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The relationship between modernization and religion is contested, with the literature differing in how and in what ways religion helps or hinders countries' social, economic, and political development. This paper draws upon the history of Christianity in South Korea to critically explore the links between religion and modernization. It makes two arguments. First, discussions of the link between religion and modernization frequently employ static definitions of religion, but Christianity is characterized by oscillations between worldly (institutionalizing) and unworldly (countercultural) impulses that theoretically make very different contributions to social, economic, and political development. Second, in the case of South Korea, it is shown that both impulses have made vital contributions to the country's modernization at different times. This suggests that the dynamic tug-of-war between the institutional and countercultural facets of Korean Christianity, although problematic for individual believers and religious leaders, helped it become an important contributor to the country's success story. However, this paper concludes on a cautionary note by warning that extreme instances of these impulses have caused cleavages between Christianity and the Korean state and society and could undermine its future contributions. This suggests that diversity and toleration—a hallmark of Korean Christianity—will continue to be the best pathway forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea's transition to democracy in 1987 was driven by social movements. The grand democracy coalition included the opposition party and various civic associations, including student groups, labour unions, and religious organisations. Civil society continued to pressure the post-transitional governments to dismantle authoritarian structures and remove undemocratic practices. Political authoritarianism in South Korea in 1961–1987 was inseparable from the developmental state that delivered the country's impressive economic development. Government reform after the democratisation entailed the weakening, if not dismantling, of the developmental state, to make public governance and policymaking more transparent, responsive, and participatory. In this paper we examine government reform in South Korea, focusing on the first ten years following democratisation. The Roh Tae Woo government created the Administrative Reform Committee in 1988, and the Kim Young Sam government launched the Presidential Commission for Administrative Reform in 1993. Although both agencies engaged civilians in the reform process, it was the Ministry of Government Administration and the Ministry of Finance and Economy that dominated the designing and implementing of the reforms, which demonstrates that the introduction and implementation of collaborative governance in South Korea was state led. Comparative implications are drawn from the South Korean case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to understand the cultural censorship practiced in contemporary South Korea, a liberal democracy, where cultural quangos were established after political democratization, following the arm's length model. I will focus on the analysis of cases from the film industry which has been central to the censorship debate historically in Korea because of its popular appeal. The establishment of arm's length cultural organizations laid the foundation for freedom of cultural expression which had been seriously curtailed under military rule. However, recent revelations of cultural blacklist cases under the two previous administrations are baffling to understand since rampant political censorship was practiced through ostensibly autonomous cultural organizations. The paper examines the ways in which the state constructed a 'system of ideological censorship' by using not only cultural quangos but non-cultural state apparatuses. In so doing, the paper emphasizes the role of non-cultural policy state institutions in the operation of cultural policy and the effect of state systems on cultural organizations. I draw upon the concept of defective democracy to understand the socio-political condition where these cultural organizations exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a theoretical tool to evaluate the success or failure of democratization movements from the perspectives of social movement theory. It reviews existing theoretical criteria and typologies for the success of social movements, and it attempts to provide a new approach by going back to the theoretical definition of social movements and their purposes. This endeavor allows the author to propose that the goal of democratization movements is the transformation of authoritarian power relations between the State and civil society. This paper also argues that the extent to which a democratization movement contributes to overcome such relations should be the indicator of success of a movement. To test the argument, this paper examines the Mexico 68 democratization movement and the 5·18 democratization movement of Korea. As a result, it becomes evident that despite apparent similarities as failed democratization movements violently repressed by the State, the two movements differ greatly in terms of their contribution to the further transformation of power relations between the State and civil society. In sum, this study provides a valuable theoretical tool to systematically measure the outcome of democratization movements and deepens our understanding of the two important democratization movements in Mexico and Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains how South Korea's democracy has controlled the military since 1993. It reveals why the overpowered military has not faded even after the eradication of Hanahoe and the consolidation of democracy in South Korea in its aftermath. The democratic control over the military is examined focusing on: (1) budget, personnel, organization; (2) the judicial system; (3) security and defense policy; (4) personnel affairs, roles, and responsibilities; and an explanation based on laws and institutions, the strategy of key actors, and historical conditions of military confrontation. Under South Korea's democracy, the military budget, personnel, and organization are only partially controlled, leaving military commanders with jurisdiction over the military's judicial system. This is a result of legal and institutional limitations, as well as resistance from the Ministry of National Defense (MND) and the military. In matters of security and defense policy, the president has taken the initiative to revitalize obsolete systems through political compromise with the military. The primary means for the president to control the military has been the personnel management of the MND and the military. The military is likely to pledge its allegiance to the regime instead of citizens because the former has control over personnel affairs, which has frequently led to unofficial private groups of military officers and their political interference. This case in South Korea shows that the way society controls the military sows the very seeds of risk and allows us to rethink the challenges in controlling the military in a democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concurs with Hamilton-Hart and Yeung that in South Korea and Taiwan, the predominance of global production networks, growth of private enterprises, and democratization have placed developmental state institutions under pressure. However, despite the reorganization of the pilot agency and state bureaucracy, new institutions have emerged to take on the functions of policy consultation and coordination. These institutions continue to control ample financial and regulatory resources, which allow state elites to coordinate industrial transformation and mediate global engagement. South Korea and Taiwan, however, differ in their ability to appease sociopolitical conflict and find common ground to defy neoliberal tendency. Moreover, they differ in their preexisting industrial structures, modes of engaging with the global market, and security considerations with respect to mainland China. Given path dependency, the two cases differ in their success in launching new industries and facilitating defensive globalization. Due to this divergence, the two economies hold disparate positions in the global division of labor: lead firms in South Korea, contract manufacturers in Taiwan, and aspiring platform leaders in both cases. Enterprises from these two economies also weave disparate types of production networks, with those from South Korea exhibiting a higher level of functional diversity and geographical expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the process of democratisation, it is expected that a former dominant party, at least one which abides by the rules of electoral contestation, will transition into a 'catch-all' party. A catch-all party aims to attract the votes of all social cleavages and classes of voters outside what would be considered their traditional voter base. As part of the wider debate about democratisation in East Asia, this paper examines how two of East Asia's liberal democracies-Japan and South Korea, the LDP and GNP/Saenuri, respectively, have adapted to electoral defeat and in what ways they have transitioned into catch-all parties in the Kircheimer mould. This paper finds that while intra-party reforms which could fit a catch-all model have yet to be institutionalised, data from the Comparative Manifesto Database shows that there has been a significant change in which policies both parties promote and that these are designed to appeal to a broad base of voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The institutional changes to the developmental states in South Korea and Taiwan have been well-documented. This paper offers a theory to recount the states' actual transformation processes in these two cases. Advancing existing insight that the state's transformation process is shaped by the emergence of either concentrated or dispersed economic interests, I argue that a crucial process behind the transformation of the developmental state is a democratic transition of a country motivated by ruling elites' strategic choices. Specifically, a democratic transition in a developmental state is shaped by two consecutive elite decisions: (1) the decision to initiate democratic transition in response to the democratic mobilisation of the middle class; (2) the decision to introduce democratic elections in response to an electoral threat from opposition elites. This process of democratic transition facilitates the emergence of state policy constraints by transforming the political foundation of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea made a democratic transition and adopted new electoral systems on the presidential and National Assembly election in 1987. The paper provides an overview of the studies on Korean voter behavior in the last thirty years. We begin our discussion with the works on two salient electoral cleavages and their changes: region and ideology. Then we discuss the generation and gender as two increasingly important explanatory variables on vote choice. Next, we canvass the works that focus on party identification, issue voting, political psychology of Korean voters. We conclude with a brief discussion on the agenda for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study how political parties react to democratic transitions. We find that the structure of legislators' social networks plays a critical role in shaping their political interactions during the transition period, and consequently, the post-transition party systems that emerge. We focus on the Korean case, where the incumbent authoritarian party merged with one of its pro-democracy opponents to create a powerful and enduring conservative party under democratic rule. Using a novel individual-level dataset on all legislative members during the transition, we find that the merger was facilitated by dense social networks linking members of the merged parties, which increased trust across the parties and reduced the difficulty of a merger. Conversely, we find that the paucity of ties linking pro-democracy parties hindered their long-term cooperation, despite their shared ideologies and policy goals. The study complements existing theories by providing a network-based explanation for the weakly institutionalized political party system that has characterized Korean politics since democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the experience of South Korea (hereafter referred to as Korea) as a testing ground for the prospects of the contemporary welfare state as affected by globalization. Korea is known as one of the most successful cases of intentional economic growth. Over three and a half decades, from 1961 to 1996, it grew from a war-torn wreck to become the world's 11th largest economy, with a per capita gross domestic product exceeding US$10,000, and to become a member of the rich nations' club, OECD. But, with the financial crisis of 1997, the Korean miracle is said to have ingloriously ended. This paper examines the development of the Korean welfare state as a composite system of democratic welfare capitalism in the context of its export-oriented economic growth, and looks into the current features of the welfare state efforts under the direct tutelage of the IMF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. (Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 1845) It can never be the task of an empirical science to provide binding norms and ideals from which directives for immediate practical activity can be derived. (Max Weber, Objectivity of Social Science and Social Policy, 1904) Abstract This paper traces the development of law and society studies in South Korea, elucidates the political implications of the academic practices of law and society scholars, and identifies the forms of their political engagement. It canvasses the situation of law and society studies in the pre- and post-Liberation periods and analyzes the changes that have occurred since law and society came to be studied and taught in universities. The paper shows how the early generations of scholarship were sidestepped in the 1980s by the so-called "third-generation legal scholarship" and delineates the counter-hegemonic movement launched by the new generation of scholars. It throws light on the empowerment of critical law and society scholars in the post-democratization phases of the 1990s and 2000s, when many of those scholars actively participated in policy-making and civil advocacy, and discusses the tensions in those developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we provide a historical overview of the development of Korea Is civil society since its transition to democracy in 1987. After a theoretical review of civil society focused on the comparison between the East and the West, we analyze seven governments of Korea since the democratic transition in 1987 in terms of the change in civil society and its engagement with the state, underscoring the continued role of civil society in democratic consolidation and deepening. Then, we discuss some prominent characteristics of Korean civil society in the post-transitional period, such as the diversification of the modes of state-civil society relationship, politicization and ideological polarization of civil society, "political societization " of civil society, the widened gap between central and local civil societies, and financial dependency of civil society on the state. We conclude the paper with a few important cautions against excessive political societization of civil society and the resultant depopulation and potential delegitimation of the civil society arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2016 and 2019, South Korean conservatives organized a movement called the T'aegŭkki Rallies to oppose the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye and to protest against President Moon Jae-in's administration. This movement is puzzling for its timing, demographic composition, and rhetorical choices. Through in-depth interviews with rally participants and non-participants, I illustrate that a collective identity, shaped by authoritarian socialization, strengthened with positive memories about an authoritarian past, combined to mobilize rally participants. Curiously, rally participants saw themselves as defenders of liberal democracy, protecting South Korea against progressive forces seeking to turn the country into a communist state. However, my interviews revealed that they were, in fact, trying to protect the authoritarian past. In this manner, South Korea's authoritarian legacy entrenches ideological polarization and hampers common understandings of democratic citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the rise of the migrant workers' movement in Korea and the conditions of their collective actions in the militant tradition of Korean democratisation. It does this with a focus on the causes of militancy and its similarities to and differences from the characteristics of Korean democratisation. This paper argues that some defects of the political system, the role of oppressive government policy, and intervention of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are the combined reason for migrant worker militancy. However, this militant trend faces the challenge of the judicialisation of politics as democratic consolidation has been deepened and the legal order of society is emphasised. Judicialisation requires reconsideration on how to maximise one's interest through legal procedure rather than militant struggle. Such a legal approach, however, again confronts a dilemma in which simply following legal procedure will not generate any change in existing laws. Furthermore, according to various cleavage lines such as labour vs. capital, national vs. non-national, and native vs. foreign cultures, the priority of struggles in migrant workers and support groups has been differentiated into labour rights, political rights, and cultural rights. In this situation, the migrant workers' movement should be sensitive to locate its future agenda considering the needs of migrants as well as the changing context of Korean society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the political economy of economic reform and the ways in which the characteristics of developmental states have been changed in this reform process. It does this with attention to the experience of structural transformation in the manufacturing, information technology and financial sectors in Korea. Using the coalition theory of policy reform, the main finding from these cases is that the relationships among politicians, bureaucrats and interest groups have been altered so that interest groups' power has been strengthened compared to politicians and bureaucrats. Although a crisis is important in promoting economic reform, broader-ranging trends, such as democratisation, globalisation and technological progress, have also been important fundamental forces. Even with change, the reform process in Korea continues to reflect the legacies of the developmental state, with the state still playing an important role in planning, implementing and sustaining economic reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews Korean foreign development aid policies, setting them in the context of evolving development assistance policies in OECD countries during the last fifty years. Korean foreign assistance levels remained quite low throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but have risen significantly in the last seven years, and the paper asks why this is so. Historically, strong support for aid has been linked primarily to humanitarian motives; the countries which have emphasized such motives have maintained much stronger aid programmes. The paper argues that Korea did not emphasize these rationales for aid very strongly, and that this, together with the weak development of Korean civil society, resulted in low levels of support for aid and low aid levels through the 1990s. However, a recent rise in voluntarism, the expanded political influence of NGOs, and strong popular support for assistance to the poor, both at home and abroad, signal a shift in civic values, and can account for the current increase in humanitarian aid to North Korea and the developing world. Korean foreign assistance policy, then, shows great promise, and has the potential to serve as a model for newly developed countries, while providing Korea with lasting prestige. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1960s, the South Korean authoritarian anti-communist system, which had been established immediately after the liberation of Korea in 1945, was transformed into an anti-communist developmental dictatorship. The student movement for democracy erupted in the spring of 1960 (April 19 Revolution) and brought down the authoritarian Rhee Syngman regime. But Park Chung Hee, a military general and former officer of the Japanese Imperial Army, seized power in a military coup on 16 May 1961. He was later elected to the presidency on an agenda of modernisation in a "nationalist democracy". In 1965, despite strong student protests, he concluded a Treaty on Basic Relations with the country's former colonial ruler, Japan, and took Korea to war in Vietnam, in the process setting the stage for a constitutional amendment that foreshadowed the transformation of the "developmental state" into the following decade's "developmental dictatorship". The focus of this paper is on the ideological structure of the transitional era in which the revolution for democracy led to the establishment of an anti-communist developmental dictatorship as a result of the combined effect of various conditions of South Korean politics and the international Cold War in the 1960s. Modernisation, anti-communism, nationalism and democracy were its essential ideological elements, and the regime changes of that decade depended on changes in the priorities and interrelations among them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how democratization has affected the dynamics of candidate selection in South Korea. After democratization in the late 1980s, it was expected that intra-party democracy would follow. In response to increasing public demand, the major parties adopted primary systems in the early 2000s. Nonetheless, most candidates for the legislature are still nominated by a small number of central party elites without additional ballots in the local branches. To explain the persistence of such exclusive, centralized features of candidate selection, I highlight the limited impact democratization has had on the political environment in which the parties operate. More specifically, since the 1987 democratization process resulted in a compromise agreement established by a small number of party leaders, South Korea retained much of the political legacy from authoritarian times, such as an electoral system advantageous to the major parties and legal provisions restricting electoral campaigns, party activities, and political participation. The continuation of these political institutions makes radical candidate selection reform highly unlikely as the party elites have no incentive to expand and decentralize the selection process. Without significant changes to the political institutions at the national level, the dominance of the central party elite over the final outcome of candidate selection looks likely to continue for the foreseeable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines how the changing demographic characteristics of voters affect generational structure of voters group and voting behavior on the presidential vote in South Korea. To do this, this research investigates the results from presidential elections in 2007 and 2017 by using the election data from 1997 as our baseline year which is not only recognized as the second presidential election corresponding with a democratic procedure, but regarded as a beginning of democratic consolidation in South Korea. Particularly, this research focuses on investigating how generational shifts in the Seoul metropolitan area (SMA) where has experienced dramatic demographic changes in the process of democratization since 1990s affect voters' decision by categorizing 66 local government entities within the SMA according to changes in population demographics as well as political ideology. The results indicate that voters' age is significantly correlated with the vote decision by ideological orientations, but its influence dramatically decreased in recent elections. Furthermore, this research utilized cluster analysis and ArcGIS to examine the similarity of municipalities within the SMA by clustering voters' demographics and election results (political orientations) based on the data from the 66 municipalities of the SMA. The cluster results indicate that these municipalities could be divided into six clusters by population aging and the level of conservatism of political orientation. It is interesting to note that certain phenomenon across cluster types appeared very similar, yet the cause of these phenomena was completely different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the questions of why and how foreign assistance was utilised successfully in South Korea but less so in Ghana, with a focus on the role of aid in the process of state building and state transition in these two countries. As multiple policy makers and scholars have noted, in 1957 South Korea and Ghana shared similar levels of GDP per capita, yet South Korea then achieved rapid economic development and democracy in one generation, while Ghana suffered from slow development and a general deterioration of the standard of living. In this study I adopt a comparative historical research method to explain the divergent paths of these two countries, with a special focus on the impact of foreign assistance on state transitions. I argue that contextual factors – including the effect of the colonial legacy in each of these two regions in shaping modern states, and the specific characteristics of foreign assistance intervention – provide useful insights in explaining the differential impact of aid on state building and state transition in Ghana and in South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I consider the transitions of Taiwan and South Korea to democracy. Specifically, I study why citizens in these newly democratic systems engage in conventional forms of participation as an indicator of consolidation. Using much of the existing literature on participation, I test hypotheses that frame the decisions to participate through conventional forms as a function of internal feelings of efficacy, or political engagement, mobilization by parties and social capital. I use a series of hierarchical linear models to assess Waves 2 and 3 data from the 2005–2010 Asian Barometer and find considerable support for political engagement, party attachment, and social connections in spurring on participation. In addition, while respondents offer limited support for democratic institutions, they espouse liberal attitudes; this reflects the large presence of “critical citizens” in these places (Norris 1999; Chu and Huang 2010). Though fragile, there are indications of meaningful democratic progress in Taiwan and South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The recent financial scandal in Korea surrounding savings banks call into question two kinds wisdom we have about corruption: corruption is a result of political rent-seeking, and corruption in East Asia is manageable with the help of the centralized and strong state. Contrary to the expectation that the double advent of democratization and globalization would scale down, if not eradicate, such a political rent-seeking, the recent corruption seen from the scandal has been encompassing the entire regulatory regime. The profile of the corruption was also ugly along with blatant trades between regulatory favors and bribes. This paper defines the Korean scandal as a bureaucratic institutional corruption resulting from the decline of a few management mechanisms occurred throughout the political and economic liberalization during the 1990s. First, the financial scandal is understood in this paper as a policy failure involving misbehaviors while implementing regulatory policies, differently from a generic political failure where policy favors are awarded to selected businesses in return for payments, mostly illegal, at the stage of policy making. It happens with an unsettled economic reform like in Korea where the liberalized financial market meets with a few still highly discretionary government policy agencies. Second, a few fallouts of bureaucratic institutional deterioration or abuse have collectively driven the financial regulatory regimes down to corruption. Most fatal, this study suggests, is the disruption of deferred compensation to policy agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how a highly politicized system of military reshuffling under the authoritarian military regime contributed to the transition to democracy in South Korea in the 1980s. Through an analysis of individual data on 2,666 Korean Military Academy (KMA) graduates, this study shows that promotion policies favored a small group of KMA graduates, called the Hana faction, who were preferentially treated in military promotions and recruited into the military leadership. These biased promotion procedures undermined the cohesion within the military as the marginalized non-Hana faction graduates became increasingly resistant to the subordination of their Hana faction superiors. This disintegration of military cohesion ultimately reduced the regime’s capacity to block the transition to democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As an emerging donor of Official Development Assistance (ODA), the South Korean government has announced that it will provide a ‘South Korean Model of Development Cooperation’. This paper explores how the South Korean development experience from the twentieth century can be transformed into an alternative for development cooperation in the twenty-first century. The early aid management system in South Korea contributed to the bureaucratic capacity-building that was necessary for the installation of the developmental state. In its quest for industrialization, the authoritarian developmental state in South Korea maintained autonomy vis-à-vis foreign donors, foretelling the ‘country ownership’ principle in today's global norms of ODA. However instructive the South Korean experience may be, it will not work as a ‘one size fits all’ model for the twenty-first century development due to such fundamental changes in the global political economy as the WTO regime and democracy promotion. In this regard, South Korea's own double transition of economic liberalization and democratization offers another important lesson. Therefore, we suggest a South Korean ‘alternative’ that respects both the global norms for development cooperation and the national democratic aspirations. It would be a democratic developmental state whose autonomy is more deeply embedded in civil society and whose capacity further expands human capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores how the return to power by the authoritarian conservative Grand National Party after a decade of liberal government was possible, drawing attention to the mode of democratic transition and its impact on democratic consolidation, and to the role of civil society in South Korea. It examines how the democratic transition by pact failed to eliminate the legacies of authoritarianism within the state and civil society and contributed to the maintenance of authoritarian civic organisations established by the military regime. Whilst liberal democratic parties took power in the midst of the East Asian financial crisis, they ultimately undermined their own social bases by carrying out neoliberal economic reforms in order to tackle the crisis. The rise of conservative civil society in the 2000s formed the social base upon which the Grand National Party was able to regain state power through a significant shift in voters' party preference. Its reorganisation of the conservative civic organisations played a key role in mobilising frustrated voters to support it in 2007. The Korean experience of democratisation demonstrates that democratic transition is not only a political process but also a social and economic process, revealing that in Korea civil society has been far from democratic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a case study of democratization movements in South Korea from 1980 to 1987, this study aims to contribute to further sophistication of social movement theories. Recognizing the limitation of the existing political opportunity approach, this paper presents a systematic definition of political opportunity structure and shows the mechanism through which it plays a role in the development of a social movement. In particular, in explaining South Korea's democratization movements, the authors distinguish political opportunity from its structure and suggest political opportunity as a framework that could explain the changes in risks and changes affecting social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly attempts to see North Korea's future political change from a comparative perspective have been rare largely on the ground that the North Korean case is regarded as so unique that it has no comparable case to study with. However, the dictatorship of the past communist parties in the postcommunist Europe during the late twentieth century was no less harsh than that of today's North Korea. Most of all, how do we know that they are incomparable until we actually compare them? If they are so different, in which aspect and how much are they different? This paper aims to fill this lacuna by discussing the possibility of regime change and democratic development in North Korea by means of systematic comparisons with the past 30 years' postcommunist experiences. The comparative analysis finds that, despite an array of dissimilarities between the cases, the role of South Korea as an economic and democratic supporter should be critical in inducing North Korea to make a political change and keep on the track of political reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Koreans have worked hard to improve the quality of their democracy. They have promoted the rule of law, accountability, control of corruption, freedom, and responsiveness, and made an effort to make government more effective. They are also committed to economic freedom. In relation to the rule of law, significant attention has been devoted to reducing terrorism and violence, making government more effective, and enhancing regulatory quality. However, with regard to accountability, control of corruption, and transparency, Korea has still a long way to go. The analysis of democratization and improvements in the quality of democracy to date suggest that Korea has adapted to the changing economic environment and is sustaining its economic growth. This has been accompanied by social and economic polarization and a consequent demand for more and better welfare services. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this paper is to bring class compromise back into the study of South Korean political economy and present it as a possible alternative to the overwhelmingly one-sided neoliberal trajectory in South Korea. The process and conditions under which positive class compromise is acquired are identified in terms of the Polanyi-Gramsci nexus. This perspective suggests that the restoration of state-led developmentalism would be unfeasible under a democratic regime, while the implementation of a purely neoliberal blueprint may lead to unproductive class conflict. Employing this theoretical framework, I examine possibilities for positive class compromise in the context of the simultaneous transitions—democratization and neoliberalization—in South Korea.JEL classification: B5, H7, O53, P5 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the impact of globalisation on the working class in South Korea. Globalisation in South Korea has been distinctive in that it has taken place during the transition to democracy. While democratisation has empowered workers to organise, globalisation has undermined the strength of the organised workers, segmenting regular workers from contingent workers. The abrupt neo-liberal economic reforms that followed the financial crisis of 1997-98 totally transformed the structure of the labour market, generating massive numbers of contingent workers who are vulnerable to economic insecurity and social risks. Under the system of company unions, the militant economic unionism that developed among unions in big corporations demonstrated its limitations in promoting the interests of contingent workers. As the struggles of contingent workers have expanded, social movement unionism, which unifies labour issues and social issues, has emerged as an alternative to militant economic unionism of unions composed of regular workers. This movement could provide a glimpse of a possible new future for the union movement in other Asian countries that have experienced similar economic and political changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]