructed by shared

interests and actions. These constructed values play pivotal roles

in building a community in a multicultural society. Students in

social studies class can explore this perspective on the community

to integrate multicultural groups in local and national levels.

Second, students can have the experience of involvement related to

social issues and the process of finding solutions by taking

feasible actions in their community. In the movie “Wandeuki,” the

church where Dongju and Wandeuk go represents a place to embrace

immigrants and foreign workers. His school as well as his

classmates is isolated from the social issues, especially the issue

of multicultural identity that Wandeuk was facing. What Paker

(1996) said is resonating with this isolation:

Two traditions in particular stand in the way of strong citizenship

education. One prevents congregations, the other fails to take advantage

of them…now that access to school building has been pretty achieved

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(ignore for the moment their differential quality), grouping practices

within buildings turn schools into clusters of discrete neighborhoods.

The little publics are kept separate (p. 11).

In the future social studies class, students can explore their

interests on social issues and discuss possible actions related to

the issues. Future many “Wandeuk”s and their classmates should have

the chance to openly bring up social issues like multicultural

families and immigrants in Korea and make plans for what to do in

their community based on their discussion. Students can also

connect their community issues like local environmental problems

with social studies topics and take practical actions such as

cleaning project of riverside or monitoring littering at public

parks and so on.

III. Closing

“Wadeuki” showed the movie’s power of sensitizing public thoughts

about multicultural families and other social issues and evoking

sympathy for them. It did respond to social needs and sentiments in

a positive way. How does social studies respond to these social

needs? How does social studies play its part to embrace social

changes and issues so that our students feel informed and prepared

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without impulsive and biased attitudes and decisions in the emerging

multicultural society? Ultimately, how can social studies do a good

job to build up a strong democracy in this change?

Within a decade, I surely hope that social studies can be

transformed to answer these questions in class for all students

including little Wandeukies. The answers are 1) to organize social

studies curriculum for multicultural issues so that students can

reflect the issue and have competence toward social changes; 2) to

change Korean educational systems from stressing knowledge

inculcation to encouraging high level of thinking such as critical

thinking of information and reflective thoughts of beliefs and

values; 3) to have students get involved with the community issues

related to class topics. These three are not exclusive of each

other. Under high pressure of college entrance test, fully exploring

social issues and fostering high levels of thinking might be just

daydreaming. On the other hand, if social studies teachers keep

trying hard to find a way to change the current ethos of social

studies class to educate students to be better citizens, they can

make students say “hmm, I never thought about it that way before”

like what Dr. Hamot said in class.

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Movie 'Wandeuki' and social studies

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