The Critiques of Liberalism in Korea and the New Liberalism

Abstract

The purpose of this paper to specify many problems from the studies and critiques on liberalism in Korea and to illustrate new liberalism in the late Victorian Age in England, which serves as an alternative to progressive liberalism aiming to overcome neo-liberalism. Those who have critical views on liberalism make their approaches to it based on the two kinds of frameworks above. First, those who consider liberalism a dominant ideology for the bourgeois class accept it as a kind of ideological device fully accomplishing class dictatorship by the bourgeoisie, in terms of a specific paradigm, Marxist historical materialism. Second, another ideology commenting upon liberalism is an equation of liberalism with neo-liberalism, which argues liberal political groups in Korea have led liberalism in Korea to be converted to neo-liberalism by making their choices in favor of neo-liberal policies. Liberalism in Korea has a dominant position as a main political ideology. Studies on liberalism in Korea have very simplistic aspects, and they tend to make critiques on all liberalism. The critiques on liberalism in Korea only take into account a unilateral aspect, dismissing the diversity of liberalism. In this circumstance, the new liberalism that appeared in England in the late eighteenth century is able to serve as a new alternative in Korea. New liberalism presents a framework for Korea that facilitates a free market economy and an advanced welfare state.