The culture and politics of resistance in South Korea

Abstract

Two issues have come to dominate discussions of South Korea's future: modernity and national reunification. Whilst state-encoded discourses dominate discussions of both these issues, a critical engagement with both has nonetheless emerged from within South Korea's dissident minjung (populist) community with the resulting visions of the nation providing a radical departure from those of the hegemonic state. In this paper I explore the cultural and political praxis of minjung resistance. I suggest that the minjung movement provides a critical engagement with Korean modernity and the nation, one which posits alternative imaginings of South Korea's future, as well as a subversive reading of both the present and the past.