Routledge Handbook of Contemporary South Korea

Sojin Lim, Niki J.P. Alsford, Sojin Lim, Niki J.P. Alsford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000422283
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary South Korea offers a ground-breaking study of the socio-political development of the Korean peninsula in the contemporary period.

Written by an international team of scholars and experts, contributions to this book address key intellectual questions in the development of Korean studies, projecting new ways of thinking about how international systems can be organised and how local societies adapt to global challenges. Academically rigorous, each chapter defines current research and lends the reader greater understanding of the social, cultural, economic, and political developments of South Korea, ranging from chapters on the Korean Wave to relations with North Korea and the Korean language overseas.

The volume is divided into eight sections, each representing a focused area of inquiry:

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• socio-political history

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• contemporary politics

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• political economy and development

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• society

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• culture

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• international relations

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• security and diplomacy

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• South Korea in international education

This handbook provides an interdisciplinary and comprehensive account of contemporary South Korea. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of Korean history, politics and international relations, culture and society, and will also appeal to policy makers interested in the Indo-Asia Pacific region.

1 Introduction

Niki J.P. Alsford

The study of specific areas or regions is not, as is often argued, an alternative to the study of global society. It is, rather, an integral part of it. If done correctly, and not with just a simple like-with-like evaluation, comparative perspectives can offer a better understanding of global issues complemented by the nuances of the local. Area studies projects new ways of thinking about how the international system is organised. It explores the many changes of human civilisation and how different societies adapt to different challenges. It sheds light on socio-political development and highlights the mechanisms of the political economy and how this sits within international governance. In so doing, it explores the inner workings of societies: the intricacies of culture, and how both state and society interact at the international and domestic levels. Area studies opens up the debate on how interaction on a global level is informed by the political, economic, and social values at the local level. In other words, it is an exercise in the discourses of human interaction that is formed by a sense of entanglement; a type of research that concerns itself with linkages and flows of peoples, cultures, and commodities: a ‘relationalism’, if you will, between specific areas, which has uncovered very new and interesting directions that are useful in developing an understanding of the connectivity between regions. Current debates surrounding the place of area studies as an academic discipline are largely a continued reflection of the anxieties of American scholarship, which has recently spread outward and is often conflated with the wider concerns of the future of the so-called ‘soft subjects’ in the humanities and social sciences.

The roots of area studies and the rush to understand regions (and in the context of this volume, the Asia Pacific region) came about from the War in the Pacific, rapid decolonisation in the post-war period, the onset of the Cold War, the ‘hot wars’ on the Korean peninsula and in Vietnam, and the United States’ (US’) attempt to replace Japan as the regional hegemon and to contain the Soviet Union and the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC or China). As early as 1940, US academia had begun to establish legitimate academic disciplines in Chinese and Japanese studies. Yet, the understanding of Korea at this point was simply as a sub-field of one or both of these. It was not until the mid-1960s that any formalised Korean Studies programmes began to be established.

American interest in Korea increased following the Korean War. Its specialism fostered an augmented understanding of the mechanisms of the political, economic, social, and military affairs of not just the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea), which had US backing, but also the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea), which enjoyed Soviet, and now Chinese, backing, as well as Korean diasporic populations.

Since area studies was born in the post-war period and formed as a response to Cold War developments, it is not surprising that the obvious areas of concentration included East Asia, the Soviet Union, Latin America, and Africa. Yet in many ways its arrival with decolonisation, according to Harootunian and Miyoshi (2002: 7), ‘succeeded in reinforcing [an] imperial-colonial relationship by maintaining that Euro-America was the privilege site of production’. Yet, paradoxically, area studies has arguably shifted to become the cornerstone custodian of regional disciplinary knowledge. Despite what can be seen as a commitment to the preservation of nation-state privilege, its performance, so to speak, is critically informed. In order to understand the political structures of a state, one must engage with social action at the local level. To do this, the exercise must be multi-disciplinary. Area studies in the context presented here is not a closed-off study of a particular national unit. On the contrary, the study of Korea in this handbook is not intended to reinforce a fortress of academic disciplinarity but, rather, to provide an opportunity: an opportunity to use this as a platform for understanding how Korea connects to the world and is connected by the world.

The chapters that make up this volume are divided into eight sections. The first section explores the socio-political history of Korea. The opening chapter by Michael J. Seth on South Korea’s educational development argues that a popular drive for educational achievement has not only helped transform South Koreans into one of the best-educated populations in the world but also contributed to the country’s rapid economic development and its democratisation in the 1980s. However, the system’s focus on competition to enter prestige schools has also put enormous pressure on young Koreans and placed a complex economic burden on families, as they have to pay for tutoring and after-school lessons. The fostering of such developments has in many ways undermined efforts to develop towards an egalitarian society. Such issues have long been central in South Korean public discourse. Jong-Chol An follows on from this by identifying the importance that South Koreans place on judicial independence. For An, the democratic judicial system in South Korea has at least three elements. The first, a core element, is the existence of an independent judiciary. The second is the division of this system into criminal and civil law. Third, An argues, is that the system safeguards individual rights. Yet the perceived independence of this system has not always been so obvious.

Hannes B. Mosler, following on from this, in the second section on contemporary politics, explores the changes in South Korean political structures since 1948. The author focuses on the characteristics of checks and balances within and between the three powers of the executive, legislative, and judiciary. Mainly drawing on constitutional amendments and changes in related laws, this chapter examines reforms of formal political institutions, such as the government organisation, election system, and legal norms, while providing explanations regarding informal practices. The chapter’s structure follows the sequence of the Six Republics, beginning with the First Republic in 1948 and ending in the present (2020).

This chapter is followed by Youngmi Kim, who writes on the evolution of political parties in South Korea. For Kim, the authoritarian rule of South Korean politics, as in other governments in the region, was once dominated by a one-party system, although other parties did nominally exist. Democratisation within South Korea bore witness to a two-party system coming to dominate the political landscape. Situated on a traditional political spectrum, these parties are frequently referred to as either conservative or progressive, in spite of frequent changes to their official names. Political rebranding has often accompanied the process of fission and fusion of political parties, both before and after elections. These remain largely leader-led and leader-centred, displaying a high level of factionalism and personalism. Although formally a multi-party system, South Korea’s party system has been a de facto system of dual dominant parties, characterised by low-level institutionalisation. Its key features lie in deeply rooted cleavages that regularly fall victim to frequent regionalism and are often split along ideological, generational, class, and gender lines. As with elsewhere, calls for direct political participation in South Korea have grown over time and new forms of online activism have emerged, often playing a crucial role in parliamentary and presidential elections. New electoral laws were introduced in late 2019 to increase representation and visibility of traditionally under-represented groups in Korean society (women, minorities, refugees, and migrant workers) and also to establish, substantially, a fully-fledged multi-party system.

A cornerstone of this development, and a combining of the political and legal systems within South Korea, has been the relationship between state and economy. The third section, focusing on political economy and development, opens with a historically grounded essay on South Korea and the history of the developmental state. Taekyoon Kim argues that the plethora of theoretical and empirical reviews on how South Korea can be considered a successful case of economic and political development converges upon the diverse aspects of the developmental state in the process of its state-building and modernisation. The South Korean developmental state keeps evolving with multi-faceted characters from its old industrial coalition within the business sector to an open democratic developmental state. The totality of the South Korean experience as a developmental state can be recast against the backdrop of new theorising about the state and society and reconsidered as crucial evidence to identify and postulate developmental propinquity to Northeast Asia beyond Korea. Key to this has been the relationship between the state and chaebǒl (large business conglomerates). Eun Mee Kim and Nancy Kim argue that, in order to understand South Korea’s rapid economic development, one must recognise the growth of the chaebǒl system. According to Kim and Kim, the chaebǒl, as unique South Korean business entities with distinct features, warrant a close political and economic analysis. For the authors, the evolution of the chaebǒl within the ‘rags to riches’ narrative of South Korea’s post-colonial economic development is analysed in three periods, with a focus on their dynamic relationship with the state, labour, and the global market. The evolution of this story is then continued by Sojin Lim in the following chapter.

According to Lim, the experience of South Korea, as an erstwhile aid-recipient country, must be understood within the theoretical framework of bilateral and multilateral aid processes. For Lim, when analysing South Korea’s experience as a donor country, the dynamics of the South-South Cooperation (SSC) and the Triangular Cooperation (TrC) frameworks must be tacitly included in the widely discussed aspect of international development cooperation policy and practice. Lim explores how South Korea has become a donor country and the lessons that it has learned from that experience. Yet, for Lim, in order for one to understand the relationship between the economy and the polity, and how this informs an exportable model, one must first engage with the representations within society – the fourth section of the book.

Religion within the context of South Korea is significant. In Kevin N. Cawley’s chapter on religion in contemporary Korean society, he argues that one must trace the development of various religious traditions from the past, as well as their interactions, in order to understand that which continues to shape and transform modern Korean society. The chapter outlines the trajectories of Shamanism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, which co-existed for centuries in relative harmony until the rise of Neo-Confucianism during the Chosǒn dynasty (1392–1910). It also underlines the important effects of Western religious evangelism within Korea – namely Catholicism and Protestantism – which also influenced the emergence of New Religious Movements (NRMs), such as Tonghak (Eastern Learning), ultimately transforming Korea’s religious landscape.

The relationship between economic progress and modernisation has been widely discussed in comparative politics. Theory has supported the argument that economic growth has influenced not only the institutions of democracy but also the values of social progress (Diamond, 1999; Rostow, 1971). Although empirically questionable, since it ignores external sources of change, it is useful in understanding the development of civil society in contemporary Korea. Dae-oup Chang argues that democratic change in South Korea can be observed in the development of the labour movement and the rise of the Democratic Trade Union Movement. Following years of state suppression, the labour movement, after 1987, navigated new challenges as emerging neoliberal ideals attempted to consolidate democracy. Competing ideas led to subsequent divisions within the working classes that began to directly and indirectly undermine the unions’ capacity to combine the interests of their members and the desires of the wider public for democratisation. In contemporary South Korea, the revitalisation of the labour movements depends largely upon how the unions build an inclusive labour movement coupled with the emerging agency of marginalised labour.

The differentiations of civil society are often determined by interpretations of culture. The complexities of these interpretations lie in the multiple uses of the term ‘culture’. There are several distinct categories of what culture is, and where it can be found, and these are explored in the fifth section. Culture has many interpretations, depending on what is being studied. From the high culture of the elite, to the aspirational nature of a middlebrow culture, to the popular culture of democratising taste, to the mass culture imposed by a capitalist system: this section reflects on both the material production of a society and the symbolic systems that are embedded within the ideas of the nation. For some, like those who study politics and society, culture can be seen as a determinant of the mode and relations of production. It is part of the economic system. Others, such as Geertz (1973), view culture as ‘a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge about the world’. Foucault saw culture as a system of thought. It is discursive. It defines the system of conceptual possibility by determining the boundaries of what can be thought in a given domain and period.

Cultural knowledge is thus intimately linked to power. In her chapter, Hannah Michell seeks to examine this power by investigating aspects of representation. This chapter contextualises the emergence of the Korean cultural wave by probing the historical use of culture by governments holding power on the Korean peninsula over the past century, revealing the use of film as a means to garner support for political and economic agendas. While the cultural policy of the current democratic government is markedly different from that of the previous dictatorial government, the chapter examines the way in which Korean popular cultural content – dramas such as Crash Landing on You, films such as Parasite, and K-Pop idols such as BTS – have been co-opted once again to serve the government’s agenda of nation branding. This is followed by Cholong Sung’s chapter on the contemporary audience for traditional Korean music.

For Sung, the recent development of digital culture has resulted in Korean audiences becoming significant agents in the construction of the cultural landscape of Korea due to the diverse methods of cultural participation. Sung’s chapter investigates this multi-faceted audience participation within traditional music via an ethnographic approach. Exploring the historical background and attempts to revitalise traditional Korean music, Sung elaborates on how the environment through which one can access traditional music has changed and envisages how Koreans engage in and contribute to the arena of traditional music. The building of cultural foundations since democratisation is followed by a chapter by Andrew David Jackson, who argues that the striking feature of South Korean cinema has been its ability over the past 20 years to build continuously on its own critical and commercial success. Jackson’s chapter investigates the current state of South Korean cinema and looks at two explanations for the spectacular box office successes of Korean films, focusing on strategies to appeal to audiences and the impact of the cinematic treatment of historical issues.

Eun Jin Jeong follows on from this by discussing the contemporary evolution of South Korean literature. For Jeong, South Korean literature needs to be understood within a historical perspective. The chapter opens with a description of the literary circle (mundan). This is followed up with examples of how the shinch’unmunye competitions testify to the latter’s extreme institutionalisation – a tight human network and a mechanism for the transmission of values. These specific rules of play guarantee the field a certain autonomy but make it a closed environment. The second part of the chapter examines recent changes in three respects: challenges to the mundan; the expansion of publication possibilities; and the foreign distribution of Korean literature.

The foreign distribution of Korean culture is very much linked to its international relations, and this topic forms the content of the sixth section. Sarah Son opens with a chapter on national identity and inter-Korean relations. In her chapter, Son explores the development of South Korean national identity in relation to the DPRK between 1945 and the present day. It draws upon the international relations theory of constructivism to understand the dynamic processes leading to the formation of national identity as part of the nation-building effort. This chapter discusses the events, people, and institutions that shaped the formation of South Korea’s identity through key phases of its short history. It demonstrates the conflicting nature of identification with North Korea as both ‘self’ and ‘other’ and argues that the perpetual ‘othering’ of North Korea over time has rendered the prospects for inter-Korean reunification, and re-defining a united Korean identity, increasingly uncertain. The complexities of the foreign-imposed division of the Korean peninsula along ideological lines are continued in the chapter by Lonnie Edge, who examines the historic trends of inter-Korean relations by focusing especially on the post-democratisation period in the south. Drawing upon inter-systemic conflict theory, neorealism/neoliberalism, and identity politics/collective memory, Edge argues that the Korean peninsula’s division led to a systemic conflict in which the two Koreas struggled for dominance as the Korean people’s true representative. While North Korean identity has largely remained fixed under the Kim Regime, South Korean identity was split into the True Korea and One Korea identities, eventually forming the right and left sides of the political spectrum, upon which rests democratisation as well as the colouring of South Korean administrations’ relationships with North Korea. Yet this relationship is not just bilateral: as a hotspot within the international system, the Korean peninsula is a field on which regional powers compete. David Hundt’s chapter explores the role that the US has had, is having, and will have with South Korea in the foreseeable future.

For Hundt, Seoul has attempted to strike a suitable balance between maintaining sound relations with Washington and achieving other goals, including an independent foreign policy. Reliance on the US was most pronounced during the Cold War, but leaders such as Park Chung-hee also prioritised goals such as regime security. From the 1980s, South Korea was willing and able to pursue an ambitious foreign policy, although efforts to improve inter-Korean relations created some friction with the US. Korean leaders have prioritised both the allia...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• Part 1 Socio-political history
• Part 2 Contemporary politics
• Part 3 Political economy and development
• Part 4 Society
• Part 5 Culture
• Part 6 International relations
• Part 7 Security and diplomacy
• Part 8 South Korea in international education
• Index