The History of South Korea, 1945–1987

This chapter explains the flow of modern Korean political history by looking at events beginning with the 1948 election and ending with the 1987 democratization process. The historical events before 1987 can be largely divided into four periods: the period of the First Republic; the period of the Second Republic and the Park Chung-hee administration; the period of the Yusin regime; and the period of the Gwangju Uprising, new military leaders, and the Democratization Uprising in 1987. The purpose of this chapter is to show the macro-flow of modern Korean politics through historical events, focusing on the causal relationships explaining each regime change by describing the characteristics and tendencies of each regime. The events and changes explain how the structure of conflict in modern Korean politics changed from democratization versus authoritarian forces to progressive versus conservative forces and show where the pro-democratization tendency of Korean politics began.

Executive Politics

This chapter explains the historical origins of strong bureaucratic power in South Korea and recent changes in which the concentration of bureaucratic power has weakened. In the 1960s and 1970s, economic growth was South Korea’s top priority, and economic policy agencies such as the Economic Planning Board (EPB) led the nation’s overall policy decisions under the protection of the powerful president, Park Chung-hee. As the economy grew, however, various social demands, such as welfare, labour rights, and environmental protection, were expressed by the public, and many institutions that could reflect these demands grew within the bureaucracy in the 1980s and 1990s. As a consequence, the influence of the EPB was relatively reduced. Since the 2000s, democratization has matured and the ability of the National Assembly to make policy decisions and keep the administration in check has been strengthened. As a result, the bureaucrats’ influence on policy further diminished.

An Old Right in New Bottles: State without Nation in South Korean New Right Historiography

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.

SOME POLICIES TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF HUMAN RESOURCES IN SOUTH KOREA AND SINGAPORE BETWEEN 1961 AND 1979

South Korea and Singapore faced several challenges in the early 1960s, including unemployment, ethnic conflicts, rising crime, etc. Faced with that situation, President Park Chung Hee and Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew conducted a strategic plan and launched a series of appropriate policies to recover the country’s economy. The plans to develop human resources for domestic industry are key factors deciding the success of these two countries. It is also the secret for them to achieve their current remarkable and miraculous progress. In this paper, the authors uses historical analysis, statistical method, comparative method, and data analysis to study some human resource development strategies of South Korea and Singapore from 1961 to 1979. Thereby, the author will find out the similarities and differences in their development strategies.