Abstract

This study analyzes the concept of the girl in the magazine “yeohagsaeng,” and it aims to analyze the characteristics of how the modernization project led by the Park Chunghee government is linked to the making of the people. Then, it explores how scientism reframes gender, as there is a link between scientism and the reconstruction of gender. Most studies from the 1960s centered on the Cold War and militarism, the Saemaul Undong (the campaign to boost productivity by reforming the whole country), and the productivity discourse. While analyzing intensively the productivity discourse of Park Chunghee’s project, which was to follow the speedy modernization, the study extracts scientism from the values that it uses as essential ideology. The characteristics of the 1960s in the magazine “yeohagsaeng,” which were examined, appeared along with the concept of the puberty girl as a woman who grew up as a woman. There were many scientific and medical discourses on the puberty girl. The Ideal Girl Award, which consists of the overemphasizing and vulnerable physical management of puberty, is a shy schoolgirl. It is institutionalized as an ideal girl to recognize uneasy feelings and body scientifically and to manage them reasonably well. Often, adolescence is understood as a time when gender politics is unclear at a stage prior to becomingamale/female . However, in the making of the people in the Park Chunghee project, it is judged that the “girl with a shy uniform” is an essential process for constructing the male labor force symbolized by the steel body. The concept of a girl can be seen as a way of projecting and managing human vulnerabilities, such as emotional overgrowth and a contaminated body that the male labor command despises and abandons. Because it is a scientific explanation, it is considered reasonable to divide emotion and reason, weak body and steel body. However, it is not a science, but a scientism that uses science as a magical helper for the making of the people of the Park Chunghee government.