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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.

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.

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.

Long description: How and why has the Korean state changed its way of handling the society and its markets over the past two decades? The Changing Role of the Korean State finds that the explosion of contentious civil society after democratization coeval with the outbreak of the financial crisis following rapid economic growth, are closely associated with the decline of developmentalism. Despite these profound changes, however, the Korean state has not totally relinquished its control over the society and the market. Rather, although its methods have been altered it remains to be highly interventionalist and regulatory in nature. The state continues to use its influence to restructure the socio-economic system and rationally manage spatial arrangements. The book amply demonstrates the residual legacy of the developmental state in Korea, and it is unlikely that Korea will ever accept the western liberalist concept of a state which limits its function to that of a referee for the spontaneous operation of the civil society and the market. The contributors of this edited volume delineate the shifting role of the Korean state from the developmental state, which led economic development by guiding investment in strategic industries through various means, to a slightly subtler role as a regulator, supervising the operation of the market in the changing economic environment. Individual chapters presented here address this changing but nonetheless vital role that the state plays in managing the variety of modern socio-economic life in South Korea. Hong Yung Lee is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at University of California, Berkeley. Sunil Kim is Assistant Professor of International Studies at Kyung Hee University.

The debate in South Korea over the government's engagement policy toward North Korea (the \"sunshine\" policy) did not start with Pyongyang's recent admission that it has been secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons program in violation of multiple international commitments. However, the evolution of the debate will be an important determinant of how the South Korean and broader international response to this latest North Korean challenge ultimately ends. This book provides a framework for viewing South Korean responses to this challenge, examining the South Korean debate over policies toward the North, analyzing the sources of controversy, and assessing their implications.

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.