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Since South Korea achieved partial democracy in 1987, the country has moved away from authoritarian political control. However, after two decades of democratic transition, South Korea still does not have a strong liberal, individualist culture - something that has brought about a wide range of scholarly discussion on the nature of democracy practised in this dynamic country. While the political changes in South Korea have received rigorous attention from Western scholars, less attention has been given to the changing nature and role of media in this and other such transitions. This book focuses on the changing role of media in the more democratised political landscape of South Korea. It thereby contributes to debates about the emerging role of the media in democratic transition, especially in relation to approaches that go beyond traditional Western constructs of media freedom and the relationship between the state and the media. In addition, it discusses the complex interacting forces that affect the role of the media and their implications for state control and democratisation.

This book is about protest politics and social movements led by a group of women, the \"Mothers,\" who were inadvertently drawn into South Korea's democratization movement from the 1970s to the 2000s. The Mothers were female family members of political dissidents of varying backgrounds and ages—college students, political and religious leaders, writers, and factory workers. Women who initially had very little in common developed a bond as the days of their families' detentions accumulated and their ordeals continued. This led them to form a quasi-organization prayer meeting group in the 1970s, which eventually developed into permanent Mothers' organizations in the mid-1980s. The Mothers in this book include both the early- and late-comers to the movement, as the membership has undergone many changes since its inception in the 1970s. While the individual Mothers are the primary focus, this book explores beyond their individual concerns and activities. It discusses various methods the individual Mothers employed to promote their causes and attempts to study how the activities of the organizations founded by the inexperienced Mothers have affected the process of Korea's democratization and how they remain active decades later.

This highly engaging book invites the reader to learn about how South Korean activists, intellectuals and various reformers approach the role of civil society in a post-colonial, post-Cold War, post-dictatorship, and post-IMF neoliberal democracy. In particular, it provides a detailed description of civil movement organisations in Seoul leading up to, during and after the Roh Moo Hyun era (2003–8). The book engages the entangled hopes, crises and pragmatic transitions that animated this era in South Korean politics and connects it with larger debates in anthropology, sociology, law and politics from around the world. Ultimately, the book contributes to growing areas of research, advocacy and general interest in pragmatism, ethnography, hope and crisis.

An outgrowth of the critical examination of Western political theory embedded in Western-centrism and the tumultuous ideational processes by which contemporary Korean political theory and reality have intensely interacted (both in convergent and divergent ways). The book addresses complex and variegated ideas regarding Western centrism: the definition of Western-centrism; how Western-centrism is compared and contrasted with other forms of centrism such as Sinocentrism, capitalism (bourgeois-centrism) patriarchy (male-centrism), and racism (white-centrism); how Western-centrism has evolved in world history and in the history of Western political thought; how the evolution of contemporary Korean political thought has been interwoven with Western-centrism; the ill effects Western-centrism has brought about in Korean society and academia; and, ultimately, how Western-centrism can be overcome.

The negative effects brought about by the domination of Western-centrism are pervasive and serious in academic disciplines as well as in everyday life of South Korea. The essays in this book address the study of contemporary Korean political thought on the premise that such a study should be implemented with a post-Eurocentric approach.

In 1987 South Korea began a democratic transition after almost three decades of significant economic development under authoritarian rule.Increased civil unrest caused by dissatisfaction resulted in the regime agreeing to constitutional changes in the summer of 1987.

The Republic of Korea achieved a double revolution in the second half of the twentieth century. In just over three decades, South Korea transformed itself from an underdeveloped, agrarian country into an affluent, industrialized one. At the same time, democracy replaced a long series of military authoritarian regimes. These historic changes began under President Park Chung Hee, who seized power through a military coup in 1961 and ruled South Korea until his assassination on October 26, 1979. While the state's dominant role in South Korea's rapid industrialization is widely accepted, the degree to which Park was personally responsible for changing the national character remains hotly debated. This book examines the rationale and ideals behind Park's philosophy of national development in order to evaluate the degree to which the national character and moral values were reconstructed.

The Routledge Handbook of Korean Politics and Public Administration gathers the expertise of leading international scholars to survey the full spectrum of contemporary South Korean international relations, public management, and public policies. Divided into four parts, the handbook covers a range of issues including: domestic Korean political parties, elections and leadership, foreign policy, national security and relations with North Korea, public administration, governance and finance, and economic, social and environmental public policies. Offering a complete overview of the field, the handbook is an invaluable resource for academics, researchers, policy analysts, graduate and undergraduate students studying South Korean Politics and International Relations as well as East Asian Politics.

Over the past fifteen years, South Korea has transformed itself from an authoritarian government into a new democracy with a vibrant capitalist economy. Modernization, democratization, and globalization have played important roles in this transformation, and have greatly influenced the programs and policies of Korea's Sixth Republic. Covering developments through the 2003 elections, this book shows how the South Korean government and society have been shaped not only by the dynamics of these forces, but also by their interaction with the cultural norms of a post-Confucian society. The author provides a conceptual framework and baseline for examining political developments in Korea, and offers an analysis of the factors that are transforming Korean institutions, society, and politics. He discusses the forces shaping Korea's political economy and the performance of successive ROK governments, and also highlights the challenges faced by the newly elected administration of Roh Moo Huan, the North Korean issue, and more.

This book examines how inter- and intra-party coalition-building affects governability in South Korea. Focusing on the Kim Dae-jung administration (1998-2003) as a case study in the failure of a government to turn electoral success into stable governability, or ability to implement reform policies, the book’s research draws on two bodies of literature which, though focusing on the same dependent variable (cabinet or government stability), have rarely been used in tandem: coalition research on parliamentary systems and studies of divided government in presidential systems. Youngmi Kim argues that a weak institutionalization of the ruling party and the party-system accounts for political instability and inefficient governability in Korea and in doing so her study makes a number of key contributions to the field. Theoretically it proposes a framework which integrates a rationalist approach with one that acknowledges the role of political culture. It further enhances the understanding of factors affecting governability after coalition-building across regime types and aims to build on recent demands for broader cross-regime analysis of minority/divided government and of the determinants of governability. This has important comparative implications as coalition-building within (semi-) presidential systems has occurred in other post-authoritarian contexts. The book finally provides a new dataset which fills a gap in a field where Western cases constitute the main focus of research. The Politics of Coalition in Korea will be of interest to students and scholars of Korean studies, Korean politics, Asian studies and Asian politics. Youngmi Kim is Assistant Professor at the Departments of Public Policy, and International Relations and European Studies at Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.