The History of Korea, 1905–1945

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyung-Gu Lynn
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Colonial Oppression ◽  
Viable System

This chapter provides an overview of key questions, issues, and debates in the scholarship on the political history of Korea from 1905 to 1945. Japan placed Korea in protectorate status in 1905 and colonized the country in 1910. After nearly forty years under colonial rule, the dominant narrative in the scholarship in South Korea from 1945 to the mid-1980s focused on Japanese colonial oppression and the Korean struggle against it to achieve national independence. The focus of this chapter is on subsequent approaches that have supplemented, qualified, challenged, and refined interpretations of this era. These include analysis of the causes behind the emergence of modern nationalism in Korea; the internal political polarization between left and right and the internal conflicts within each camp that formed the domestic foundations for the division of the Korean Peninsula after 1945; the bureaucratization that, according to some scholars, served as the template for the developmental state that emerged in South Korea during the 1960s; and the dissolution of absolute monarchy as a viable system of governance in the post-1945 period.

South Korea during the Park Chung Hee Era: Explaining Korea’s Developmental Decades

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-192
Author(s):  
Kurtuluş Gemici
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Park Chung Hee ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

Abstract Despite the voluminous literature on South Korea’s rapid economic development and social transformation in the 1960s and 1970s, the literature in English on Park Chung Hee — the political figure who indelibly marked this era — is still lacking. Furthermore, the existing studies approach the subject of Korea’s fateful decades from general theoretical perspectives, such as the developmental state. This approach inevitably flattens out historical particularity in the process. A recent edited volume, The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea, fills these gaps by bringing political history back into the study of Korean modernization. The goal of this review essay is a critical evaluation of this volume’s contribution to scholarship on South Korea. It is posited that The Park Chung Hee Era throws light on topics such as Park’s leadership that have been hitherto neglected in the analysis of arguably the most consequential decades in the history of South Korea. However, while the edited volume mounts an effective criticism of existing perspectives on Korea’s developmental decades under Park Chung Hee’s rule, it is less successful in offering a consistent framework to analyze different causal factors shaping the Korean trajectory of economic development.

A Note on Economic Development in North Korea: Call for a Comprehensive Approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 247-259
Author(s):  
Yong-Shik Lee
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
South Korea ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Mineral Resources ◽  
Comprehensive Approach ◽  
Advanced Economies ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Political Economic

Abstract North Korea is currently one of the most impoverished countries with a history of famine, but the country has a significant potential for economic development that could lift its population from poverty. Neighbored by some of the largest and most advanced economies in the world (South Korea, Japan, and China) and endowed with abundant mineral resources, industrial experience, and a history of successful economic development in the past, North Korea can embark on the path to rapid economic development, as its southern counterpart (South Korea) did so successfully since the 1960s. Yet, the successful economic development of North Korea requires a comprehensive approach, including obtaining a fund for development; normalizing relations with the West and the neighboring countries; improving its human rights conditions; prioritizing key industrial development; and reforming its political-economic system. This note discusses the comprehensive approach necessary for the successful economic development of North Korea.

A Geopolitical Economy of Heavy Industrialization and Second Tier City Growth in South Korea: Evidence from the ‘Four Core Plants Plan’

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Young-Jin Choi ◽  
Jim Glassman
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
Korean Economy ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Original Plan ◽  
Second Tier ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The City

In this article, we examine heavy industrialization and second tier urbanization in South Korea during the 1970s from a geopolitical economic perspective. We highlight the crucial, spatially complex geopolitical process of forming transnational class alliances, embedded in Cold War geopolitics, which has been neglected within state-centric developmental state theories and approaches to urbanization. Specifically, we trace the changes in the state’s original developmental plan for promoting the machinery industry in the southeast region during the 1960s and 1970s. We show how Hyundai, one of the most dominant chaebols, grew to exercise decisive influence over the state’s developmental strategy and became a powerhouse in the Korean economy, particularly in the city of Ulsan. Based on a case study of the Four Core Plants Plan, we show that the success of Hyundai was not an outcome of the effectiveness of the state’s developmental policy but was, ironically, due to the failure of the government’s original plan. The successful substitution of Hyundai’s own strategy for the state’s plan, which contributed enormously to the growth of Ulsan, would have been impossible without Hyundai’s enrollment into the transnational geopolitical economic alliance spurred by US military projects in Asia.

scholarly journals Left is right and right is left? Partisan difference on social welfare and particularistic benefits in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-41
Author(s):  
Jaemin Shim
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Construction Projects ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Elite Level ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Socioeconomic Dimension

AbstractThis paper investigates elite-level partisan differences along the socioeconomic dimension in three developed East Asian democracies – Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. On the one hand, the mainstream literature in welfare studies and party politics expects left- and right-leaning parties should vary significantly in utilizing social policy promises. On the other hand, the path dependency logic tells us that left–right difference should be found over particularistic benefits, such as agricultural subsidies or construction projects, considering that these were central means for right-leaning parties to maintain their power during the developmental state period in the three countries. Using an original bill-sponsorship data set between 1987 and 2012, we find that there has not been any substantial difference in the agenda setting of conventional social welfare bills between left- and right-wing government periods. However, a clear elective affinity can be observed between established right-wing parties and particularistic benefits. The paper shows that contextualizing key political actors' preferences can lead to a more systematic understanding of political dynamics behind the socioeconomic dimension in non-Anglo-European countries.

Adopting in the Shadows: False Registration as a Method of Adoption in Postcolonial South Korea

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 495-521
Author(s):  
Sungyun Lim
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Civil Code ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Choson Dynasty ◽  
Legal Reforms ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
Japanese Colonial

Abstract This article examines false registration as a method of domestic adoption in South Korea. The article argues that the practice of falsely registering adoptees as natural births in the family registry emerged in response to the highly restrictive adoption laws in South Korea. As adopting agnatic kin for the purpose of family succession was deemed the only legitimate form of adoption, significant hurdles existed for other kinds of adoption in Korea. This article examines the history of domestic adoption in Korea and highlights the legal hurdles to domestic adoption. These restrictive adoption customs first originated during the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) as a prescription for yangban elite; they were then codified as customary law for all Koreans under Japanese colonial rule (1910–45). The ban on non-agnatic adoption continued in the postcolonial period when it was codified in the new Civil Code of 1960. Multiple legal reforms were attempted since the 1970s to promote domestic adoptions, but change was slow. This article argues that the highly restrictive nature of adoption laws in South Korea produced an adoption regime that existed largely outside of the legal realm.

Modern Womanhood, the Ideology of the Housewife, and Young Female Rural–Urban Migrants in the 1960s and 1970s in South Korea

2020 ◽  
pp. 171-194
Author(s):  
Jaok Kwon
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Filial Piety ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
Young Female ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Single Female ◽  
Female Workers ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

This paper attempts to clarify how young female rural–urban migrant workers were positioned within the ideology of the housewife as a form of modern womanhood, which was regulated by the developmental state as part of the modern nation-state building in the 1960s and 1970s in South Korea, by analyzing media discourses on the mobility, space and labor of single female workers. First, within the ideology of the housewife, in which women were required to settle down in the private sphere away from the main breadwinners after the Korean War, the mobility of young rural girls was depicted as ‘unsettled’ and ‘unstable’ and thus was socially deviant relative to the ‘settled’ and ‘cared for’ women in the private sphere. Second, the working space as well as the residential space for single female workers was illustrated as a loss of control of their bodies and sexuality under the normative ideology of the housewife, which led to the idealization of the institution of marriage as the final savior for single female workers. Finally, under the patriarchal system and the redefinition of women’s labor in the developmental state based upon familism, the labor by single female workers was ‘housewifized’ either as ‘filial piety’ or a ‘natural duty’ to the family as well as to the motherland.

scholarly journals Modern Historical and Cultural Values of Volunteer Fire Brigade: Sulsan Volunteer Fire Brigade in Impi-myeon, Gunsan-si, Jeollabuk-do

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 112-117
Author(s):  
Sang-Hee Lee ◽  
Myung-O Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Fire History ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Fire Brigade ◽  
History Of ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
A Site

Data investigations and research on the history of firefighting were conducted considering a recent fire museum construction plan. To devise a plan to develop a volunteer fire brigade (the basis of firefighting) in a situation in which most of the real data have been lost or discarded and only some firefighting vehicles and suppression equipment remain, a site visit and relic survey were conducted at the Sulsan Volunteer Fire brigade site in Impi-myeon in Gunsan-si, Jeollabuk-do. It was found that fire wells, manual pumps used since the Japanese colonial period, volunteer fire brigade buildings, and a fire watchtower installed in the 1960s remain. Based on the results and considering the historical and cultural values of the Sulsan Volunteer Fire brigade in Impi-myeon at that time, this study emphasized the importance of fire history and culture, the need to designate and preserve such sites as registered cultural properties, and the new role of the volunteer fire brigade.

scholarly journals Blood purity and scientific independence: blood science and postcolonial struggles in Korea, 1926–1975

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 239-260
Author(s):  
Jaehwan Hyun
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Blood Groups ◽  
World War ◽  
Japanese Colonialism ◽  
Racial Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
Prewar Period ◽  
The 1960S

ArgumentAfter World War II, blood groups became a symbol of anti-racial science. This paper aims to shed new light on the post-WWII history of blood groups and race, illuminating the postcolonial revitalization of racial serology in South Korea. In the prewar period, Japanese serologists developed a serological anthropology of Koreans in tandem with Japanese colonialism. The pioneering Korean hematologist Yi Samyŏl (1926–2015), inspired by decolonization movements during the 1960s, excavated and appropriated colonial serological anthropology to prove Koreans as biologically independent from the Japanese. However, his racial serology of Koreans shared colonial racism with Japanese anthropology, despite his anti-colonial nationalism.

Ghana-Korea Economic Relations – The Record after 40 Years and the Future

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 6-39
Author(s):  
Lloyd G. Adu Amoah ◽  
Kwasi Asante
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
West African ◽  
African Nation ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Economic Miracle ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Economic Relationship ◽  
The 1960S

Abstract Over the last sixty years the economic and industrial fortunes of Ghana and Korea have proved worryingly divergent. Though Ghana and South Korea had comparatively similar GDP per capita in the 1960s, South Korea in 20171 ($29,742.839) has been able to attain a GDP per capita that is about ten times that of Ghana ($1,641.487). This work critically examines the economic relationship between Ghana and South Korea in the last forty years. It focuses on the economic miracle of South Korea and the lessons for developing countries like Ghana. The article utilizes economic, historical and policy data drawn from primary and secondary sources in an attempt to examine the economic relations between the two countries thus far and prescribe ways in which Ghana can benefit far more than ever before from her economic co-operation with Korea. The paper argues that for Ghana to benefit from its economic relations with South Korea the ideational example of this East Asian state in constructing a developmental state (DS) is critical. Flowing from this, it is recommended that this West African nation becomes more diligent and innovative in her economic relations with Korea as a matter of strategic necessity in pursuit of Ghana’s long held industrialization dream.

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