From the publisher’s website: This volume brings together translated essays by fourteen established and emerging South Korean scholars. Using approaches from sociology, political science, history, and literary and cultural studies, the authors offer innovative and nuanced analyses of a wide range of topics—from refugee displacement to street politics, from anti-communism and democracy to militarization—and discuss … [Read More]
Booklist: Politics and Current Affairs (page 3)
Democratization and Democracy in South Korea, 1960–Present
This book analyses democratization and democracy in South Korea since 1960. The book starts with an analysis of the distinctive characteristics of bureaucratic authoritarianism and how democratic transition had been possible after inconclusive and protracted “tug of war” between authoritarian regime and democratic opposition. It then goes on to explore what the opportunities and constraints … [Read More]
The Korean Developmental State
From the publisher’s website: This book analyzes, from a historical comparative perspective, the Korean economic development model, the extent to which it has changed from its classical model, and what constitutes its changes and continuity. Unlike studies claims the dissolution of Korean developmentalism, the book holds that the Korean state maintains its characteristics of state-led … [Read More]
South Korea’s Democracy Challenge: Political System, Political Economy, and Political Society
Thirty years have passed since in 1987 formal democratization was achieved in South Korea. Since then the country has undergone the two turnover test (Huntington), and it overcame economic, financial, and political crises. However, social inequality is higher than before democratization, social conflict has been exacerbating, and political polarization has been on the rise. South … [Read More]
On the Margins of Urban South Korea: Core Location as Method and Praxis
This book provides a rich and illuminating account of the peripheries of urban, regional, and transnational development in South Korea. Engaging with the ideas of “core location,” a term coined by Baik Young-seo, and “Asia as method,” a concept with a century-old intellectual lineage in East Asia, each chapter in the volume discusses the ways … [Read More]
The Political Economy of the Small Welfare State in South Korea
From the publisher’s website: This book explains why the Korean welfare state is underdeveloped despite successful industrialization, democratization, a militant labor movement, and a centralized meritocracy. Unlike most social science books on Korea, which tend to focus on its developmental state and rapid economic development, this book deals with social welfare issues and politics during … [Read More]
Diplomacy, Trade, and South Korea’s Rise to International Influence
From the publisher’s website: This volume details how the diplomatic successes of South Korean presidents removed the country from the international isolation it experienced in the aftermath of the Korean War and also provided the necessary international connections for the expansions of international trade it experienced. Patterson and Choi explain how diplomacy then was the … [Read More]
Revisiting Minjung: New Perspectives on the Cultural History of 1980s South Korea
From the publisher’s website: An epoch-marking alliance of laborers, students, dissident intellectuals, and ordinary citizens was at the heart of South Korea’s transformation from a dictatorship into a vibrant democracy during the 1980s. Collectively known as the minjung (“the people”), these agents of Korean democratization historically carved out an expanded role for civil society in the country’s … [Read More]
South Korean Identity and Global Foreign Policy: Dream of Autonomy
From the publisher’s website: In the 20th century, South Korea was usually seen as a “shrimp amongst whales”, a minor player with limited agency in regional and global affairs. Korea’s risen status as a “middle power” today, however, begs the question about related changes in the South Korean identity or “sense of self” in the … [Read More]
Top-Down Democracy in South Korea
From the publisher’s website: While popular movements in South Korea rightly grab the headlines for forcing political change and holding leaders to account, those movements are only part of the story of the construction and practice of democracy. In Top-Down Democracy in South Korea, Erik Mobrand documents another part – the elite-led design and management of … [Read More]
The Park Chung Hee Era: Economic Development and Modernization of the Republic of Korea
From the publisher’s website: This volume presents a collection of authoritative summaries and analyses of the most significant economic policies of the Park Chung Hee years (1961–1979). It is the product of a major project by Korean academics and officials to critically review and analyze policies aimed at economic development and modernization of Korea. Most … [Read More]
Rationality in the North Korean Regime: Understanding the Kims’ Strategy of Provocation
From the publisher’s website: How and why are the Kims rational? There is no consensus about either the Kims’ rationality or how best to determine if they are rational actors. Rationality in the North Korean Regime offers a concise and finite method to assess rationality by examining over ten cases of provocations from the Korean War to … [Read More]
Cultural Policy in South Korea: Making a New Patron State
From the publisher’s website: This is the first English-language book on cultural policy in Korea, which critically historicises and analyses the contentious and dynamic development of the policy. It highlights that the evolution of cultural policy has been bound up with the complicated political, economic and social trajectory of Korea to a surprising degree. Investigating … [Read More]
Conscience in Action: The Autobiography of Kim Dae-jung
From the publisher’s website: This book is an English translation of the authoritative autobiography by the late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. The 2000 Nobel Peace Prize winner, often called the Asian Nelson Mandela, is best known for his tolerant and innovative “Sunshine Policy” towards North Korea. Written in the five years between the end … [Read More]
Igniting the Internet: Youth and Activism in Postauthoritarian South Korea
From the publisher’s website: Igniting the Internet is one of the first books to examine in depth the development and consequences of Internet-born politics in the twenty-first century. It takes up the new wave of South Korean youth activism that originated online in 2002, when the country’s dynamic cyberspace transformed a vehicular accident involving two U.S. … [Read More]
The Personalist Ethic and the Rise of Urban Korea
From the publisher’s website: This book reviews South Korea’s experiences of kŭndaehwa (modernization), or catching up with the West, with a focus on three major historical projects, namely, expansion of new (Western) education, industrialization and democratization. The kŭndaehwa efforts that began in the last quarter of the nineteenth century have now fully transformed South Korea into an … [Read More]