Search

This paper examines the formation of the teachers' movement in South Korea, focusing on the publication of the short-lived magazine "Minjung Gyoyuk" (People's Education) in 1985. Progressive teachers published this magazine to systematically critique the education practises of the time and seek a new direction for education under repressive conditions, which led to dismissals and arrests of the contributors. This incident became central to the formation of the Korean Teachers' Union (KTU) in 1989, which emerged in the milieu of compressed growth and the struggle for democratisation. By looking at the cultural notions of shame as a source of struggle, the paper examines the complexity of political and social values inherent in the progressive movement, undergone in the process of compressed modernisation and democratisation.

South Korea's persistent enmity towards its erstwhile colonizer Japan has been a compelling topic of East Asian international relations scholarship for decades. This article argues that the historical evolution of South Korea's democracy offers a vital and overlooked piece of this puzzle. Given that it emerged from one of the most virulently anti-communist dictatorships of the Cold War period, in a society facing an ongoing threat from communist North Korea, any left-of-center opposition movement faced an uphill battle against severe anti-communism. In such circumstances, the only way for a leftist opposition party to survive was by pitting its stronger anti-Japan reputation against conservatives' anti-communism. After South Korea's democracy stabilized, liberals tried and failed to overturn the anti-leftist institutions left over from the Cold War and then sought equilibrium through parallel rhetoric targeting pro-Japanese elements. Today, neither left nor right can afford to allow a final amicable settlement with its respective target of antagonism. Through analyses of domestic political rhetoric targeting alleged pro-Japanese or pro-communist elements, this paper demonstrates how these competing antagonisms achieved an uneasy equilibrium that undergirds South Korean political dynamics to this day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The May 1980 Gwangju Democracy Movement was a seminal event in the democratization process of South Korea. However, it was also a critical event in the development of anti-Americanism in the country. The US government recognized this and towards the end of the 1980s began to engage in public diplomacy to explain the US role in the events of May 1980 to the Korean public to dampen anti-American sentiment. These efforts culminated in the release of the "United States Government Statement on the Events in Kwangju, Republic of Korea, in May 1980" on June 19, 1989. This article reviews US motivations for producing the 1989 statement and argues misinformation provided by the Chun government to the Korean people and rising anti-Americanism were the two main factors. Next, the US public diplomacy effort to explain US actions during May 1980 is analyzed before showing that Korean reactions to these US efforts were on the whole negative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

he U.S.-China hegemonic competition is clearly underway, as the Biden administration acknowledges China as the only challenger to the existing global hegemony. This recognition has initiated a power struggle between the two, despite neither possessing absolute national power for complete dominance. This article goes beyond the traditional debate of whether China will eventually surpass the U.S. and focuses on deriving pertinent implications. The role of allies in shaping the U.S.-China competition is gaining significance. The U.S. is restructuring the global supply chain to exclude China, creating overlapping mini-lateral cooperative networks with traditional allies and friendly nations. Conversely, China is expanding its influence through traditional multilateral cooperation, aligning with alliance transition theory. Furthermore, mid-sized countries, especially pivotal ones are assuming a more critical role. This situation has implications for ROK government's foreign policy, which aims to play an active role as a Global Pivotal State emphasizing liberal democratic values and common interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do young adults in Korea appear to reject the democratic system and embrace with authoritarianism? Employing a specially designed survey, this study examined the influence of the models of extreme economic hardship, social threat, fairness, and populism using the structural equation model. Thus, the determinants of the authoritarian system were found to be multidimensional and somewhat at odds with each other in the direction of causation. The threat of economic hardship and intolerant attitudes toward North Korea and minorities were important factors that led young adults to support authoritarian regimes. Nevertheless, young adults who are critical of the fairness of democracy in Korea continue to support the democratic system. Young adults who are critical of representative democracy and oriented toward populism showed the same preference. This result provides the hopeful prospect that Korea may not join the recent trend of deconsolidation and further reauthoritarianism in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are authoritarian successor party (ASP) supporters more likely to protest? I propose that ASP supporters are less likely to protest in general. The post-democratization mobilization environment is shaped upon the pre-democratization mobilization basis. During the pre-democratization period, protest was organized around the democracy movement. Thus, protest tactics and networks were accumulated through it. As former authoritarian ruling party supporters, ASP supporters are less likely to have legacies of participating in the democracy movement, which prevents them from accessing the accumulated protest resources from the democracy movement. However, I argue that this negative association varies based on the ASP qualities and supporters' age. Supporters of ASPs that maintain strong pre-democratization legacies are more likely to participate in protests than supporters of ASPs that do not strongly highlight their authoritarian legacies. Also, when the ASPs' characteristics are considered, older ASP supporters are more likely to participate in protests than younger supporters. Using both single-level and multilevel statistical analyses, I examine four Asian countries with politically powerful ASPs and find evidence supporting my hypotheses. Lastly, I compare two South Korean mass movements, the Candlelight movement and the Taegeukgi rallies to unpack the relationships between ASP supporters, protest resources, and mobilization. This study reveals authoritarian legacies among post-democratization citizens through ASP supporters' protesting behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Teorija in Praksa is the property of Teorija in Praksa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Under the new government helmed by President Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea (ROK) has displayed a clear tilt toward and a more open embrace of the Indo-Pacific concept. Interestingly, Yoon has also expressed the need for a review of South Korea’s ties with China, strengthening the United States–South Korea alliance, and an interest in participating in the Quad forum. This article looks to explore such goals and understand the political and strategic imperatives of a Quad plus South Korea framework. The article outlines the transition in South Korea’s foreign policy toward the Indo-Pacific under Moon Jae-in and Yoon. It analyses South Korea’s bilateral connections with the four Quad powers— India, Japan, the United States and Australia—to draw conclusions as to what capacity Quad–ROK cooperation can take a real shape—particularly considering the disconnect between their priorities vis-à- vis China and North Korea. Additionally, it examines the scope for South Korea’s greater involvement in the other Indo-Pacific–oriented initiatives (like Build Back Better World, Democracy 10, and Global Gateway) and regional organizations like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vanishing critique of capitalism within the Sewŏl movement for truth finding has revealed the bare face of the current democratic order and its rule of law. This article presents the Sewŏl movement as the bellwether, in a synchronic sense, of the Candlelight Protests that have become a modality of direct action in South Korea. I seek to contribute to our understanding of the life politics that has become a key marker of struggles against the state-capital network since the 2000s. I ascribe the antinomies of truth finding and mourning and of massacre and accident in the Sewŏl movement to the democratic collective unconscious that regards the 1987 moment in South Korea as an irrevocable rupture from dictatorship to democracy. The Sewŏl movement illuminates how the axes of organization and spontaneity and of reformism and revolution in the Candlelight Protest movement are not so much binaries, or oppositions, as hieroglyphic signs of the democratic unconscious and its excesses that contest the temporalizations of the capitalist present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study offers a critical analysis of refugee policy in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) since the national government in 2013 enacted a law intended to improve its treatment of refugees and asylum seekers and align itself more closely with the principles of the 1951 Refugee Convention. The article begins by focusing on a major controversy that arose in 2018, following the arrival of more than 500 asylum seekers from Yemen, an episode that revealed how considerable public antipathy toward refugees presents a social and cultural problem for South Korea as it charts a course for improvement of its treatment of refugees. The analysis then turns to numerous problems at the nexus of law and society that continue to plague the refugee status determination process and, in many instances, to deny basic rights to a rapidly growing number of asylum seekers in South Korea. The article concludes by showing how, despite these problems, South Korea is better positioned than many of the world's more affluent constitutional democracies to harmonize its national interests with its responsibilities to make a meaningful contribution to ongoing global efforts to protect and accommodate refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the concept of protest cycles has received much attention in the collective action literature, its empirical operationalization remains relatively crude compared to the rich theoretical discussion. Reimagining social movements as populations of interlinked protests, we demonstrate the advantages of analyzing protest event networks with a novel dataset related to South Korea's democracy movement. In our conceptualization, protest events play the role of network nodes and links were identified based on protesters citing prior events as sources of inspiration for mobilizing. Appropriating strategies for network analysis, we assess the types of events that were more likely to be cited as sources of inspiration and bridge otherwise disconnected events. Our analysis shows that protests that raised systemic versus local issues and events that were repressed by the state were more likely to occupy central positions in the democracy movement. By identifying the characteristics of events that contribute to movement inspiration and bridging, our novel approach to analyzing protest events sheds new light on dominant themes in social movement research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars argue that democracy tames religious fundamentalism. This inclusion-moderation theory holds that when radical religious movements are incorporated in the democratic system, they have incentives to adhere to institutional frameworks to influence politics and access power. But despite these claims, we have witnessed a growing influence of religious fundamentalism in Asian democratic politics, with immoderation becoming prominent. Why have religious fundamentalist movements become influential in various democracies in Asia? How have they shaped policies? Using a most-different-systems approach, I investigate religious fundamentalism in two dissimilar democracies: Islamic fundamentalism in Indonesia and Christian fundamentalism in South Korea. In both cases, I argue that religious fundamentalist movements facilitate immoderate politics through strong mobilization capacity, agenda-setting power, and framing. The study contributes to the inclusion-moderation literature through its discussion of religious fundamentalism and its cross-religious comparison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]