Examining the struggle to align high-growth economic models with the egalitarian promises of democracy. Over the last 25 years, South Korea has witnessed growing inequality due to the proliferation of non-standard employment, ballooning household debt, deepening export-dependency, and the growth of super-conglomerates such as Samsung and Hyundai. Combined with declining rates of economic growth and … [Read More]
Booklist: Politics and Current Affairs
Civic Activism in South Korea: The Intertwining of Democracy and Neoliberalism
In recent decades, neoliberalism has transformed South Korean society, going far beyond simply restructuring the economy. In response, a number of civic organizations that emerged from the democratization movement with a conscious emphasis on social change have sought to address socioeconomic and political problems caused or aggravated by the neoliberal transformation. Examining how “citizens’ organizations” … [Read More]
The Dawn of War in South Korea (1947-1950): The South Korean Workers’ Party and the April Third Massacre
This book offers an analytical account of the April Third Massacre in Korea, a bloody confrontation between supporters of the Syngman Rhee Administration and those suspected (largely incorrectly) of being Communists, or members of the South Korean Workers’ Party―the second largest Communist Party after Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule. As a result, some 80,000 … [Read More]
The Constitution of South Korea: A Contextual Analysis
The constitutional system of South Korea is a work in progress, and this volume fleshes out and makes intelligible to foreign readers that process within the specific political and historical context of modern South Korea. The current South Korean Constitution of 1987 is the culmination of decades-long efforts by the South Korean people to achieve … [Read More]
Cornerstone of the Nation: The Defense Industry and the Building of Modern Korea under Park Chung Hee
Cornerstone of the Nation is the first historical account of the complex alliance of military and civilian forces that catapulted South Korea’s conjoined militarization and industrialization under Park Chung Hee (1961–1979). Kwon reveals how Park’s secret program to build an independent defense industry spurred a total mobilization of business, science, labor, and citizenry, all of … [Read More]
Seeds of Mobilization: The Authoritarian Roots of South Korea’s Democracy
South Korea is sometimes held as a dream case of modernization theory, a testament to how economic development leads to democracy. Seeds of Mobilization takes a closer look at the history of South Korea to show that Korea’s advance to democracy was not linear. Instead, while Korea’s national economy grew dramatically under the regimes of Park Chung … [Read More]
Politics of the North Korean Diaspora
Politics of the North Korean Diaspora examines how authoritarian security concerns shape global diaspora politics. Empirically, it traces the recent emergence of a North Korean diaspora – a globally-dispersed population of North Korean émigrés – and argues that the non-democratic nature of the DPRK homeland regime fundamentally shapes diasporic politics. Pyongyang perceives the diaspora as … [Read More]
Transnationalism and Migration in Global Korea: History, Politics, and Sociology, 1910 to the Present
Contrary to the image of Korea as a largely self-contained country until its economy became global during the 1990s, this book shows that transnationalism has firmly been part of modern Korea’s national experience throughout its existence. The volume portrays Korea’s frequent transnational entanglements with other nations in East Asia and the West from the start … [Read More]
The Red Decades: Communism as Movement and Culture in Korea, 1919–1945
Focusing on previously neglected cultural expressions of colonial-period Korean socialism such as Marxist philosophy, Marxist historiography, and travelogues by socialist writers, The Red Decades reveals Marxian socialism as a cultural phenomenon of colonial-age Korea. Providing an account of the social composition of the Communist milieu in 1920s and 1930s Korea and outlining the aims of … [Read More]
South Korea’s Grand Strategy: Making Its Own Destiny
Since the end of the Cold War, South Korea has taken on a greater role in global affairs. Ramon Pacheco Pardo provides a groundbreaking analysis of South Korea’s foreign policy from its transition to democracy in the late 1980s through the present day, arguing that the country’s approach to the world constitutes a grand strategy. … [Read More]
Celluloid Democracy: Cinema and Politics in Cold War South Korea
Celluloid Democracy tells the story of the Korean filmmakers, distributors, and exhibitors who reshaped cinema in radically empowering ways through the decades of authoritarian rule that followed Korea’s liberation from Japanese occupation. Employing tactics that ranged from representing the dispossessed on the screen to redistributing state-controlled resources through bootlegging, these film workers explored ideas and practices … [Read More]
Calculated Nationalism in Contemporary South Korea: Movements for Political and Economic Democratization in the 21st Century
Nationalism in a nation-state reflects its emergent structural, cultural, and personal properties at a given time. In the politico-historical context of South Korea and the globe, the fruits of the 1968 Revolution in France could not reach Korean society under its military regime and exploitative economic structure. This continued to frustrate the grassroots and especially social actors … [Read More]
The Oxford Handbook of South Korean Politics
South Korea is best-known for its economic development, democratic transition and consolidation, vibrant civil society, and emergence as a cultural powerhouse. The Oxford Handbook of South Korean Politics presents and analyses contemporary South Korean politics, bringing together domestic political, economic, social cultural, and demographic developments and putting them in the context of trends in fellow … [Read More]
Memory Construction and the Politics of Time in Neoliberal South Korea
In Memory Construction and the Politics of Time in Neoliberal South Korea Namhee Lee explores memory construction and history writing in post-1987 South Korea. The massive neoliberal reconstruction of all aspects of society shifted public discourse from minjung (people) to simin (citizen), from political to cultural, from collective to individual. This shift reconstituted people as Homo economicus, rights-bearing and rights-claiming individuals, … [Read More]
Privilege and Anxiety: The Korean Middle Class in the Global Era
In Privilege and Anxiety, Hagen Koo examines what has happened to the Korean middle class in the era of rapid globalization and demonstrates that the middle class has experienced significant changes in its social character. The middle classes in most advanced economies today are frequently described as being “squeezed” and “shrinking.” Globalization has inserted an “axis … [Read More]
Spirit Power: Politics and Religion in Korea’s American Century
Spirit Power explores the manifestation of the American Century in Korean history with a focus on religious culture. It looks back on the encounter with American missionary power from the late nineteenth century, and the long political struggles against the country’s indigenous popular religious heritage during the colonial and postcolonial eras. The book brings an anthropology … [Read More]