이 글의 목적은 민주공화주의 이념의 기원과 그 정치철학적 의미를 밝히는데 있다. 1919년 4월 11일 대한민국임시정부 헌법(?임시헌정?) 제1조에 명시된 민주공화주의 이념은 서양 정치철학사에서 찾아보기 힘든 합성어이다. 서양 정치철학의 전통에서 민주주의와 공화주의 이념은 지배형식과 통치형식을 지칭하는 용어로 수준을 달리하며 또한 오히려 일상적인 의미에서는, 오늘날 미국의 양대 정당의 명칭이 시사하듯, 평등과 자유 사이에 일정한 긴장을 수반하기도 한다. 이런 이유로 1776년의 「미국독립선언문」이나 1779년의 「미국헌법」 어디에서도 이 단어는 나타나지 않는다. 또한 1789년 프랑스혁명의 「인권선언」이나 프랑스공화국 헌법 어디에도 이 개념은 찾아볼 수 없다. 서구 현대국가 일반과 현재의 (...) 대한민국 헌법에도 많은 영향을 미친 독일 바이마르 공화국 헌법은 「임시헌정」보다 몇 달 뒤인 1919년 8월에 제정되었지만, 여기서도 이 개념은 없다. 또한 동아시아에서 첫 번째 공화혁명이었던 신해혁명으로 만들어진 중화민국도 민주공화주의를 제창하지는 않았다. 민주공화주의는 우리 애국지사들이 당시 노골화하던 제국주의적 침탈의 세계사적 조류를 거슬러 일본의 국권 강탈과 국토 침략에 저항하기 위해 만들어낸 독창적인 정치철학적 이념이며, 국권회복을 위한 치열한 고뇌를 담아내는 자생적 개념이다. 또한 이 민주공화주의 이념은 「3 · 1운동」의 국제적 전파력과 함께 중국의 「5 · 4운동」등 아시아지역의 민족해방운동에 기폭제 역할을 수행함으로써, 대중문화를 주축으로 한 지금의 한류와 차원을 달리하는 20세기 초 아방가르드적 정치 한류의 원형을 형성한다. (shrink)

The Republic of Korea (Korea hereinafter) has been widely regarded as one of the most vigorous and analytically interesting third-wave democracies (Diamond and Shin, 2000: 1). During the first decade of democratic rule, Korea has successfully carried out a large number of electoral and other reforms to transform the institutions and procedures of military-authoritarian rule into those of a representative democracy. Unlike many of its counterparts in Latin America and elsewhere, Korea has fully restored civilian (...) rule by extricating the military from power. As is the case in established democracies of North America and Western Europe, free and competitive elections have been regularly held at all the different levels of the government. In the most recent presidential election, held in December 1997, Korea also established itself as a mature electoral democracy by elevating an opposition party to political power. In Korea today, there is general agreement that electoral politics has become the only possible political game in town. (shrink)

Nowadays, young people from all over the world are fascinated by the mass popular culture of South Korea. This process of spread of Korean culture in the world came to be called “Korean current” or “Korean wave”, which became a kind of “Korean cultural boom”. The spread of the “Korean wave” has been compared to a viral disease that first spread throughout East Asia, then Southeast Asia, and eventually engulfed the entire world. Despite the fact that the (...) phenomenon of the “Korean wave” had a sufficient public resonance, due to its novelty and unexpected emergence, it remains an understudied subject of scientific study, especially in the West and in particular in Ukraine. That is why the topic of this study is relevant nowadays. The aim of the article to investigate the mass cultural phenomenon “Korean wave”, to analyze its sources and dynamics of development, to characterize its inherent features, to determine the aspects of its spread and popularization, to investigate its influence on world society and culture, as well as to find out the peculiarities of its influence on the consciousness of the masses. The research methodology is based on a philosophical and cultural analysis of such a mass phenomenon of modern artistic culture as the “Korean wave”. When writing the work, we tried to adhere to the principles of objectivism, systematicity, comprehensiveness and multifactoriality. To comply with these principles, we used a number of general scientific and special methods in the research: comparative-historical, axiological, phenomenological, logical, retrospective, analytical-synthetic, socio-critical, systemic, structural-functional, generalizing and statistical. Adherence to these principles and methods made it possible to avoid bias and tendencies in judgments. Results. Such a mass cultural phenomenon as the “Korean wave” is a kind of entanglement of opposite principles: modern Western (progressive-innovative) and traditional Eastern (Confucian) cultural values. It manifests itself in the spread of fashion to everything Korean (or to be more precise, South Korean): not only K-pop, dramas, toys, clothes and other types of South Korean entertainment industry, but also Korean cuisine, household items, etc. In the past, despite the geographical proximity and cultural connectivity, for political reasons the countries of Asia largely suppressed cultural exchanges among themselves. China, Korea and Japan began to develop cultural ties between themselves relatively recently. It should also be noted that South Korea is a country that was previously considered a cultural periphery in international exchanges, now it plays an important role in the regionalization of mass culture as a whole in East and Southeast Asia and the product produced by it is considered a center of mass culture and one of the ways of cultural exchange throughout Asia. Conclusions. To sum up, we can say that the great popularity of the “Korean wave” is a kind of leap in the modern culture of South Korea. This phenomenon is represented not only by the synthesis of modern Western (European-American) culture and traditional Eastern (Korean), but also by the fact that in our time it has turned into a powerful locomotive of the entire South Korean economy, a kind of “dragon’s head”. The phenomenon of the “Korean wave” helps to raise the level of the image of South Korea as a prosperous country, and also visually demonstrates the modern South Korean culture to the world. The “Korean Wave” demonstrates to other countries in Asia and to the whole world in general that South Korea is not a periphery in our time, it is no longer a third world country, and it is as modern an urbanized country as most of the developed countries of the West, which has not only modernized its culture, but also spread it, and even managed to influence other countries and their cultures. (shrink)

How well is the field of political studies doing and where is it headed? Such questions are examined and answered in this broad world overview of political science, along with the advances and shortcomings, as well as the recommended prescriptions for the future decades of the new century. The book includes three world regional assessments of the discipline, along with an in-depth survey of various sub-disciplinary fields and a concluding critical essay on the future of political studies. (...) This is the final volume in a book series on the development of political science, created in 2000 by Research Committee 33 of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) on the study of political science as a discipline. Contents include: Political Science in Three Asian Democracies: Disaffected (Japan), Third-Wave (Korea), and Fledgling (China) * Political Science in Europe: Its Development as a Discipline * Political Science in North America and Other Continents: Is There a Genuinely Int. (shrink)

This study aims to analyze populism in the scope of South Korean politics. It addresses the contexts in which political actors adopt dichotomous populist discourses and the implications of populist mentality on the social fabric of country. Populism can be defined in three different dimensions as an exclusionary, divisive and marginalizing ideology, discourse politics and a mobilization strategy. It is typically built on others that take on various forms. In this framework, the recent reflections of populism in the case (...) of South Korea are discussed through the dichotomies and constructed perceptions of the other. It seeks to shed light on how political actors in South Korea which is assumed to have a homogenous social structure, point out the internal and external others that constitute the essence of populist politics. While populism’s understanding of the other is relatively uniform in different contexts, in South Korea the reflections of populism are differentiated and concretely understood through a range of internal and external others. South Korea, which is considered as one of the successful democracies in East Asia, is also affected by populist wave. The reflections of populism in South Korea are not severe and can generally be expressed as soft populism. Moreover, it is predominantly effective on discourse politics and is not observed in the form of concrete policies. (shrink)

Korea Wave means the vigorous drive toward Korean mass culture among the young generation of East Asian countries. The Korea Wave has had great socio-cultural and economic effects on China and East Asian countries and even made a new word 'Hawhanzoo (哈韓族)' which mean the Korea Wave fan. The most important characteristic of the Korea Wave is that the followers are the young generation of the upper classes of those regions who are (...) apt to learn and use the Internet and the culture of the Information Age. This means that the future leaders of the East Asia countries are sympathizing with the characteristics of modern Korean culture and its vision. They are absorbing positively the Korea Wave as their spiritual foundation upon which their world views and valuejudgments are conglomerated. In this article I'd like to consider new possibilities in the Korea Wave which pave roads to a cultural community around East Asia in the age of information. Therefore, I will analyze three dimensions of Korea Wave which are material, symbolic and experiential dimensions. (shrink)

이 논문은 한류의 基因을 풍류사상으로 분석해 보고자 한 논문이다. 한국의 대중문화가 동아시아권을 넘어 세계로 확대되어지면서 그 실체에 대한 시각도 다양하게 논의되고 있다. 그 논의 중에 하나가 한류를 문화 민족주의와 범아시아주의 내지 세계주의적 관점에서 진행된 논의를 들 수 있다. 전자가 한류현상을 통해 한국 문화의 우수성을 입증할 수 있는 계기가 되었다고 주장하고 있다면, 후자는 한류현상을 한국적인 문화로 보기 보다는 서구 자본주의가 확대되어진 소비문화로 규정하고 범아시아 네트워크를 형성하는 기회로 삼아야 한다고 본다. 그러나 두 입장이 논리적인 타당성을 가지기 위해서는 무엇보다도 한국 문화의 정체성에 대한 (...) 탐색이 선행되어야한다. 그러면 정체성을 어떻게 규정할 수 있는가? 어느 특정 민족의 문화의 정체성은 고유성, 대중성, 역사성을 가지고 있어야 한다고 하는데 우리 문화에서 이런 요소를 충족시키는 정신을 풍류정신에서 찾을 수 있다.풍류사상의 기원은 삼국사기의 기록에 의하면 한국적 무교에 기원을 두고 있으며, 그 특징은 ‘멋’과 ‘한’ 그리고 ‘삶’으로 파악할 수 있다. 풍류의 ‘멋’에는 외형적인 멋과 내면적인 멋이 있으며, 외형적인 멋은 외모를 아름답게 꾸미는 현상으로 이야기할 수 있으며, 내면적인 멋에는 창의적이고 역동적이면서 개성을 강조하고 있음으로 나타난다. 그리고 ‘한’은 여러 개성들을 어우르는 특징이 있음을 설명하고, 풍류에서 ‘삶’의 특징은 내세적이고 초월적인 가치관을 가지고 있다고 보기 보다는 현실의 생활세계를 강조하고 있으며, 이런 특징이 스토리 문화를 발전시킬 수 있었다. 이런 특징을 가진 풍류사상은 한국의 기층문화에 깊이 스며져 있었지만, 정치와 외래에서 수용되어진 사상에 의해 억압되어져 오다가 1990년 대 이후부터 서구의 대중문화와 결합되어져 한류를 일으키게 되었다.대중매체의 설문조사에 의하면 한류가 발생할 수 있었던 원인을 역동적이고 창의적인 기법, 그리고 열정, 활력, 다양성, 개성 등을 들고 있는데 이런 특징은 몇몇 소수의 대중매체 종사자들이나 대중매체에서만 찾아 볼 수 있는 것이 아니라 한국인의 문화적 기질임을 알 수 있다. 그리고 한국 드라마나 영화의 특징 중에 연출자, 배우, 그리고 관객이 하나로 어우러져 제작되어진다는 특징과 그 내용상에 있어서의 독자성과 우수성을 들곤 한다. 어우러짐의 특징은 바로 풍류문화의 특징에서 ‘한’의 요소와 삶을 강조하는 문화적 특징과 연결되어지고 있다. 이런 논의를 통해 한류의 문화적 基因이 바로 풍류정신에 있음을 논의하였다. (shrink)

Tapping into the politics and rhythms of surfing, this paper embodies a “set” of waves that seeks to erode the sedimentation of Hawaii's modern political orders. By foregrounding a more fluvial and dynamic sense of the political, this paper treats surfing not only as a heterotopic site of agency, but also as an opening for an “other” kind of politics.

(1989). Three waves of political mobilization in Western Europe and the coming of a fourth. World Futures: Vol. 26, European Perspectives II, pp. 155-191.

This collection of essays attempts something entirely novel: to provide a snapshot of the new work that is being conducted in political philosophy, written by up-and-coming figures in this area.

Spanning the 19th and 20th centuries and identifying multiple waves of modernization, this book illustrates how principles originating in Chinese Confucianism have impacted the modernization of East Asia, especially in Korea. It also analyzes how such principles are exercised at personal, interpersonal and organizational levels. As modernization unfolds in East Asia, there is a rising interest in tradition of Confucianism and reconsider the relevance of Confucianism to global development. This book considers the actual historical significance of Confucianism in the (...) modernization of the three nations in this region, China, Korea, and Japan through the nineteenth century and early twentieth century to the aftermath of the end of World War II. Examining the existing literature dealing with how Confucianism has been viewed in connection with modernization, it provides insight into western attitudes towards Confucianism and the changes in perceptions relative to Asia in the very process of modernization itself. (shrink)

This article summarizes the findings of this special issue focusing on five questions: (1) who studies Japanese politics and international relations in China, Japan and the Republic of Korea?; (2) what is being studied in each of these countries?; 3) how are Japanese politics studied in each of these countries?; (3) what determines the nature of the study of Japanese politics and international relations?; and 4) what is the impact of the study of Japanese politics in each of these (...) three countries? The findings on the first questions are that most scholars in each of these countries are concentrated in their forties and fifties, but their educational backgrounds are considerably varied. On the second question, the topics of study are becoming more wide-ranging in recent years, although in China, government policy still puts a constraint on the range of topics studied. Regarding the third question, the approaches that are used are becoming more varied, especially in Japan and South Korea. Concerning the fourth question, domestic politics in each of these countries matter, and financial constraints are a problem in China. Finally, it seems that Korean scholars in this area may have greater impact on the government than in the other two countries. (shrink)

With its six nuclear tests, North Korea aims to be regarded as a nuclear power by international society. However, such a status has been denied to North Korea, especially after its fourth and fifth nuclear tests in 2016 and the sixth in 2017. North Korea's international isolation has been strengthened with the UN Security Council resolutions, and the tensions in the relations between North and South Korea and between North Korea and the U.S. have been (...) heightened. The problem of North Korea's nuclear weapons is both political and ethical one. There are four political and ethical approaches to nuclear weapons: nuclear maximalism, nuclear minimalism, nuclear reductionism, and anti-nuclearism. A nuclear maximalist approach to North Korean nuclear weapons may cause a second Korean War, and a nuclear minimalist approach to them also has the danger to increase and escalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Therefore, either a nuclear reductionist approach or an anti-nuclearism approach to the problem of North Korean nuclear weapons is more desirable. Three models of denuclearization can be helpful in achieving the North Korean denuclearization: Ukraine model, South African model, and Libya model. Each model can provide its own lessons and implications. Especially, considering the importance and significance of the Budapest Memorandum in the process of the Ukraine model, an East Asian version of Budapest Memorandum is needed for the successful North Korean denuclearization. (shrink)

This essay sheds new light on Korean democracy after democratization. It examines how the notion of ‘transcendental collectivism’, associated with familial bonds and the concept of chŏng, led to an emphasis on citizen‐empowerment. This participatory perspective replaced the militant elite‐led activism of the transitional period, which was underpinned by a Confucian ‘transcendental individualism’ predicated on the concept of ren. The argument is based on a detailed case study of a recent episode of citizen action. The article shows how the search (...) for a new democratic citizenship that was capable of overcoming the parochial regionalism that has bedeviled Korean politics for decades, led ordinary (especially young) Korean citizens to come up with a new national democratic civic ethos that corresponded to the changed political environment. This new ethos was uri‐responsibility, a uniquely Korean view of collective moral responsibility. After examining uri‐responsibility and comparing it with Kantian‐liberal accounts of responsibility, its strong democratic implications for Korea are explored. (shrink)

As ardent followers of Mencius and Zhu Xi, virtually all Korean Neo-Confucians during the Chosŏn dynasty rejected the Way of the Hegemon by understanding it as directly opposed to the Kingly Way, a humane government allegedly conducted by ancient sage-kings. However, Yi I [Formula: see text]珥 (1536–1584), a prominent Neo-Confucian scholar-official in sixteenth-century Korea, endorsed the Way of the Hegemon as compatible with the Kingly Way by reconceptualizing it, otherwise predicated on strong consequentialist ethics, in a way consistent with (...) Confucianism’s deepest concern with the well-being of the people. In Confucianizing the Way of the Hegemon through the creative re-reading of the Book of Rites from a Xunzian standpoint, Yi I proposed a new method of moral self-cultivation specifically tailored for a Confucian ruler—called political self-cultivation in this paper—that combined the traditional Neo-Confucian recovery model of self-cultivation with a strong sense of political responsibility. (shrink)

이 논문은 2018년 시작된 개헌 논의에 맞추어 ‘도래할’ 헌법(constitution to come)이 담고 있어야 할 정치철학의 내용이 무엇인지, 한나 아렌트의 헌정이론을 이론적 틀로 삼아 ‘새로운 시작’과 ‘인민헌정주의’라는 개념을 중심으로 논한다. 도래할 헌법이 반영해야할 혁명 정신의 근거로서 ‘2016-17년 촛불혁명’에서 시작하는 이 논의는 다음 세 단계를 거친다. 첫째, 초일상의 정치로서 혁명과 헌법의 관계를 논하고, 헌법이 지니는 ‘새로운 시작’의 기능에 대해 살펴본다. 둘째, 도래할 헌법의 정치철학적 기초로서 인민헌정주의의 특징을 ‘헌정민주주의’와 ‘포스트주권’의 개념을 통해 제시한다. 셋째, 인민헌정주의에 기초를 둔 새로운 시작이란 관점에서 ‘대한민국 기본질서를 어떻게 규정할 (...) 것인가’와 ‘자발적 동원의 혁명정신을 헌법에 담을 것인가’라는 두 논쟁을 분석하고 대안을 제시한다. 마지막으로 헌법의 혁명정신을 보존하기 위해서는 헌법제정 과정에서 시민들이 헌법의 공동저자(constitutional authorship)가 될 수 있는 제도적 채널이 확보되어야만 한다고 주장한다. (shrink)

During the communist era, Radio Free Europe (RFE) was Romania's favorite radio station. This paper analyzes the role of RFE in everyday life in the strictly controlled Romanian communist state by looking at the broadcasts of RFE's Romanian Department, their audience, and their impact. Drawing largely on the RFE archives at the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA) and the former secret police files at the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS), it investigates how (...) radio waves mediated and channeled information while preparing people to embrace political and cultural change. The paper focuses on the circulation of knowledge, media confluences, and human agency. The rituals that developed around the secrecy which governed the listening process, the personal requests, attitudes, and opinions expressed in letters to RFE, and oral and written testimonies, coupled with the disproportionate and, at times, extreme reactions of the communist state, together reveal the carving out of individual spaces that allowed for the preservation of the “self” during Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship. At such critical historical moments, the connection became visible. Through an analysis of recent media representations in which RFE figures, such as Cold Waves, this study also looks at how RFE shaped personal memories of communist times. (shrink)

If there actually is a third wave of feminism, it is too close to the second wave for its definition to be clear and uncontroversial, a fact which emphasizes the political nature of declaring the existence of this third wave. Through an examination of some third wave literature, a case is made for emphasizing the continuity of the second and third waves without blurring the differences between older and younger feminists.

In the South Korea's 16th National Assembly (NA) elections held on 13 April 2000, there was widespread speculation that the Citizens Alliance's (CA's) public interest blackballing campaign against candidates increased voter cynicism and decreased voter turnout, as it was the lowest ever for NA elections. We empirically evaluate this speculation by conducting logit analyses of individual voter survey data as well as regression analyses on district-wide aggregated data on turnout. Although we find that cynical voters are likely to be (...) more sympathetic to CA's blackballing campaign, we do not find any evidence that the campaign decreases voter turnout. These findings are consistent with Kahn and Kenny (1999) who argue that voters respond well to the negative information if it is presented in an appropriate manner. (shrink)

This article investigates the Neo-Confucian project of “reverse moral economy,” which aims to restore the ideal congruence between political power and moral virtue, by examining a political debate on the selection of the new Crown Prince and the incumbent ruler’s subsequent abdication that took place in Korea during the formative period of the Chosŏn 朝鮮 dynasty in light of the so-called “the Mencian trouble,” a compromise between Mencius’ ideal vision of Confucian virtue politics and his realistic concern (...) with political stability. After discussing how Korean Neo-Confucians were able to justify their choice of a more virtuous candidate in violation of the Lineage Law, which upheld father-son transmission as the constant norm, by judiciously balancing between the candidate’s virtue and the incumbent ruler’s recommendation, it articulates the Korean Neo-Confucian project of reverse moral economy from the standpoint of the constitutionality of the new dynasty. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 1102-1116, October 2022.

A growing literature looks at how the design of the electoral system shapes the voting behavior of politicians in parliaments. Existing research tends to confirm that in mixed-member systems the politicians elected in the single-member districts are more likely to vote against their parties than the politicians elected on the party lists. However, we find that in South Korea, the members of the Korean National Assembly who were elected on PR lists are more likely to vote against their party (...) leadership than the members elected in single-member districts (SMDs). This counterintuitive behavior stems from the particular structure of candidate selection and politicians' career paths. This suggests that any theory of how electoral systems shape individual parliamentary behavior needs to look beyond the opportunities provided by the electoral rules for voters to reward or punish individual politicians (as opposed to parties), to the structure of candidate selection inside parties and the related career paths of politicians. (shrink)

This paper examines the internal dynamics of Korean political parties to understand why the minority coalition government of Kim Dae-jung suffered from political stalemate or deadlocks in the legislature. It shows that a focus on the size of the government in terms of a majority status in the legislature does not offer a convincing explanation of why the Kim Dae-jung administration slid towards ungovernability. Instead better insights come from an analysis of party organization, an aspect of party politics (...) rarely examined through in-depth analysis. The paper shows that in terms of the key dimensions of organization (leadership type, factionalism, funding, linkage role) Korean political parties fail to connect citizens to the political system. (shrink)

디지털 시대의 페미니즘 운동은 온라인에서 시작해 오프라인으로 확장하여 현실 변화를 추동하는 온라인 행동주의를 수행한다. 온라인 페미니즘은 온라인 연결행동이라는 방식을 통해 대중 운동을 일으키는 페미니즘 운동이다. 온라인 페미니즘은 비단 한국만의 상황이 아니라 세계적인 상황이다. 소셜 미디어는 페미니즘 운동의 소통 방식을 바꾸며, 페미니즘 운동을 글로컬한 운동으로 확장한다. 소셜 미디어를 통해서, 페미니즘 운동은 의제설정 목적을 뚜렷하게 부각하는 해시태그로 빠르게 집합하고 정서적으로 연결하여 문제를 사회적인 것으로 끌어올린다. 이런 발화는 기존 언론의 영향력을 뛰어넘는 대안 언론으로도 기능하며, ‘급진적 말하기’이자 일종의 ‘진리 말하기’인 ‘파레시아’(parrhesia)를 행한다.BR 본 글은 (...) 온라인 페미니즘을 소셜 미디어의 측면에서 분석하여 통치성에 저항하는 새로운 주체화로서 정치성을 설명하고, 새로운 물결인 제 4물결 페미니즘이자 동시대(Contemporary)의 페미니즘으로 제시한다. (shrink)

New Waves in Ethics brings together the leading future figures in ethics broadly construed, with essays ranging from meta-ethics and normative ethics to applied ethics and political philosophy. Topics include new work on experimental philosophy, feminism, and global justice, incorporating perspectives informed from historical and contemporary approaches alike. An ideal collection for anyone interested in the most important debates in ethics and political philosophy, as well as those with an interest in the latest significant contributions from the leading (...) new generation of philosophers working in ethics. (shrink)

STS research has devoted relatively little attention to the promotion and reception of science and technology by non-scientific actors and institutions. One consequence is that the relationship of science and technology to political power has tended to remain undertheorized. This article aims to fill that gap by introducing the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries. Through a comparative examination of the development and regulation of nuclear power in the US and South Korea, the article demonstrates the analytic potential of the (...) imaginaries concept. Although nuclear power and nationhood have long been imagined together in both countries, the nature of those imaginations has remained strikingly different. In the US, the state’s central move was to present itself as a responsible regulator of a potentially runaway technology that demands effective containment. In South Korea, the dominant imaginary was of atoms for development which the state not only imported but incorporated into its scientific, technological and political practices. In turn, these disparate imaginaries have underwritten very different responses to a variety of nuclear shocks and challenges, such as Three Mile Island (TMI), Chernobyl, and the spread of the anti-nuclear movement. (shrink)

Since the turn of the millennium South Korea has continued to grapplewith transgressions that shook the nation to its core. Following the serial killings of Korea's raincoat killer, the events that led to the dissolution of the United Progressive Party, the criminal negligence of the owner and also the crew members of the sunken Sewol Ferry, as well as the political scandals of 2016, there has been much public debate about morality, transparency, and the law in South (...) Korea. Yet, despite its prevalence in public discourse, transgression in Korea has not received proper scholarly attention. Transgression in Korea challenges the popular conceptions of transgression as resistance to authority, the collapse of morality, and an attempt at self- empowerment. Examples of transgression from premodern, modern, and contemporary Korea are examined side by side to underscore the possibility of reading transgression in more ways than one. These examples are taken from a devotional screen from medieval Korea, trickster tales from the late Choson period, reports about flesheating humans, newspaper articles about same- sex relationships from colonial Korea, and films about extramarital affairs, wayward youths, and a vengeful vigilante. Bringing together specialists from various disciplines such as history, art history, anthropology, premodern literature, religion, and film studies, the context- sensitive readings of transgression provided in this book suggest that transgression and authority can be seen as forming something other than an antagonistic relationship. (shrink)

Given its close ties with Confucianism, East Asian exceptionalism could be defined as the inversion of Max Weber's doctrine that Confucian values inhibit rationality and lead to economic stagnation. That revaluation, which has contributed to an inversion of `Orientalism' as it relates to East Asia, becomes a core premise of what may be called the Singapore model of East Asian development theory. Another premise of that model is the primacy given to economic over political development, i.e., over democracy. In (...) opposition to this reactionary turn, and in the light of current revisionism in Japanese studies, this article follows Kim Dae Jung in positing a `Korean model' which challenges prevailing assumptions of East Asian exceptionalism. It is argued that Korea's record of democratic development over the last 15 years deserves a more affirmative response than has been allowed by some of the most vocal American Koreanists. This model, moreover, affirms Kim's belief in an organic rather than exogenous explanation of Korea's political development. It is argued that Korea, rather than Japan, offers the best available prototype for Asian political development in its `post-exceptional' phase, and that Korea's emerging political culture - in striking contrast to Singapore's - bears witness to the fact that economic development can be consistent with liberal-democratic objectives. In Kim Dae Jung's opposition politics, and now in his presidency, one finds a rare balance of political and economic priorities. In the long run the `Korean Model' could prove far more important for East Asia than anything the IMF has to offer. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to identify who's who and the whereabouts of Japanese political studies in South Korea. Previous studies suggest that South Korea made a delayed start in Japanese studies because of submerged anti-Japanese feeling among the general public, and that linguistic and humanistic studies were prevalent while social scientific studies lagged behind. The second generation scholars, who actively published their academic works on Japan between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, contributed to the (...) development of objective, social scientific understanding of Japan. Their research interests included scrutinizing modern Japan, studying Korea-Japan relations, and analyzing Japanese foreign policy. The third generation scholars, which this article focuses on, have a few common characteristics: they began Japanese studies when Japan was rising; most of them were trained in Japan or the United States; most of them are fluent in Japanese; and they are publishing actively in major academic journals. The research interests of the third generation are categorized into four: (1) widening the research horizon; (2) inheriting the tradition of the previous generation; (3) synchronizing research agendas with the foreign scholarly community; and (4) opening up a new research horizon. After making a comprehensive content analysis of the works undertaken by third generation scholars, three major challenges are suggested for the upcoming generation of Japanese studies in South Korea: (1) globalizing the scholarly works with more theoretical analysis; (2) developing a uniquely Korean perspective about Japan; and (3) undertaking a systematic collaborative study with foreign scholars. (shrink)

Using a lens of cultural industry approach, this study explores the rise and fall of the political entertainment with a focus on specific moments associated with the trajectory of Korean political entertainment in public setting. A historical overview of Korean political entertainment traces back to the 1930s when Mandam, a unique kind of political satiric talk became popular in 1930s. Mandam played a satiric role in influencing public opinion on political affairs, particularly led by the (...) early generation of Mandam storytellers. Their criticism centered on Japanese colonial rule, even though Mandam was limited in terms of freedom of speech during this period. Furthermore, this study highlights that the great popularity of Mandam was driven by business organizations for the commercial purpose. Mandam was placed at the core of intricate relationships among the related industries. In sum, the present study concludes that as distinctive form blending political information and entertainment, Mandam played a vital role in expressing individuals‟ political opinions under the communicative circumstances during the Japanese colonial period. (shrink)

For the past half a century, Latin American scholars have been pointing toward the emergence of new social actors as agents of social and political democratization. The first wave of actors was characterized by the emergence of novel agents—mainly, new popular movements—of social transformation. At first, the second wave, epitomized by nongovernmental organizations, was celebrated as the upsurge of a new civil society, but later on, it was the target of harsh criticism. The literature often portrays this (...) development in Latin American civil society as a displacement trend of actors of the first wave by the second wave—“NGOization”—and even denounces new civil society as rootless, depoliticized, and functional to retrenchment. Thus, supposedly, NGOization encumbers social change. The authors argue that NGOization diagnosis is a flawed depiction of change within civil society. Rather than NGOization related to the depoliticization and neoliberalization of civil society, in Mexico City and São Paulo, there has been modernization of organizational ecologies, changes in the functional status of civil society, and interestingly, specialization aimed at shaping public agenda. The authors argue that such specialization, instead of encumbering social change, brings about different repertoires of strategies and skills purposively developed for influencing policy and politics. Their argument relies on comparative systematic evidence. Through network analysis, they examine the organizational ecology of civil society in Mexico City and São Paulo. (shrink)

In pre-modern Korea, paper was renowned for its white glossy surface and cloth-like strength, becoming an important item in both tributary exchanges and private trade. The unique material of the tak tree and related technical innovations, including toch’im, the repeated beating of just-produced paper that provides sizing and fulling effects, were crucial to this fame. However, the scholar-officials who integrated papermaking into the state production system in order to meet administrative and tributary needs initially made toch’im corvée and then (...) penal labor, thereby dismissing it as simple toil. They were not alone, though, in denigrating a form of manual labor. Historiographies of modern science and technology are generally silent about such work, focusing instead on how we invented the human out of drudgery. However, papermakers in late Chosŏn Korea (the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) chose to identify their artisanship with toch’im and eventually succeeded in securing recognition for that technique as a highly paid specialty. By examining this skilling of toch’im, this paper seeks to change the historiographical silence about toil. It overcomes the archival silence that accompanies manual skills by tracing toch’im’s contours through its changing locations and associations in society’s changing social and material networks, revealing paper artisans’ social techniques, or everyday politics that eventually dignified their laborious technique. Paper artisans’ changing relationships with tak barks, tools and facilities, central and local authorities, farmers, merchants, and scholar-officials reveal how such social skilling was made in late Chosŏn Korea, where papermaking became a most successful industry. This tracing of toch’im re-situates creative toil and everyday politics of artisanal hands in the interconnected transformation of social relations, craft, and knowledge practices. (shrink)

Abstract:Investigated here is how Pyŏn Kye-ryang, one of the most distinguished Neo-Confucian scholar-bureaucrats of fifteenth-century Korea, achieved the balance between ritual-based moral universalism, as pertaining to the hierarchical order between China and Korea, and the Korean monarch's Heaven-given responsibility for the well-being of his people under staggering political pressure for the consolidation of the new Korean Neo-Confucian dynasty called Chosŏn (1392–1910). Contrary to the prevailing view of Pyŏn as an advocate of Chosŏn's political independence and national (...) identity, Pyŏn Kye-ryang is presented here as a distinctively Neo-Confucian political realist who enabled Chosŏn's consolidating rulers to carry out the mandate of Heaven as the new state's socioeconomic and political circumstances would require, without having it violate the ritual propriety it owes as a Ming foreign vassal state. Special attention is paid to how Pyŏn developed his Neo-Confucian political realism through the creative reinterpretation of the Confucian theory of "the expedient.". (shrink)

A wave of interest in Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault as bio-political thinkers was initiated by publication of Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer. The intellectual connection of these two figures is, however, broader than their bio-political considerations. Arendt and Foucault both offer detailed accounts of an ethico-political self. Both Arendt’s and Foucault’s later work explores the meaning of living ethically and politically. By examining the relationship between self, ethics and politics, I suggest there are two general points (...) of convergence in Arendt and Foucault regarding the ethico-political self: (1) a shared suspicion of ethical or political systems presented as universally applicable; (2) the attempt to undermine prescriptive moral and political models by fostering a dynamic and critical self-relationship. In the shared attempt to develop a dynamic ethico-political attitude Arendt and Foucault present their respective alternatives to universally applicable moral and political structures, which both consider to be potentially dangerous. (shrink)

This article investigates how South Korea was able to make relatively smooth democratic transition and deepening by relying on recent scholarship on democratization. It argues that this may be attributed in part to Korea’s regionalist politics. Its detrimental implications for democracy in general nonetheless. Despite its regionalism in Korea served democratization in two ways: first, by helping Korea’s politics move from the principled confrontation between the democratic forces and the authoritarian forces to the more pragmatic contestation (...) between regionalist political actors; second, by guaranteeing major political actors some minimum political power and thus providing them with motivations to adhere to Korea’s fledgling democratic game. (shrink)

In this paper I examine third wave leminism in the hopes of shedding light on its relationship to the concurrent contemporary backlash against leminism. I investigate this by attempting to answer two questions. First, given the nature of the first and second waves, is the third wave appropriately so called? I tentatively conclude that it is not. Second, I ask whether the issue of identity, which is central to third wave analysis, is addressed well by third wavers. (...) I suggest that there are serious problems with the rejection of identity politics that characterizes much third wave feminism, particularly in the repudiation of second wave feminism that seems to accompany it. I conclude that, at best, the third wave seems unprepared to light the present backlash and, at worst, it appears to be a part of it. (shrink)