Korean Social Movements Research Articles

Unifier: that is who I am (acceptance speech on behalf of the Simsan Award)

ABSTRACT Paik Ki-wan was a leading activist of the Korean unification movement and the labor movement. He passed away on 15 February due to chronic disease. During his grave illness, Shim San Prize was awarded to him on 10 November 2020, three months before his death. Therefore, the author, his eldest daughter, gave an award acceptance speech on his behalf. This essay was written for the speech. Paik Ki-wan has various names in South Korea, such as unifier, storyteller, street fighter, poet, white-haired warrior, Bulssam-ggun (revolutionist) grandfather. Whenever he was inquired to identify himself by the dictatorship and division ideology, he claimed to be a unifier. What he meant by unifier is a person who takes the lead in resolving the contradiction of division, which not only refers to the peaceful unification of the two Koreas, but also addresses the global division system that the US and the Soviet Union imposed on the globe during the Cold War era creating an all-around subordination structure in South Korea. Paik had dedicated his life to national unification and social liberation in the Korean Peninsula and Asia by people's power. This essay attempts to shed light on Paik Ki-wan's unique role and status in the Korean social movement. The concept of Nonamegi, the essence of his thought, means a plural-equal civilization world where every people has an equal right to work and live well materially and ethically, including practice to achieve it. He refused to retreat from the front line and become “historicized” by making age an excuse. Although he has already gone a long way and can no longer resonate with the world with his resounding voice, his spirit always will be the first to run into the place of tears and blood in the Korean Peninsula and Asia. Paik's poem, “Heaven Lake,” (Baekdusan cheonji), depicting his desire for unification, is added at the end of the essay.

Sixty Years of Korean Social Movements

Sixty Years of Korean Social Movements

Protest by candlelight: A comparative analysis of candlelight vigils in South Korea

ABSTRACT Protest activist leaders must make a series of decisions about the strategies they use; one such decision is the choice of tactic or performance, often informed by their cultural historic contentious repertoire. In South Korea's contentious repertoire, the use of candlelight vigils has become an increasingly prevalent form of protest tactic. Candlelight vigils have become an increasingly prominent tactic in South Korea’s repertoire over the last two decades, as evidenced by major candlelight vigils in 2002, 2008, and 2016-2017. In this study, we explore the ways in which candlelight vigils as a protest tactic have evolved over time in South Korea. We notably find that vigils emerged as a left-wing protest tactic in 2002, but right-wing protesters began adopting the tactic during the counter-protests opposing President Park Geun-Hye’s impeachment in 2016–2017 (Taegeukgi Giphoei). Additionally, we find that candlelight vigils drew participants from an increasingly wide swath of society over time and average citizens assumed greater organizational roles. This research not only contributes to the literature on South Korean social movements and civil society, but to understanding candlelight vigils as a distinct form of protest and how contentious repertoires evolve over time more broadly.

Ideological parallelism: toward a transnational understanding of the protest paradigm

ABSTRACT This study advances the protest paradigm as a transnational theory by examining how ideological affiliations within and across national borders influence the framing of a protest movement. Our empirical focus is the coverage of the 2016–17 South Korean ‘candlelight’ protests to oust conservative President Park Gyun-hye in Korean and US newspapers. Content analysis of 6 months of coverage suggests that liberal publications in both nations (Kyunghyang Shinmun and New York Times) were supportive of the movement, framing the protests as large yet peaceful and relying on protesters for information. In contrast, the conservative press in the US (Wall Street Journal) was closer in its coverage to Korea’s conservative publication (Chosun Ilbo), which was defensive of Park and her supporters. We argue that ideological affinities can operate beyond national boundaries – what we term ‘ideological parallelism’ – to make news organizations sympathetic or hostile toward a social movement. But nationalist sentiments also remain significant to the extent that a foreign (Korean) social movement affects a nation’s (US) foreign policy. We identify a novel framing device – Gaze – under which the coverage of both US newspapers converged and considered the adverse implications of candlelight protests for America’s relations with South Korea and its containment of North Korea and China. We also show how the US media’s Gaze recursively shapes South Korean press coverage, indicating that transnational protest frames impact local perceptions of social movements and can potentially influence their legitimacy and outcome.

미투(#MeToo) 운동에 대한 기독교 윤리적 고찰 : 사회변혁과 여성주체성 형성의 상관관계를 중심으로

The Korean Social Movement recognizes that sexual assault and violence is no longer a personal problem of the victim and leads to a major change in the women ‘s standing as a political subject as it is settled as a new discourse on sexuality in the field of public opinion. The Korean church, which can not be ignored in this reality, should respond responsibly to sexual violence. In this paper, I have attempted to think about the meaning of the MeToo Movement through the analysis and reflection from the Christian ethical perspective on the Me Too Movement which is not finished. In the process, I have actively evaluated the Me Too movement as a process of formation of female subjectivity and establish it as a social transformation movement.

Park,chungum󰠏Failure of Assimilation ideology on Modern Japan.

The infamous pro-Japanese Chumkeum Park who had suppressed the Korean social movement, was elected as a member of Japanese Imperial Diet in 1932, 1940, and 1942. He is regarded as a nationalist in Japan who demanded to abolish the discrimination to Korean, such as removing restrictions on imports of the Korean rice, allowing the right to vote in Korea. He is also mentioned as a successful case of `colonial assimilation` at the times, and as a evidence of working institutional democracy under Japanese colonial empire in these days. His arguments, however, was for the Japanese settler community who had become the rich in colonial Korea or for the Korean rich people, not for the interests of Korean in general. The election of Park was due not to universal democracy, but due to strong support of interest group who exploited the loophole in general election. The fact that his electoral campaign was supported by the fund of the Japanese Government General of Korea who wants to advertise the success of colonization as well as the Japanese and Korean rich.

The material culture of Korean social movements

Through interviews with Korean political activists, this research explores the material culture of Korean social movements, with a particular focus on artifacts of the police and protesters from the 1980s to the 2000s. First, the article analyses the symbolic meaning of artifacts and their sensory–emotional impact on protesters. Second, it explores the relationship between artifacts and protest culture, looking at how artifacts concern the gendered performance and hierarchical culture of protesters. Finally, the author examines the correlation between artifacts and protest space in terms of how the emergence of artifacts involves the availability and mobility of protest space. Through artifacts, protesters’ emotions are less spiritual than sensory or corporeal. Hierarchical and gendered aspects of protest culture depend on the types of protest artifacts and their use in protest performances. The use of artifacts in protest performances is restricted by the characteristics of protest space.

Democratization and Social Movements in South Korea: Defiant Institutionalization

South Korea provides an intellectual challenge in the fields of social movements and democracy in that intense mobilization and the strong influence of social movements have accompanied steady democratization for more than two decades, despite major theories having predicted otherwise. This book examines how social movements in previously authoritarian contexts evolve after democratic transition, using South Korea as a case study. It explores how democratic change influences the form of social movements, and how social movements affect the pace and direction of democracy in turn. It explains how South Korean social movements were able to attain strong political influence by focusing on four causal factors: the configuration of major political actors during the transition period, the relational dynamics among social movement groups, the relationship between social movements and institutionalized political actors, and the impact of transnational forces in the post-transition period. Unlike previous scholarship, the book takes a historical, actor-centered, and process-oriented approach that closely follows the interactions among contending actors through event sequences, rather than being driven by abstract theoretical frameworks. In doing so, it analyses uses a broad range of evidence, including police records, untapped activist documents, presidential memoirs, newspaper accounts and original data sets. Shedding light on the complex political reality that gave rise to a contentious civil society in South Korea after democratization, this book also illuminates the institutional conditions that can help promote domestic peace and stability. Therefore it will be of great use to students and scholars of Korean Studies, Korean politics and social movements, as well as policy makers.

The public as active agents in social movement: Facebook and Gangjeong movement

This study content analyzed a South Korean social movement Facebook page to examine how activists and the public used it for the movement. Specifically, the study examined posts as well as comments that activists and the public made on a Facebook page related to the Gangjeong movement. The findings imply that activists and the public are more similar than different in terms of their use of messages posted and general comments. In fact, differences between activists and the public were more clearly found in posts than comments; by and large, activists preferred to use posts while the public were more active in writing comments compared to their posting frequency. Both groups frequently used hyperlinks as a method of providing information and developing coalitions. Furthermore, frame conflicts between activists and the public are less likely to appear as they tend to prefer particular types of frames. Taken together, the results indicate that members of the public have become active agents within the social media movement.

Asia's Unknown Uprisings, Volume 1: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century. By George Katsiaficas. Chicago: PM Press, 2012. 480 pp. $28.95 (paper).

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Asia's unknown uprisings: v.1: South Korean social movements in the 20th century

Asia's unknown uprisings: v.1: South Korean social movements in the 20th century

Politics of cosmopolitan citizenship: the Korean engagement in the global justice movements

This article explains why and how the Korean social movements engage in the Global Justice Movement (GJM). We believe that Korean social movements gradually developed consciousness of cosmopolitan citizenship through engaging in the GJM. We found that international opportunities like the UN and World Social Forum processes, whether positive or negative, have forced Korean social movements to engage in the GJMs. Environmental and human rights movements (belonging to the ‘new social movements’) were increasingly disappointed with the UN process and focused on the GJM with changing the strategy from institutionalization to global campaigns or south-to-south collaboration. Labor and peasants movements (belonging to the ‘old social movements’) continue to struggle with developing sustained networks because of lack of the so-called ‘rooted cosmopolitans.’ Despite such differences, Korean civil society becomes more conscious of global justice as a new master frame to tackle neoliberal globalization within the future.

FAILED INTERNATIONALISM AND SOCIAL MOVEMENT DECLINE

In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, South Korean social movements converted a former military dictatorship into a more democratic regime, while raising hopes for yet more improvements in the position of Korean workers and farmers. In the 1990s, Thai social movements also cast aside a military dictatorship and opened a period in which popular movements seemed poised to make yet greater gains. Yet as of 2008 it is apparent that social movements in both South Korea and Thailand have faced increased difficulties and have seen a number of significant setbacks. The authors of this article analyze what they take to be one of the reasons for these setbacks: the failure of social movements in both of these countries to more successfully internationalize their efforts. Failed internationalism is far from being the only significant factor in this social movement decline, and, moreover, it has not necessarily occurred in precisely the same way in the South Korean and Thai cases. The authors show, however, that by analyzing similarities and differences in the patterns of social movement decline between South Korea and Thailand one can discern some common conundrums faced quite generally by social movements in an era of neoliberalism and neoconservatism.

Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience (review)

Reviewed by: Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience Tobias Hübinette (bio) Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience, edited by Gi-Wook ShinSoon-Won ParkDaqing Yang. London: Routledge, 2007. 266 pp. $160.00 cloth; $40.00 paper. Truth and reconciliation processes to settle and overcome colonial pasts, Cold War dictatorships, and civil war atrocities have recently proliferated in many different countries around the world, including South Africa, Australia, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda. The Nigerian writer and Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka has called this recent phenomenon a “fin de millenaire fever of atonement,” as if humanity wanted to enter the new millennium by leaving behind the bloody legacy of what the British historian Eric Hobsbawm has dubbed “the age of extremes” or the “short 20th century” (1914–1991) without having too much bad consciousness. For Europe, the end of [End Page 195] the Cold War was both symbolically and in practice the final end of the Second World War, and accordingly the continent is today dealing with different investigations regarding Nazi crimes and collaborators, financial compensation for slave laborers during Fascist regimes, and restitution issues for former anticommunists in Eastern Europe, while academics and activists alike are in the process of rethinking the full meaning and scope of the Holocaust. Furthermore, problems related to Europe’s former colonial empires also continue to haunt the continent, resulting in, for example, an apology by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for the 1919 Amritsar massacre in India, and a belated economic compensation to the Second World War veterans from the French colonies, while my own country, Sweden, has apologized both to the Saami indigenous minority for centuries of colonial oppression, as well as finally admitting its complicit role in the Holocaust and the Nazi plundering of Europe. In Northeast Asia, however, neither the consequences of the Second World War and the subsequent Cold War nor the legacies of the Japanese colonial empire have been sufficiently reconciled and rectified, and this was the reason why the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University convened a conference on the problem in 2004, whose papers have now been collected in the anthology Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience, published by Routledge in 2007, and edited by Gi-Wook Shin, Soon-Won Park, and Daqing Yang, who together have also written the introduction and an epilogue. In relation to and in comparison with the ongoing reconciliation and justice processes in other parts of the world, the fourteen contributors to this timely, updated, and well-informed and balanced publication try to understand why reconciliation has not been achieved in Northeast Asia in the same manner as in Europe by looking at the specific Korean experience and perspective and by making use of the American philosopher David Crocker’s distinction between thick and thin reconciliation processes, with the Northeast Asian case definitely falling into the latter category. Within the framework of the contemporary Northeast Asian setting, including rapid industrialization and economic growth, political democratization and the rise of a civil society, and regional integration concomitantly with the rebirth of ethnic nationalism, the first part of the book takes up previously censored and subjugated domestic events in modern Korean history such as the “comfort women” issue (Chunghee Sarah Soh and Hideko Mitsui), the Korean forced laborers of imperial Japan (Soon-Won Park), the massacres and atrocities committed against alleged “communists” before and during the Korean War (Dong-Choon Kim and Tae-Ung Baik), and the South Korean involvement in the Vietnam [End Page 196] War (Kyung-Yoong Bay), several of which are hotly debated and still considered to be highly controversial in today’s Korea. While the “comfort women” issue has been heavily exploited by patriarchal ethnic nationalists, as Chunghee Sarah Soh so convincingly shows, and thus is a wellknown problem today in spite of the covering-up of Korean complicity, new uncomfortable facts regarding the massacres committed by the Syngman Rhee government with the guidance and perhaps even the approval of the U.S. army, are continuing to be published both by Korean social movements media and...

Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: A South Korean Social Movement

Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent:. South Korean Social Movement. NANCY ABELMANN. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. xviii. 306 pp., illustrations, appendixes, notes, bibliography, index.

Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: A South Korean Social Movement.

Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: A South Korean Social Movement.

Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: A South Korean Social Movement

Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: A South Korean Social Movement

Echoes of the past, epics of dissent: a South Korean social movement

Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent, the story of a South Korean social movement, offers a window to a decade of tumultuous social protest in a postcolonial, divided nation. Abelmann brings a dramatic chapter of modern Korean history to life--a period in which farmers, student activists, and organizers joined to protest the corporate ownership of tenant plots never distributed in the 1949 Land Reform. From public sites of protest to backstage meetings and negotiations, from farming villages to university campuses, Abelmann's highly original study explores this movement as a complex process always in the making. Her discussion moves fluently between past and present, local and national, elites and dominated, and urban and rural. Touching on major historical issues, this ethnography of dissent explores contemporary popular nationalism and historical consciousness.