A “K” to bridge Korea and the world: the state-led formulation of K-lit and its contradictions

Author(s):  
Bo-Seon Shim

Abstract This study examines the activity of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI), a South Korean state agency promoting Korean literature internationally through translation. Analyzing LTI programs and participants in LTI policymaking and implementation, I advocate reconsideration of the conventional theorization of the state as either “strong” or “weak” in its control over national culture, corresponding to the degree of liberalization of market and politics. Instead, the institutional strength of the state and the marginal status – globally – of a given literature are intertwined and mutually transformative for the global formulation of a national literature. This study articulates how LTI's embeddedness in networks of domestic and international literary actors, such as translators, publishers, academics, and critics, both enables and constrains LTI policy. Based on the analysis, I argue that LTI as an intermediary formulates Korean literature with multiple components, combining the marketization of prominent writers with cultural consecration of non-commercial works, and universal literary values with nationalist cultural pride. Consequently, this study reveals the contentious nature of the state-led literary project, under which a national literature in global context is shaped collectively by actors both within and without the state.

Author(s):  
Ji-Yeon O. Jo

I trace how conceptions of citizenship have transformed in post-1990 South Korea, focusing on the major formations of and shifts in Korean citizenship, as well as on the evolution of nationality laws concerning diaspora Koreans. I also examine legacy migrants’ perspectives on citizenship and legal belonging. The process of citizen-making, which unfolds through the dynamics between an “enterprising” South Korean state and the “entrepreneurial” strategies incorporated by the legacy migrants in this study, largely rests on the interplay between emotionally charged ethnic nationalism and economic mobility driven by neoliberal global capitalism, both of which in turn have rearticulated and reconfigured the borders of South Korean citizenship and belonging. As a result, various forms of conditional and contingent citizenship—statuses that are neither fully admitted by the state nor fully committed to by returnees—have been produced.


Author(s):  
Dominik Aziewicz

State-owned enterprises supervision system in South Korea and Singapore, within the context of the debate about reforming state-owned enterprises supervision system in Poland State-owned enterprises are a part of most modern economies. Therefore, it is substantial to elaborate which model of supervision system is the most suitable for the challenges of each country. Since the 2015 there is an ongoing debate in Poland, about the shape of a stateowned enterprises supervision system. It was considered to establish a national holding company, which would perform the ownership function for Polish state-owned enterprises. An inspiration for this idea was the South Korean state-owned supervision system and the impact of the chaebols on the Korean national economy. The aim of this article it to examine Korean solutions, and to present the state-owned supervision system which function in Singapore, because in many ways it seems to be a more adequate inspiration for the needs of Polish decision-makers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Vierthaler

Abstract The emergence of the South Korean New Right movement in the mid-2000s led to the questions of how to commemorate and evaluate the ROK state establishment in 1948, and when to precisely trace such a “foundation” (1919 or 1948?) to be vividly discussed in South Korean society. Was 1948 primarily a political division? Or was it a “foundation for success”? Following the 2008 Foundation Day Dispute, a significant number of scholarly works on the subject has been produced. This article analyses the conservative side of this discourse, approaching the foundation dispute as a conservative attempt to regain hegemony over South Korean Cultural memory in post-democratisation South Korea. Analysing New Right-authored historiography on the subject of “foundation,” the present study discloses how conservatives narrated the formative years of the South Korean state, arguing that merely dismissing the New Right as historical revisionists is too simple a conclusion. Rather, this article argues that struggles over Cultural memory are rooted in the ideological and institutional polarisation of South Korean intellectuals in contemporary South Korea. Furthermore, by contextualising the Foundation View against progressive historiography within South Korea as well as Cold War history in a global context, this study answers why the Foundation View ultimately failed to gain acceptance.


1990 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Mardon

The literature on the political economy of developing nations has focused attention upon the weakness and vulnerability of the nation-state and its limited ability to deal with and effectively alter the dominant forces of the international economy. Despite common international structures, however, the empirical pattern of foreign ownership and control of the means of production varies in newly industrializing nations. Domestic political structures and alternative state strategies may therefore have a significant impact on the pattern of foreign ownership and on the degree of control that foreign capital may exert on a developing economy.The author examines the principal legal and bureaucratic mechanisms utilized by the South Korean state to regulate the domestic economy's interaction with international capital, as well as the impact of these mechanisms upon domestic production patterns. The South Korean case demonstrates that, through the formulation and implementation of appropriate policy, the state in a developing nation possesses the capacity to shape the pattern of interaction with international economic forces. Legal and bureaucratic mechanisms have facilitated an industrial development that is predominantly owned and effectively controlled by Korean nationals.


2002 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 737-758 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Maman

This paper examines the emergence of business groups in Israel and South Korea. The paper questions how, in very different institutional contexts, similar economic organizations emerged. In contrast to the political, cultural and market perspectives, the comparative institutional analysis adopted in this research suggests that one factor alone could not explain the emergence of business groups. In Israel and South Korea, business groups emerged during the 1960s and 1970s, and there are common factors underlying their formation: state-society relations, the roles and beliefs of the elites, and the relative absence of multinational corporations in the economy. To a large extent, the chaebol are the result of an intended creation of the South Korean state, whereas the Israeli business groups are the outcome of state policies in the economic realm. In both countries, the state elite held a developmental ideology, did not rely on market forces for economic development, and had a desire for greater economic and military self-sufficiency. In addition, both states were recipients of large grants and loans from other countries, which made them less dependent on direct foreign investments. As a result, the emerging groups were protected from the intense competition of multinational corporations.


1990 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pranab Bardhan

The role of the state in economic development is one of the oldest topics in economics, yet controversies rage with similar passion and camps are divided on lines today broadly similar to the early writings. Though the authors of the papers in this symposium present different views, they all refuse to pose the question as a simple choice between the market mechanism and state intervention. Larry Westphal and Albert Fishlow evaluate the South Korean and the Latin American experience, respectively, in their essential complexity. Mrinal Datta-Chaudhuri draws upon a comparative study of the Indian and East Asian cases to bring out the contradictions and complementaries in the relationship between the state and the economy. Anne Krueger's paper reflects on how the comparative advantages and disadvantages of state action flow from its organizational and incentive characteristics.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Sungik Yang

The New Right movement that arose in the early 2000s in South Korea was a response to a change in ownership of Korean nationalist discourse during the preceding decades. Although nationalism was the preserve of the South Korean right wing from the trusteeship crisis in 1945 through the end of the Park Chung Hee regime, a historiographical revolt in the 1980s that emphasized the historical illegitimacy of the South Korean state allowed the Left to appropriate nationalism. With the loss of nationalism from its arsenal, the Right turned to postnationalist neoliberal discourse to blunt the effectiveness of leftist nationalist rhetoric. An examination of New Right historiography on the colonial and postliberation periods, however, shows that despite the recent change in conservatives’ stance on nationalism, a preoccupation with the legitimacy of the South Korean state remains at the center of right-wing historical narratives. The New Right represents old wine in new bottles.


2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serk-Bae Suh

This essay focuses on Ch'oe Chaesŏ, a leading Korean intellectual, active translator of English literary criticism, and editor in chief of Kokumin Bungaku (National Literature), a prominent Japanese-language journal published in colonial Korea. Ch'oe asserted that the unfolding of history in the twentieth century demanded a paradigmatic transition from liberalism to state-centered nationalism in culture. He also privileged everyday life as allowing people to live as members of communities that ultimately are integrated into the state. By positioning Koreans firmly as subjects of the Japanese state, his argument implied that the colonized should be treated on a par with the colonizers. Further, Ch'oe advocated Koreans' cultural autonomy as an ethnic group within the Japanese empire. Tracing Ch'oe's early life and examining his critical essays on nation, culture, and state, the author discusses how his endeavors to establish an autonomous space for Korean culture simultaneously legitimized Japanese colonial control.


Sociologija ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-95
Author(s):  
Smiljana Milinkov ◽  
Dinko Gruhonjic

The paper problematizes the presence of political clientelism in the media in the Republic of Serbia. The aim of this research is to point out the examples of establishing mechanisms of clientelistic practice in the media, using the News agency Tanjug as an example. Three analytical categories, which are relevant for perceiving the problem of clientelism, have been included: regulatory framework, financial allocations from the state budget and the reporting of the news agency Tanjug. The results of the research show that the illegal functioning, the unsolved ownership issue, non-transparent financing and unprofessional reporting are characteristics of the media work of Tanjug agency. According to the law, the former state agency was scheduled to stop work by the end of 2015. However, Tanjug still, with unclear legal status and significant financial help from the state, publishes information, some of which were proven to be disinformation. The analysis of examples of unobjective and unprofessional reporting points out to the ignoring of public interest, in order to satisfy the particular interest of the governing political structure, which financially makes Tanjug?s functioning possible, in an illegal manner. This case represents a closed circle of interrelationships on the relation politics-economy-media, through which clientelism is defined, using quid pro quo practice.


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