Anticommunism as regime legitimisation strategy in South Korea in the 1960s

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (19) ◽  
pp. 117-137
Author(s):  
Natalia Matveeva
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Military Regime ◽  
American Military ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Park Chung Hee ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

Since its founding in 1948, South Korea existed on the forefront of the Cold War divide between the two rival blocs. The 'communist threat' was never far from the South Korean leaders' minds, yet it was not until the 1960s that anti-communism was turned into a strategy for regime legitimisation. In 1961, as a result of a coup d'état, a military regime came to power. Its first and most important goal was to legitimise itself both domestically and internationally. General Park Chung-hee, the leader of the military junta, chose anticommunism as part of his strategy. It was deployed to convince the US of the new regime's commitment to defending the country against any possible threat; to prevent American military and economic withdrawal from Korea, and to justify the intensive drive for rapid economic development, for which the general later became renowned. This article argues that South Korean anticommunism in the early 1960s was a complex and conscious strategy aimed at establishing the foundations for the new military regime and ensuring its continued survival. Based on Park Chung-hee's speeches and books and the available archival sources, the article illustrates the way in which anticommunism was presented and how it was used as part of the regime's legitimising strategy.

Progressives and Labor under Park Chung Hee: A Forgotten Alliance in 1960s South Korea

2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 873-892
Author(s):  
Hwasook Nam
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Unusual Case ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Military Government ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Park Chung Hee ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Military ◽  
Shipyard Workers

Using an unusual case of a democratic and militant shipbuilding union in 1960s South Korea as a window on society, this article explores the politics and ethos of the first decade of Park Chung Hee's rule. Pronounced public support for the union in the region, dense links between the unionists and local progressives, and the surprisingly optimistic and positive expectations of the military government that shipyard workers exhibited in this period all call our attention to the still quite fluid and open terrain of politics before the full-blown authoritarianism of the 1970s. These dynamic aspects of the 1960s, when both elites and non-elites engaged major postcolonial questions of democracy, development, and unification, are mostly hidden from view today, overwhelmed by the power of the dominant minju discourse that became hegemonic in the democracy movement during the 1980s and 1990s. Excavating the forgotten alliance between an important union and the progressives surrounding it thus opens a space for alternative understandings of South Korean development and democratization.

Destination Hong Kong: The Geopolitics of South Korean Espionage Films in the 1960s

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-364
Author(s):  
Sangjoon Lee
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Cold War ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Market Potential ◽  
James Bond ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Developmental States ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract As the apparent progeny of Cold War politics in the West, espionage films witnessed unprecedented popularity around the globe in the 1960s. With the success of Dr. No (1962) and Goldfinger (1964)—along with French, Italian, and German copycats—in Asia, film industries in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea recognized the market potential and embarked on churning out their own James Bond-mimetic espionage films in the late 1960s. Since the regional political sphere has always been multifaceted, however, each country approached genre conventions with its own interpretation. In the US-driven Cold War political, ideological, and economic sphere, developmental states in the region, particularly South Korea and Taiwan, vigorously adopted anti-communist doctrine to guard and uphold their militant dictatorships. Under this political atmosphere in the regional sphere, cultural sectors in each nation-state, including cinema, voluntarily or compulsorily served as an apparatus to strengthen the state’s ideological principles. While the Cold War politics that drive the narrative in the American and European films is conspicuously absent in Hong Kong espionage films, South Korea and Taiwan, on the other hand, explicitly promulgated the ideological principles of their apparent enemies, North Korea and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), in their representative espionage films. This article casts a critical eye over South Korea–initiated inter-Asian coproduction of espionage films produced during the time, with particular reference to South Korea–Hong Kong coproduction of SOS Hong Kong (SOS Hongk’ong) and Special Agent X-7 (Sun’gan ŭn yŏngwŏnhi), both produced and released in 1966.

Bilateralism, Multilateralism, and the Making of an Alliance Consensus

2019 ◽  
pp. 25-56
Author(s):  
Andrew Yeo
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
South Korea ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Over Time

Chapter 2 recounts the origins of bilateralism in Asia and the legitimization of the US-led hub-and-spokes system among Asian elites during the Cold War. It also outlines the rise of ASEAN in the 1960s. Exploring postwar US alliances forged with the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Thailand, I demonstrate how material threats, institutions, and ideas interact to produce an alliance consensus among political elites in Asia. Despite periodic domestic opposition to US alliances, and the weakness of ASEAN, the hub-and-spokes system and ASEAN become entrenched over time.

Reluctant Cold Warriors

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Kontorovich
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Soviet Economy ◽  
Accurate Analysis ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Us ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The academic study of the Soviet economy in the US was created to help fight the Cold War, part of a broader mobilization of the social sciences for national security needs. The Soviet strategic challenge rested on the ability of its economy to produce large numbers of sophisticated weapons. The military sector was the dominant part of the economy, and the most successful one. However, a comprehensive survey of scholarship on the Soviet economy from 1948-1991 shows that it paid little attention to the military sector, compared to other less important parts of the economy. Soviet secrecy does not explain this pattern of neglect. Western scholars developed strained civilian interpretations for several aspects of the economy which the Soviets themselves acknowledged to have military significance. A close reading of the economic literature, combined with insights from other disciplines, suggest three complementary explanations for civilianization of the Soviet economy. Soviet studies was a peripheral field in economics, and its practitioners sought recognition by pursuing the agenda of the mainstream discipline, however ill-fitting their subject. The Soviet economy was supposed to be about socialism, and the military sector appeared to be unrelated to that. By stressing the militarization, one risked being viewed as a Cold War monger. The conflict identified in this book between the incentives of academia and the demands of policy makers (to say nothing of accurate analysis) has broad relevance for national security uses of social science.

The Emergence of Business Groups: Israel and South Korea Compared

2002 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 737-758 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Maman
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Business Groups ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Economic Organizations ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Korean State

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.

The Soviet Factor in the US-China Military-Technical Cooperation during the Cold War

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 12-47
Author(s):  
Yinan Li
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Active Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Technical Cooperation ◽  
Arms Sales ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The development of the PRC’s armed forces included three phases when their modernization was carried out through an active introduction of foreign weapons and technologies. The first and the last of these phases (from 1949 to 1961, and from 1992 till present) received wide attention in both Chinese and Western academic literature, whereas the second one — from 1978 to 1989 —when the PRC actively purchased weapons and technologies from the Western countries remains somewhat understudied. This paper is intended to partially fill this gap. The author examines the logic of the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States in the context of complex interactions within the United States — the USSR — China strategic triangle in the last years of the Cold War. The first section covers early contacts between the PRC and the United States in the security field — from the visit of R. Nixon to China till the inauguration of R. Reagan. The author shows that during this period Washington clearly subordinated the US-Chinese cooperation to the development of the US-Soviet relations out of fear to damage the fragile process of detente. The second section focuses on the evolution of the R. Reagan administration’s approaches regarding arms sales to China in the context of a new round of the Cold War. The Soviet factor significantly influenced the development of the US-Chinese military-technical cooperation during that period, which for both parties acquired not only practical, but, most importantly, political importance. It was their mutual desire to undermine strategic positions of the USSR that allowed these two countries to overcome successfully tensions over the US arms sales to Taiwan. However, this dependence of the US-China military-technical cooperation on the Soviet factor had its downside. As the third section shows, with the Soviet threat fading away, the main incentives for the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States also disappeared. As a result, after the Tiananmen Square protests, this cooperation completely ceased. Thus, the author concludes that the US arms sales to China from the very beginning were conditioned by the dynamics of the Soviet-American relations and Beijing’s willingness to play an active role in the policy of containment. In that regard, the very fact of the US arms sales to China was more important than its practical effect, i.e. this cooperation was of political nature, rather than military one.

Transcending the Past: Singing and the Lingering Cold War in the Korean Christian Diaspora

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
HYUN KYONG HANNAH CHANG
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Choral Music ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Identity And Agency ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract Protestant music in South Korea has received little attention in ethnomusicology despite the fact that Protestant Christianity was one of the most popular religions in twentieth-century Korea. This has meant a missed opportunity to consider the musical impact of a religious institution that mediated translocal experiences between South Korea and the United States during the Cold War period (1950s–1980s). This article explores the politics of music style in South Korean diasporic churches through an ethnography of a church choir in California. I document these singers’ preference for European-style choral music over neotraditional pieces that incorporate the aesthetics of suffering from certain Korean traditional genres. I argue that their musical judgement must be understood in the context of their lived and remembered experience of power inequalities between the United States and South Korea. Based on my interviews with the singers, I show that they understand hymns and related Euro-American genres as healing practices that helped them overcome a difficult past and hear traditional vocal music as sonic icons of Korea's sad past. The article outlines a pervasive South Korean/Korean diasporic historical consciousness that challenges easy conceptions of identity and agency in music studies.

"A Pragmatic March toward Democracy"?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Political Reform ◽  
Military Regime ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Military ◽  
Egyptian Politics

This book has examined how the Free Officers were able to seize and consolidate power, topple the parliamentary regime, and put in place a new political order with them at the helm. It has shown that the erosion of liberalism in Egypt caused turmoil which in turn sparked clamors for drastic social and political reform. This created a situation that was exploited by the officers to stage a coup d'etat, and the military regime they established received support from the public and the intelligentsia. The officers initially refused to call their movement a revolution, and instead called themselves the “blessed movement.” They eventually declared their movement a revolution in early 1953; it was described by Anwar al-Sadat two years later as a “pragmatic march toward democracy.” This conclusion discusses the legacy of Nasser and Nasserism in Egyptian politics.

Korea: divided nation, divided allegiances

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jude Woodward
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Economic Benefit ◽  
Mutual Economic ◽  
Economic Miracle ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
The Us ◽  
Post War ◽  
North And South

This chapter looks at South Korea’s response to the US ‘pivot’. It takes stock of the post-war division of the peninsula and its consequences for the international alignment of both North and South. It considers how the ‘economic miracle’ in South Korea led to growing competition with Japan and greater synergies with China. It looks at the degree to which North Korea threatens stability in the region, and to what extent its demonisation justifies a major US presence in close proximity to China. The chapter discusses whether resurgent China is seen as a threat to South Korean interests or chiefly viewed through the prism of mutual economic benefit; and contrasts alleged concerns about China with those provoked by Japan. It concludes that while South Korea has continued to step up its military collaboration with the US, it has not become a cheerleader for pushing back against China and has not signed up to a US strategy to contain China.

Gurye

2019 ◽  
pp. 69-100
Author(s):  
Suhi Choi
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Southwestern Part ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The Us ◽  
Memorial Sites

The term “Yŏsun Killings” refers to a prewar atrocity in which the US-allied South Korean forces killed numerous civilians who were accused of being either communists or communist sympathizers in the cities that had been occupied by rebels in the southwestern part of South Korea. As one of the sites of these atrocities, Gurye became the first town in South Korea to erect a public memorial in 2006 for the victims of the Yŏsun Killings. Gurye presents a case that demonstrates how democratized South Korea has continued to negotiate a strong legacy of anticommunism, even at its subversive memorial sites. In a land that has long muted the memories of an old atrocity, suppressed mourners in Gurye are still struggling to reclaim their fundamental yet long-deprived rights to mourn the loss of their loved ones.

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