Handbook of South Korean Politics PDF

T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f S OU T H KOR E A N P OL I T IC S The Oxford Handbook of SOUTH KOREAN POLITICS Edited by JEONGHUN HAN, RAMON PACHECO PARDO, and YOUNGHO CHO Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2023 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2023 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2022940778 ISBN 978–0–19–289404–5 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192894045.001.0001 Printed and bound in the UK by TJ Books Limited Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. Table of Contents List of Contributors ix PA RT 1 I N T ROD U C T ION 1. Introduction: South Korean Politics after Transitions 3 JeongHun Han, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, and Youngho Cho 2. The History of Korea, 1905–1945 17 Hyung-Gu Lynn 3. The History of South Korea, 1945–1987 34 Tae Gyun Park PA RT 2 C OR E C ON C E P T S 4. Presidentialism with Parliamentary Characteristics 49 JeongHun Han 5. Regionalism 68 Kwang-Il Yoon 6. Conservative Democratisation 87 WooJin Kang 7. The Developmental State 104 Meredith Woo 8. Chaebol 120 Sang-young Rhyu 9. Nationalism 136 Jungmin Seo vi Table of Contents PA RT 3 P OL I T IC A L I N S T I T U T ION S 10. Constitutional Politics 153 Won-Taek Kang 11. Legislative Politics 167 Byoung Kwon Sohn 12. Executive Politics 183 Jongkon Lee 13. Judicial Politics 198 Dongwook Cha PA RT 4 PA RT I E S A N D E L E C T ION S 14. Parties and Party Systems 217 Sunghack Lim 15. Minority Representation 233 Kyungmee Park 16. Elections and Electoral Systems 252 Woojin Moon 17. Political Communication 270 Han Soo Lee 18. New Issue Politics 285 Seung-Jin Jang PA RT 5 C I V I L S O C I E T Y 19. Social Movements: Developments and Structural Changes after Democratisation 305 Jin-Wook Shin 20. Interest Group Politics 326 Yoojin Lim and Yeonho Lee 21. Labour Union Activism 342 Soonmee Kwon 22. Citizens’ Support for Democracy 358 Youngho Cho Table of Contents vii PA RT 6 C U LT U R E A N D M E DIA 23. Cinema and Television 377 Hyangjin Lee 24. The Internet and Social Media 394 Dal Yong Jin 25. The Press 408 Ki-Sung Kwak 26. Public Intellectuals 423 Namhee Lee 27. Politics and Popular Music 439 John Lie PA RT 7 P U B L IC P OL IC Y A N D P OL IC Y-M A K I N G 28. Political Control and Bureaucratic Autonomy 455 Huck-ju Kwon 29. The Development of Welfare Programmes 471 Jooha Lee 30. Decentralisation and Local Government 491 Yooil Bae 31. Corruption 508 Kyoung-sun Min PA RT 8 T H E I N T E R NAT IONA L A R E NA 32. Foreign Policy 529 Ramon Pacheco Pardo 33. Security and Defence Policy 546 Sung-han Kim and Alex Soohoon Lee 34. Foreign Economic Policy 562 Sohyun Zoe Lee viii Table of Contents 35. The South Korean Development Model 578 Eun Mee Kim and Nancy Y. Kim 36. Korean Reunification 595 Young-Kwan Yoon 37. The ROK–US Alliance: Drivers of Resilience 613 Victor D. Cha and Katrin Katz 38. Evolving Relations with China 629 Heung-Kyu Kim Index 647 List of Contributors Yooil Bae, Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration, Dong-A University Dongwook Cha, Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration and Policy, Dong-eui University Victor D. Cha, Vice Dean and D.S. Song-KF Professor of Government and International Affairs, School of Foreign Service and Department of Government, Georgetown University Youngho Cho, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Sogang University JeongHun Han, Associate Professor, Graduate School of International Studies and Chair of the EU Center, Seoul National University Seung-Jin Jang, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Kookmin University Dal Yong Jin, Distinguished SFU Professor, Simon Fraser University Won-Taek Kang is professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Seoul National University WooJin Kang, Professor, Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, KyungPook National University Katrin Katz, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, The Korea Society and Adjunct Fellow (Non-Resident), Office of the Korea Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Eun Mee Kim, President, Ewha Womans University Heung-Kyu Kim, Director, US–China Policy Institute, Ajou University Nancy Y. Kim, PhD Candidate and Researcher, Institute for Development and Human Security, Ewha Womans University Sung-han Kim, Professor, College of International Studies, Korea University Ki-Sung Kwak, Chair of Department, Department of Korean Studies, University of Sydney x List of Contributors Huck-ju Kwon, Professor, Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University Soonmee Kwon, Professor, Korea Employment and Labor Educational Institute Alex Soohoon Lee, Associate Research Fellow, Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA) Han Soo Lee, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, Ajou University Hyangjin Lee, Professor of Film Studies, Rikkyo University Jongkon Lee, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Ewha Womans University Jooha Lee, Professor, Department of Public Administration, Dongguk University Namhee Lee, Professor of Modern Korean History, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and Director, Center for Korean Studies, UCLA Sohyun Zoe Lee, Lecturer in International Political Economy, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen's University Belfast Yeonho Lee, Professor, Department of Political Science and International Studies, Yonsei University John Lie, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley Sunghack Lim, Professor, Department of International Relations, University of Seoul Yoojin Lim, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Kangwon National University Hyung-Gu Lynn, AECL/KEPCO Chair in Korean Research, University of British Columbia and Editor, Pacific Affairs Kyoung-sun Min, Assistant Professor, Korean National Police University Woojin Moon, Professor, Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, Ajou University Ramon Pacheco Pardo, Professor of International Relations, King’s College London and KF–VUB Korea Chair, Brussels School of Governance, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Kyungmee Park, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Jeonbuk National University Tae Gyun Park, Professor, Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University Sang-young Rhyu , Professor, Graduate School of International Studies, Yonsei University List of Contributors xi Jungmin Seo, Professor, Department of Political Science and International Studies, Yonsei University Jin-Wook Shin, Professor, Department of Sociology, Chung-Ang University Byoung Kwon Sohn, Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Chung-Ang University Meredith Woo, President, Sweet Briar College Kwang-Il Yoon, Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Sookmyung Women’s University Young-Kwan Yoon, Professor Emeritus, College of Social Sciences, Seoul National University and Former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Republic of Korea Pa rt 1 I N T RODU C T ION Chapter 1 Introdu c t i on South Korean Politics after Transitions JeongHun Han, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, and Youngho Cho 1. South Korean Politics: Old and New South Korea is best known for its economic development, democratic consolida- tion, proactive civil society, and, more recently, for its emergence as a cultural power- house. South Korea transitioned from one of the poorest countries in the world in the 1950s into a developed economy by the 1990s. Its economic development model is now being exported throughout the developing world. Meanwhile, South Korea went from dictatorship to democracy in the 1980s, thanks to the re-establishment of free and fair elections in 1987. Over three decades later, it is a consolidated democracy with peaceful transitions of power between parties. In addition, South Korean civil society has been key in the democratic transition as well as its consolidation. Today, it keeps leaders accountable, as the 2016–2017 Candlelight Uprising showed. Furthermore, South Korean culture has been gaining in popularity across the world. Both its trad- itional and, especially, contemporary cultural expressions are being consumed well beyond East Asia. The starting point of this handbook is that South Korea has experienced various transitions, including political, democratic, economic, societal, and demographic, and, thus, its contemporary politics are considerably different from its traditional patterns through the process of responding to these transitions. During the 1950s and 1960s, the South Korean state was not functionally differentiated. The country was ruled by per- sonal dictatorship, its economy was based on subsistence agriculture, and most South Koreans lived in rural areas and followed Confucian norms and rituals. Accordingly, 4 JeongHun Han, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, and Youngho Cho few foreign scholars paid attention to this small, recently war-torn country for which there was little hope. In recent decades and moving away from this old image, South Korea has created and developed specialised state organisations and the country has institutionalised core elements of liberal democracy such as free elections, multiparty competition, and civil liberties. Moreover, high-tech and service companies have been leading its economy, South Korean cultural industries have been gaining global popularity, and its society now looks hyper-modern. Owing to these dramatic transitions, international society now regards South Korea as a middle power and the country has expanded its interests, as well as its responsibilities, abroad. Overall, South Korea and its politics are far distant from the old image and the grand perspectives that tended to underappreciate the com- plex and diversified nature of South Korean politics. Traditional understandings of South Korea indeed do not account for this historical evolution and the complex nature of its politics. Many scholars and political pundits specialising in South Korea describe its politics through two grand perspectives: dy- namic and static. On the dynamic side, Gregory Henderson published his seminal book, Korea: The Politics of the Vortex, in 1968. Henderson characterised South Korean polit- ical dynamics using a physics analogy: as a strong vortex sweeping all active elements of society upwards and towards centralised power. Henderson applied the popular thesis of the politics of mass society by William Kornhauser (1959) to link South Korean politics to an agrarian and traditional society. In his analysis, the strong unity and homogeneity of South Korea were the main reasons hindering the formation of strong institutions or voluntary associations, preventing change, and, therefore, failing to construct a stable liberal democracy (Henderson 1968: 5). On the static side, scholars emphasise the cultural legacies of Confucianism. According to this perspective, the Joseon dynasty adopted Confucianism as the state ideology and it eventually became embedded into social and private norms and values (Deuchler 1995). Since then, Confucianism has continued to play an important role in shaping the mod- ernisation trajectories of South Korea and continues to have an enduring impact on its politics and democracy (Kim 2014; Shin 2012). While acknowledging that some aspects of these grand perspectives may still remain relevant, we need to present an updated understanding of South Korean politics, which, by and large, has been overlooked by these perspectives. We aim to shed fresh light on contemporary South Korean politics and put together this handbook with two underpinning related principles in mind. First, most of the chapters examine South Korean politics since the 1987 democratic transition. The reason is that state development, economic growth, and social and demographic changes began to be reflected in South Korean politics after this transition, which removed the inter- vention of authoritarian leaders. Second, the authors take a bottom-up perspective to advance our understanding about South Korean politics. Relying on Robert Merton’s (1968) mid-range theory, the different contributors integrate both theoretical and em- pirical research about specific aspects of South Korean politics. As South Korea has experienced various transitions over the past decades, its politics have changed in a Introduction 5 multidimensional way. And since holistic and grand approaches are limited in detailing specific aspects of South Korean politics, we have divided the handbook into six sections: core concepts, institutions, civil society, culture and media, public policy, and foreign policy. What changes have been taking place in South Korea’s core political elements such as the developmental state, nationalism, presidentialism, and regionalism? How have democratic institutions, such as elections, the party system, and the judicial body, processed citizens’ interest and values and transformed them into government policies and laws? Has the civil society of South Korea, including interest groups and labour unions, grown in size and attained democratic civility? What are the main characteristics of South Korean culture as it has modernised and globalised? What impacts and implications have decentralisation, new public management (NPM), and growing welfare programmes had on the politics and society of South Korea? And what is the current state of South Korean foreign policy towards North Korea and the superpowers surrounding the Korean Peninsula? This handbook answers these and related questions by providing state-of-the-art analyses of all significant aspects of South Korean politics. The authors in this hand- book share a desire to explain South Korean politics using both theoretical and em- pirical approaches and to provide a general account of the main characteristics observed in specific domains of its politics after transition. Through this project, the contributors hope that an international audience will gain new knowledge about South Korean politics either in their own right or in comparison to the experience of other countries. 2. Modern History and Core Concepts Our handbook focuses on the contemporary politics of South Korea after the 1987 democratic transition. However, contemporary politics reflect social, economic, and political changes that the country experienced during the twentieth century. After the Joseon dynasty failed to reform and survive, the modernisation process of the Korean Peninsula was postponed until it gathered new strength following its liberation from Japanese colonialism and later occupation by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1945. With modernisation in the first half of the twentieth century proving impossible, domestic efforts to develop a liberal democracy, an industrial economy, and a modern society took place during its second half, framed by South Korea’s alliance with the United States. Because these two periods in modern Korean history are crucial to understanding contemporary South Korea, we include two chapters that take stock of what we would lose should we jump straight into present South Korean politics. Hyung-Gu Lynn (Chapter 2) examines major transformations in the period from 1905 to the 1940s such as the emergence of Korean nationalism, the polarisation of left and right independence 6 JeongHun Han, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, and Youngho Cho groups, and incipient economic development under the period of Japanese occupation. While acknowledging the dominant scholarly narrative about the interplay between Japanese colonial oppression and the Korean struggle against it to achieve national in- dependence, Lynn shows that these transformations are less self-evident than those described in school textbooks. Tae Gyun Park’s (Chapter 3), meanwhile, focuses on the history of South Korean politics from 1948 to 1987. Throughout this period, South Korea underwent several political changes in terms of regime type and president. For the most part, however, South Korea spent these years under de facto or de jure authoritarian rule. Thus, there were decades-long tensions between authoritarianism and progressive forces demanding democratisation. Ultimately, the experience of South Korea during these decades and the political tensions affecting the country helped to shape South Korea’s democratisation and democratic years post 1987. After these two chapters on the modern political history of South Korea, we provide core concepts whose understanding is the basic foundation to delve into various aspects of South Korean politics. JeongHun Han (Chapter 4) posits that South Korea has been commonly known as a presidential system. However, he also points out that its perform- ance is often questionable from the perspective of the normal dynamics of a presidential system. This is due to the existence and effectiveness of institutions observed in parlia- mentary systems. In particular, the institutional characteristics of institutions abnormal to presidential systems—thus providing stronger power to the executive—may help us to understand why the power of South Korean presidents is not controlled or checked by other governing institutions, including the National Assembly or the courts, but is often controlled by civil society movements. Regionalism, covered in Chapter 5, is one of South Korea’s most distinct sociological characteristics. Its importance is reinforced because of its influence on South Korean politics. Defining it as a voting behaviour tendency based on voters’ birth places, Kwang-Il Yoon (Chapter 5) contends that regionalism emerged due to processes of un- even industrialisation and state repression between regions. As the leading politicians— the ‘three Kims’—conducted campaign strategies to mobilise voters according to their birth places, incentives for voters to find alternative channels of representation were weakened. Even though its influence has declined, Yoon posits that regionalism is the only clear political cleavage in South Korea. Conservative democratisation is a concept separating South Korean democratisa- tion from some other countries. According to WooJin Kang (Chapter 6), South Korean democratisation was the result of a political pact established through a bargaining pro- cess between old political elites that remained in power. Instead of reshuffling the entire system, the democratisation process to a large extent preserved the power of the polit- ical elites of the old authoritarian regime. This clashes with the role and beliefs of new democratic elites that have emerged post democratisation and which sometimes seek to transform the regime itself. Similarly, the continuation of the policymaking patterns of the developmental state is also present in contemporary South Korea. Meredith Woo (Chapter 7), meanwhile, shows that the country was part of a group of East Asian peers including Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan in which governmental, Introduction 7 bureaucratic, and economic elites worked together to promote economic development. With the advent of democracy and the graduation of South Korea into a developed economy, these links have frayed but have not completely dissipated. Indeed, a devel- opmental mindset characterised by state–private sector cooperation and long-term thinking continues to inform policymaking in South Korea. Sang-young Rhyu (Chapter 8) examines the chaebol using one of the three metaphors in the political economy of South Korea: angels, demons, and necessary evils. According to Rhyu, chaebol are active players in the South Korean developmental state, helping to make South Korea one of the major industrial powers. Nonetheless, the long-standing collaboration between chaebol and political elites also deteriorates the development of social organisations. Political competition has failed to escape from the pattern of conflicts between elite coalitions and the mass public. Therefore, the developmental state and the chaebol face the prospect of having to go their own ways. Finally, this section discusses how South Korean culture’s strong unity based on na- tionalism has evolved. Modern nationalism originated from the anti-Japanese inde- pendence movement, yet Jungmin Seo (Chapter 9) points out that political leaders have utilised and altered its forms and contents since 1948. Taking the constructivist approach to nationalism and using Benedict Anderson’s definition of a nation as an ‘imagined community’ (1991), Seo contends that South Korean nationalism has evolved throughout major political events such as the Korean War, authoritarian state-building, democratisation, and recent globalisation. Seo concludes that nationalism conditions how politicians and ordinary citizens deal with domestic and foreign issues. Seen from the perspective of these core concepts characterising contemporary South Korean politics, the profound changes occurring since the 1987 democratisation pro- cess might have had mixed effects on the emergence of new dynamics in South Korean politics. On the one hand, political and social divisions have changed as the interests between governing institutions as well as regions and other social sectors have become more heterogeneous. On the other hand, such divisions may not have found channels for their representation. The legacies of the previous authoritarian regime were not completely eliminated, suggesting that political dynamics are still dominated by the same centres of power. Nevertheless, recent changes seem to have weakened the nega- tive influences of authoritarian legacies. The remaining sections of the handbook illus- trate in more detail the changes taking place in South Korea. 3. Political Process Sections 2 and 3 in this handbook examine various aspects of the political process to link peoples’ preferences and public policy. During the democratic movements of the 1980s, the political interests of the whole of South Korean society were concentrated in making the authoritarian leaders step down from the centre of power. This would open the door to choosing new leaders in a democratic way. This homogeneous 8 JeongHun Han, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, and Youngho Cho orientation to political and societal reform is now no longer valid. More than thirty years after democratisation, the political interests of the South Korean people have become diversified, leading to the emergence of a complex web of groups of people divided by different preferences on various social issues. The extent to which contem- porary South Korea’s political process succeeds in responding to this change is the main concern of these two sections. Section 2, in this regard, explores the political accommodation of the current South Korean Constitution and identifies key defining characteristics of performance among three main constitutional institutions, namely the National Assembly, the executive, and the judiciary. In Chapter 10, Won-Taek Kang argues that the current South Korean Constitution shows clear limitations by producing ‘imperial’ presidents as well as failing to represent the diversity of the contemporary South Korean society. He explains that the focus of the 1988 Constitution lay in re-establishing a fair, free, and direct presiden- tial election system. Consequently, by following the 1962 version of the Constitution, the 1988 version left other issues untouched including human rights, economic liberalism, and institutional consistency. Based on this understanding, he claims that the current Constitution is inadequate to reflect the diversity of contemporary South Korean society. Under the Constitution, the relationship between governing institutions has some- times failed to produce the expected checks and balances in a presidential system. Byoung Kwon Sohn (Chapter 11) argues that the role of the National Assembly is still fairly limited, preventing the development of the so-called inter-party consultative system. Instead, the dominant role of the president and the executive branch in the le- gislative process often results in the atrophy of standing committees and quick, major- itarian decisions without proper deliberation. In contrast, Jongkon Lee (Chapter 12) finds that the strong bureaucratic power tradition has been weakened as the ability of the National Assembly to keep the executive in check has been strengthened. The slightly different evaluation on the relationship between the National Assembly and the execu- tive in these two chapters may lead us to reach the understanding that South Korean society is still waiting for the development of an adequate representative role for the National Assembly, independent of the seemingly weakened power of legislative initia- tive for the executive. As for the judiciary, Dongwook Cha (Chapter 13) points out how recent relations between the executive and the National Assembly have been mediated by the Constitutional Court. South Korean society did not pay much attention to the role of this court in the early stages of democratisation. But, as the era of dominance by the president and the government has passed, the Constitutional Court is now fa- cing unprecedented political and social pressures to resolve the conflicts between highly polarised political forces. Section 3 examines the process of political representation and its substantial outcomes in South Korea. Sunghack Lim (Chapter 14) confirms the stable inter-party competition over the years leading to democratic consolidation in South Korea. While blaming regional factionalism, personality-based party organisation and organisa- tional instability for the weak party system institutionalisation of South Korea, his Introduction 9 evaluation of South Korean parties is overall fairly positive. Lim characterises them as a fairly successful actors for democratic governance. Indeed, South Korean parties have frequently changed their labels and organisational structures. But if we make use of a one-dimensional ideological spectrum, the main liberal and conservative parties have remained as representatives of voters in their respective ideological positions. Nevertheless, ideological representation by each party does not imply a substantively successful representation. Kyungmee Park (Chapter 15) covers, in this regard, the level of political representation for different groups of people. In particular, she argues that women’s representation in South Korean society is still lower than the standard for other developed countries. Park also explains that representation for migrants, as well as the younger generation, still remains at a symbolic level. Thus, the stable existence of two main parties on each side of the ideological spectrum does not guarantee the avoidance of marginalisation of some social issues in South Korean society. Woojin Moon (Chapter 16), focusing on electoral competitions in South Korea, highlights how voters’ issue preferences can be weakly represented. He argues that the current mixed- member majoritarian electoral system in South Korea produces a weak proportionality between the vote and seat shares of political parties. In addition, the South–North con- frontation tends to distort the programmatic mobilisation strategies of political parties in South Korea. Because of these characteristics, he argues that candidates’ campaigning strategies are more likely to concentrate on mobilising personal votes form their re- gional base. Meanwhile, Han Soo Lee (Chapter 17) discusses the potential development of different types of campaign strategies. He argues that the recent advancement of on- line communication technologies is associated with significant changes in the cam- paign strategies of political parties in South Korea. Even though Lee cautions against concluding that there is a direct correlation between the use of new media and offline political participation, he analyses the possibility that online communication tools will play a significant role in the process of representing the diversity of South Korean society. While Lee shows the effect of communication technology developments, Seung-Jin Jang (Chapter 18) leads us to pay attention to the effect of diverse issues in the process of representation. He finds that issues such as gender and immigration have only recently begun to become politically significant and attract public attention. Likewise, only in recent years have welfare and redistribution become a prominent area of party competition. As he shows, there are emerging political coalitions among South Korean voters focusing on those issues. Thus, he expects that political competi- tion in South Korea will be affected by the diversification in the type of issues receiving attention. Overall, all authors studying the representation process in South Korean politics seem to agree that the country’s society no longer has a homogenous purpose as observed in the early period of democratisation. In response to heterogenous preferences, the devel- opment of political dynamics different from the early democratising period is required. And indeed, some of them are already taking hold in contemporary South Korean pol- itics and society. 10 JeongHun Han, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, and Youngho Cho 4. Civil Society, Culture, and Media Sections 4 and 5 examine various aspects of South Korea’s civil society, culture, and media as they relate to the country’s politics. Section 4 focuses on the interplay between civil society and politics. Even though Henderson (1968) attributed the unstable pol- itics of South Korea to a lack of intermediary civic organisations, the authors in this section show that economic development and democratisation have led to the tremen- dous growth of civil society. The authors concur that South Korean civil society initially grew out of the democratic movement against the authoritarian state before the 1987 transition. But they also show that the democratic consolidation of the 1990s dramatic- ally facilitated its expansion and activism compared to the pre-democratic era. The two main reasons are that socio-economic modernisation equipped South Korean citizens with resources and opportunities to form civic organisations and interest groups, while political democratisation removed barriers to citizens’ associationism and activism in the political process. The authors highlight that the unity of the democratic movement during the 1980s did not hold and gave a way to diversity and differentiation within civil society. In this context, economic interest groups, labour unions, civic reform organisations, and even new issue groups focusing on issues such as gender or minorities have formed and engaged in politics since the 1990s. In Chapter 19, Jin-Wook Shin demonstrates that civic associations and activism have blossomed not only due to the democratisa- tion movement but also because of their own success. Along with the growth of civil society and activism, three notable changes have been observed in the macrostructure of South Korean social movement: the differentiation of social movements across inde- pendent issue areas, the decentralisation of communication and mobilisation structures as well as the ecosystem of social movements, and the ideological division of civil so- ciety intensifying competition between groups pursuing conflicting values and reform agendas. Moreover, citizens actively participate in non-profit organisations and politics in comparison with other democratic countries, which confirms that South Korean civil society is vibrant at both the individual and societal levels. Along the same lines, Yoojin Lim and Yeonho Lee explain in Chapter 20 that the growth of interest groups is evident in four areas: labour unions, economic organisations, professional associations, and public interest groups. If these interest groups were controlled by government during the authoritarian past, they have departed from state influence and demanded their sectoral interests. And if interest groups showed the features of competitive pluralism before the 2010s, they have then headed towards a conflictual pluralism in which they directly clash, and representative organisations such as political parties remain weak. Soonmee Kwon (Chapter 21) details the internal characteristics of South Korean la- bour unionism. Growing out of the Great Workers’ Struggle of 1987, labour unions in South Korea have faced a dilemma: they have been under pressure from globalisation Introduction 11 and market-friendly politics, while maintaining militant activism without official channels to communicate with political parties. Indeed, labour unions are internally divided at the ideological level and have failed to shift from enterprise unionism to in- dustrial unionism. They have also failed to establish a working class differentiated from the classes represented by the liberal and conservative parties. Accordingly, the recent dualisation of the labour market has intensified the political marginalisation of labour unions, making militant unionism, including ‘sky protests’, an attractive strategy among union leaders. Youngho Cho (Chapter 22) examines recent trends and the state of civic culture in South Korea, since the health of a democracy depends on what people think about it. Since the 1990s, public support for democracy has steadily eroded and openness to strongmen and military rule has increased in South Korea. It is notable that this down- ward trend continued even after the 2016–2017 Candlelight Uprising. The sluggish de- velopment of representative institutions has contributed to the steady decline in public support for democracy, causing worrisome signals for the future of South Korean democracy. The authors in this section identify three general features of South Korean civil so- ciety. First of all, large-scale mass protests have continued as evidenced in the 2016– 2017 Candlelight Uprising. Second, political polarisation within civil society has been intensifying in that labour organisations have maintained militaristic activism and various interest groups conflict outside of formal politics. Finally, representative institutions have been limited in terms of incorporating and integrating differentiated interests of civil society. Section 5 examines the links between South Korea’s culture and media and the country’s politics, focusing on how traditional and new communication spaces and tools shape socio-political and politico-economic dynamics. The contributors to this section show that media indeed influences politics. But as media consumption patterns have changed, online media has become more central to politics compared to other types that played a bigger rule during the authoritarian era. Also, politicisation can affect media narratives as well. Thus, media sometimes plays the role of political actor rather than being a medium for objective information to allow informed citizens to form their own views. In any case, and broadly speaking, media and cultural expressions have also served their purpose of allowing for debate among different views. In Chapter 23, Hyangjin Lee explains the role that cinema and television have played in critiquing South Korean politics, therefore shaping the views of voters and public opinion at large. In particular, cinema and television have been critical of government interven- tionism, a remnant of the authoritarian years. In the case of cinema, in addition, its popu- larity continues to make it an influential medium. As for television, its apt use of online communication has preserved its enduring relevance. Likewise, Dal Yong Jin explains in Chapter 24, that the internet and social media have shaped voting behaviour and, more broadly, the political conversation since the early 2000s. They have democratised this conversation by influencing political messaging and giving voice to new groups which found it difficult to be represented in traditional media. At the same time, the 12 JeongHun Han, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, and Youngho Cho dominance of a small number of internet portals and messaging apps give them a gate- keeper function in that they determine which ideas circulate. In contrast, the role of the press in shaping public discourse has weakened as Ki- Sung Kwak suggests in Chapter 25. The main reason is its partisanship and identifica- tion with either conservative or liberal ideas, which has sowed divisions in South Korea and means that those with a particular ideology will only read the press that conforms to their views. In the case of the press, Kwak explains how the legacy of decades of au- thoritarianism still affects political reporting and the relationship between the press and political parties. But as Namhee Lee (Chapter 26) explains, the situation is different for public intellectuals that used to rely on the press to influence the circulation of political ideas. Their role has not been diminished but rather transformed. Making use of new means of communication, public intellectuals continue to shape and participate—if not necessarily to lead—public debate. Furthermore, both socially conscious celebrities and experts in a particular field have emerged as new public intellectuals since the 2000s. Meanwhile, popular music plays a different role in politics. As John Lie (Chapter 27) shows, popular music was more political during the years of authoritarianism when it channelled the thirst for democracy. Since democratisation, however, it has become a paradigm of South Korean political economy and globalisation rather than a driver of domestic political conversation. Therefore, the political role of popular music has changed. Today, popular music in general and K-pop in particular supports the political goal of economic growth and globalisation that is central to the contemporary South Korean state. Culture and media have a big impact on the politics of post-democratisation South Korea. They shape the political agenda, represent different points of view, and provide a communication channel for political parties, civil society, and other groups. Some cul- ture and media organisations have become stronger as the years have gone by, while others have become weaker. But all of them play an important role, as is the case in com- parable democracies across Asia and elsewhere. 5. Public Policy and the International Arena Sections 6 and 7 examine the politics of South Korea’s public policy and international relations. Section 6 shows how bureaucratic government and public policy have changed in the post-developmental and democratic era. Before the 1987 transition, South Korea could be best described as an authoritarian developmental state with centralised gov- ernment and minimal welfare programmes. When Park Chung-hee launched the devel- opmental state including specific government structures in the 1960s, North Korea was more advanced and belligerent than South Korea (Greitens 2016). Thus, Park sought to avoid a reunification-first policy and direct conflict with North Korea, focusing instead Introduction 13 on boosting security and the developmental state via economic growth. The ultimate purpose was regime survival as well as winning the ‘competition’ against North Korea. This approach provided the necessary impetus for the development of both the state and the economy. The South Korean government was optimised for economic development and security. However, this developmental model became unsustainable and has had to change to respond to new demands emerging from the 1990s. In Chapter 28, Huck-ju Kwon evaluates the democratic accountability of the South Korean government. Kwon argues that the political control of elected leaders from the national to the local levels has increased, politicising and overwhelming bureaucratic autonomy. Following democratisation, South Korean presidents have undertaken reforms to dismantle the policy regime of the developmental state and to reduce the number of initiatives coming out of the bureaucracy, eventually making performance management less autonomous and effective than before. Government reforms in South Korea need to create a balanced and accountable relationship between elected leaders and professional bureaucrats. Jooha Lee (Chapter 29) identifies the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis as the critical juncture when South Korea departed from the legacy of developmental welfarism characterised by low government spending and strong emphasis on human capital investment. While the current welfarism of South Korea has become more inclusive by increasing its spending and focusing on vulnerable groups compared to the previous developmental welfarism, its social investment strategies still mix both protective and productive purposes. It is apparent that the dualisation between regular and non-regular work and addressing the aftermath of COVID-19 are two urgent tasks for South Korean welfarism. When analysing the decentralisation of South Korea’s central government, Yooil Bae (Chapter 30) shows that institutional decentralisation has been enormous. However, the weak administrative and fiscal capabilities of local governments have led to frequent confrontation with the central government and a growing gap among them. Furthermore, dependency on fiscal transfers from the central government and shrinking local populations are expected to increase the burden of local governments and widen regional economic disparities, which may pose a threat to local as well as na- tional democracy. Meanwhile, Kyoung-sun Min (Chapter 31) divides corruption into two types: petty and grand. Min demonstrates that the democratisation and economic development of South Korea have dramatically reduced the petty corruption experienced by or- dinary citizens and lower-class officials, but more efforts are needed to control grand corruption, especially linked to presidents. While democratisation and the use of internet technology explains a low level of petty corruption, the legacies of crony capit- alism and prosecution power explain the persistence of grand corruption. Overall, the old centralised, developmental, and authoritarian government of South Korea has been adapting to the pressures of democratisation, globalisation, decentral- isation, and need for social protection. Recent governmental and political efforts have focused on institutional domains, but they are yet to create a balanced and reciprocal relationship between elected politicians and professional bureaucrats. 14 JeongHun Han, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, and Youngho Cho Section 7 examines South Korea’s foreign and defence policy since the transition to democracy. South Korea has become more ambitious, dynamic, and self-confident. It has emerged as a middle power, one whose history of democratic and economic de- velopment plus military upgrading has equipped it with a strong political narrative to underpin its foreign policy. But even though politics may not have a huge impact on the ultimate goals that South Korean policymakers would like to achieve (e.g. reunifica- tion with North Korea, a strong alliance with the United States, or promoting economic growth), liberals and conservatives do not always agree on the instruments to achieve them. Thus, domestic politics influence foreign policy insofar as changes in government can lead to the prioritisation of some specific tools of foreign policymaking over others. In Chapter 32, Ramon Pacheco Pardo shows that foreign policy has remained rela- tively stable in terms of structures, goals, and available tools in spite of the level of political polarisation in South Korea. To a large extent, this reflects that South Korea is a middle power, which has both advantages and constraints. One of the key advantages is that South Korean politicians and policymakers agree on the range of issues that their country should be focusing on, thus providing continuity. When analysing South Korea’s security and defence policy, Sung-han Kim and Alex Soohoon Lee (Chapter 33) find that South Korea faces two key security dilemmas that underscore this stability in terms of structures and goals: the North Korean nuclear threat and US–China strategic competition. These dilemmas are decades old, which underscores the extent to which South Korean foreign policy is determined by developments outside its control. However, Kim and Lee caution, competing beliefs mean that South Korean policy choices have fluctuated between liberal and conservative administrations. This is the result of each camp having different beliefs about the best ways to promote South Korean national interests. With regards to the economic dimension of foreign policy, Sohyun Zoe Lee explains in Chapter 34 that the overarching goal of promoting growth through foreign economic policy remains unchanged. This has been a cornerstone of South Korean foreign eco- nomic policy dating back decades, given the extent to which the country has benefited from global trade openness. But governments differ in terms of how to achieve this goal. And they also have different ideas about the role of the chaebol and other civil society groups in economic policymaking. If there is one area in which liberals and conservatives agree when it comes to foreign policy, it is in positing South Korea as a development model and an aid donor. Eun Mee Kim and Nancy Y. Kim (Chapter 35) ex- plain that this is a cornerstone of South Korean foreign policy, given the extent to which South Korea benefited from external support when it was a developing country. And they argue that South Korea’s success story ultimately is the result of policy flexibility, a lesson that the country is trying to export. When it comes to South Korean relations with third countries, three stand out: North Korea, the United States, and China. In Chapter 36, Young-kwan Yoon finds that South Korea’s policy towards North Korea has also been in flux because liberals and conservatives identify differently vis-à-vis Korea’s other half. The ultimate goal of reuni- fication remains unchanged, regardless of South Korean domestic politics, and has been a staple of the country’s foreign policy since its foundation. But the means to achieve this Introduction 15 goal do not. This is the result of opposing views about North Korea’s nuclear programme and the regime’s stability. Similarly, Victor Cha and Katrin Katz (Chapter 37) show that South Korea’s liberals and conservatives agree on the need for a strong alliance with the United States. This has been a staple of South Korean foreign policy since the Korean War. However, liberals and conservatives differ in terms of how much autonomy South Korea should exercise within the alliance. In general, liberals believe that autonomy should take precedence over the alliance. For conservatives, in contrast, the alliance is an enabler of South Korean autonomy. In Chapter 38, Heung-kyu Kim assesses the relationship between South Korea and China. The two countries only normalised dip- lomatic relations in 1992, but, of course, Sino-Korean historical relations date back centuries. Kim explains that this proximity means that the gravitational pull of China inevitably affects South Korean foreign policy, particularly in an area marked by stra- tegic competition between South Korea’s neighbour and its ally, the United States. In this context, South Korea has had to learn to carefully navigate relations between the two powers to avoid being affected by their bilateral competition. All told, the politics of South Korea in relation to its presence in the international arena have evolved substantially since the country’s democratisation. As South Korea has become more developed and democratic, debates about how to pursue the country’s core foreign policy interests have grown. The goals may not change much regardless of who is in power, but the means to achieve them are affected by domestic politics. 6. South Korea’s Democracy By critically evaluating the contemporary politics of South Korea in their areas of expertise, most of the contributors to this handbook point out that South Korean politics have been moving in the direction of introducing the principle of checks and balances over the South Korean presidential system. Different groups, including political parties and civil society, have developed diverse channels to make their voices heard. Strong state-led developmentalism has been replaced by a thriving market-driven economy with heterogenous demands. Instances and practices of international cooperation and mutual learning have eroded the unity of political elites, now divided into competing groups with different reference points behind their policy orientations. Accordingly, both the vortex-like instability of Henderson (1968) and the static cul- ture of Confucianism have limits in explaining the contemporary dynamic of South Korean politics. This is the case because South Korea has experienced social, economic, and demographic transitions over the past half-century and its democratic politics has accompanied—as well as enabled—those changes. The dynamics of contemporary South Korean politics have often followed from developments on civil society. The number of interest groups has expanded as a result of economic development, on the one hand, and the interplay between representative politics and a modernised society on the other. 16 JeongHun Han, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, and Youngho Cho In the literature analysing political development and democracy, there are two contrasting views. According to the modernisation paradigm of Seymour Lipset (1959), a stable democracy emerges as a consequence of socio-economic modernisa- tion. Socio-economic modernisation empowers the middle class, breeds civil society with interest groups and civil organisations, and supports the accumulation of cultural capital supportive of democratic legitimacy. On the other hand, Huntington (1968) posited that socio-economic modernisation does not necessarily lead to democracy but tends to cause political instability because of the changes it brings. The reason behind Huntington’s claim is that the speed of socio-economic modernisation is normally faster than that of political development, and therefore (political) democracy is not likely to attain institutional stability in changing societies. Despite the academic debate between these two views, both approaches agree that South Korea is as an exemplary case of a country which has successfully achieved socio-economic modernisation and political democracy following a sequential path (Fukuyama 2014). Taking mid-range perspectives rather than grand theories, this edited volume aims to provide an in-depth and accurate evaluation of South Korean contemporary politics as well as the evolution of its democracy as a system and as a practice. The volume explains and discusses their strengths and weaknesses, the areas in which there has been more change since the 1980s and the areas in which shifts have proceeded more slowly, and the reasons why South Korean politics and democracy have evolved in a particular way. It is our hope that readers of this volume gain a deeper understanding of how South Korea got to the point it is at today, appreciate the country’s remarkable evolution from the late 1980s onwards, and come up with their own analysis to debate the ways in which South Korean democracy might evolve in the future. Bibliography Anderson, B. (1991), Imagined Communities (New York: Verso). Deuchler, M. (1995), The Confucian Transformation of Korea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Fukuyama, F. (2014), Political Order and Political Decay (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Greitens, S. (2016), Dictators and Their Secret Police (New York: Cambridge University Press). Henderson, G. (1968), Korea: The Politics of the Vortex (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Huntington, S. P. (1968), Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Kim, S. (2014), Confucian Democracy in East Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press). Kornhauser, W. (1959), The Politics of Mass Society (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press). Lipset, S. (1959), ‘Some Social Requisites of Democracy’, American Political Science Review 53, 69–105. Merton, R. K. (1968), Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: The Free Press). Shin, D. C. (2012), Confucianism and Democratization in East Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press). Chapter 2 The History of Kore a , 1905–1 94 5 Hyung-G u Lynn 1. Introduction The period of 1905–1945 in modern Korean history has had a long-lasting and out- sized impact on the public memory in Korea. Post-1945 political leaders such as Rhee Syngman, the first president of South Korea, and Kim Il-sung, the first leader of North Korea, mined the period as a source of political legitimacy and public appeal by invoking their anti-Japanese, pro-independence activities overseas during these years. School textbooks in both Koreas continually reinforce a binary narrative pitting Japanese co- lonial oppression against Korean resistance and independence movements, while legal and political issues stemming from the period have plangent resonance in bilateral relations between South Korea and Japan in the 2020s, despite the decades that have passed since liberation in 1945, and the fact that normalised diplomatic relations be- tween the two countries were established in 1965 (Lynn 2000). The dominant narrative in the scholarship, especially from 1945 to the mid-1980s, also focused on Japanese colonial oppression and the Korean struggle for national in- dependence. While further documentation of independence movements and colonial atrocities remain essential areas of research, these have been supplemented by other approaches that have helped to generate additional depth, precision, and nuance. More specifically, historians have analysed the processes and the causes driving the forma- tion or the expansion of modern Korean nationalism under the crucible of colonial rule; the intensification of fractures along the entire political spectrum; the socio-economic transformations and the emergence of a middle class during the 1930s; the implications of industrialisation, mobilisation, and militarisation that occurred from 1936 as lodestars for the array of economic planning and mobilisation, policies implemented in South Korea in the 1960s, the so-called developmental state; and the dissipation of mon- archy as a sustainable form of government. 18 Hyung-Gu Lynn This chapter provides an analytical overview of the essential questions, issues, and debates about Korean politics from 1905 to 1945, a period during which Japan ruled over Korea as a protectorate (1905–1910) and as a colony (1910–1945). It is not intended to be an encyclopaedic or descriptive summary; rather, the aim is to highlight and examine major transformations that occurred during these years and their implications for the study of post-1945 politics. Organised into five sections and a Conclusion after this Introduction, the chapter first outlines the implications of the Protectorate period (1905–1910) for the study of Korean politics, flagging in particular the interplay of domestic Korean modernisation efforts, imperialist jockeying for influence and control among international powers, and the impacts—or lack thereof—of major, unpredicted events and agency on Korean politics. Second, it covers the development of modern nationalism or the emergence of a col- lective Korean ethnic identity that encompassed, rather than superseded, other units of identity based on locale, region, class, clan, gender, and age. Third, it outlines the po- larisation of politics between left and right and diversification within these categories. Fourth, it briefly assesses the attempts to trace the origins of the so-called development state of 1960s South Korea to economic planning of the colonial bureaucracy during the 1930s. Finally, the chapter addresses the emergence of republicanism and the waning of monarchy as desirable forms of government, before presenting a conclusion. 2. The Protectorate Period, 1905–1910 Japanese colonial rule of Korea officially started on 29 August 1910 with the public announcement of the Treaty of Annexation. Contemporary observers and later historians underscored the inevitability of imperialist expansion and the ineffectiveness of Korean efforts to modernise prior to 1910, but the pre-history of colonialism was in fact a complex interplay of international power politics, truncated domestic reforms, and major assassinations that raise questions about the relative importance of indi- vidual political actors relative to structural dynamics. To be sure, imperialist ambitions and international politics did loom large over the period. From the mid-nineteenth century, Korea had been forced to wend its way be- tween foreign powers, namely China, Japan, the United States, Britain, France, and Russia, competing for influence over it. Japan forced Korea to sign its first port-opening treaty in 1876 through gunboat diplomacy, while China held sway over the Korean Peninsula from 1885 until 1904 through its representative in Seoul, the Imperial Resident, Yuan Shikai (Larsen 2008). The First Sino–Japanese War of 1894–1895 was fought largely over indirect control of Korea, paving the way for a period of Russo–Japanese compe- tition. Increasing tensions over Korea and Manchuria prompted Japan to shore up its alliance with Britain (Anglo–Japanese Alliance Treaty of 1902) prior to the outbreak of the Russo–Japanese War of 1904–1905. Japan’s victory over Russia secured its control over Korea and recognised via the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth in September The History of Korea, 1905–1945 19 1905, a process brokered by the United States. The importance of international politics can be gleaned from the fact that despite lobbying from Korean leaders, US President Theodore Roosevelt’s position on the Japanese protectorate in Korea was that there was really nothing to be done (Duus 1998). The Eulsa Treaty of November 1905, with Japanese troops from the war still occupying Korea, officially rendered the country a protectorate of Japan, a dependent state granted a degree of internal administrative au- tonomy, but whose major foreign policy decisions were to be controlled by its ‘protector’ or suzerain state. The first Japanese Resident General was former Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi, apparently sealing Korea’s slide towards colonisation. But a second major issue infusing the study of pre-1910 history is the extent and im- pact of domestic reforms launched by the Korean government prior to 1905. Historical accounts that focus on the machinations and jockeying of foreign powers can render Korea a marginal agent in its own history. Admittedly, numerous contemporary Western diplomats and missionaries were dismissive of the capacities of the Korean government in the early 1900s, but recent scholarship has shown that the modernisation efforts undertaken by the Korean King (Emperor after 1897), Gojong, were more com- prehensive than previously depicted and that the Korean government made numerous attempts to invoke international law to prevent being colonised (Yi 2000). Korea became the Great Korean Empire in 1897, allowing Gojong to elevate himself from King to Emperor, not for reasons of ego, but in order to gain equal footing, at least technically, with the emperors of Japan and China under international law. More sub- stantively, Gojong undertook a programme of modernisation, called the Gwangmu Reforms (1897–1905), that introduced new weapons for the Korean military and new regulations governing clothing and haircuts, and initiated the construction of infra- structural services, such as the expansion of the postal system, telephone and telegraph, electricity, water pipes, streetcars, trains, and public parks. In addition, grassroots organisations, such as An Chang-Ho’s Sinminhoe (New People Association) established in 1907, emerged in this period, propelled by the goal of increasing public access to edu- cation, medical facilities, and other social services (Yu 1997). Korea also attempted to use international law to counter the trajectory towards col- onisation in the years prior to 1910. Gojong sent a trusted advisor, Hyeon Sanggeon, as early as 1903 to convince officials in France, the Netherlands, and Russia to recog- nise Korea’s perpetual neutrality, and declared his country’s neutrality under inter- national law at the outbreak of the Russo–Japanese War in 1904. However, European governments and the two combatants in the war ignored Korea’s entreaties and filing. The Emperor also sent a letter to the Hague Conference of 1906 to again request support for Korea’s neutrality and sovereignty, and in 1907 sent three envoys to the Hague Peace Conference for that year to protest Japan’s violation of Korea’s sovereignty (Jeon 2014). The Korean delegates were denied entry into the conference and Itō Hirobumi and his Korean Prime Minister, Yi Wanyong (whose name, much like that of Norwegian Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling, became synonymous with ‘traitor’ as he was the signatory to the Treaty of Annexation in 1910, which sealed Korea’s colonisation), forced Gojong to abdicate his throne in July of the same year (Im 1993). Only five days after Gojong’s 20 Hyung-Gu Lynn son Sunjong ascended to the Emperorship, Itō pushed through the Japan–Korea Treaty (also known as the Jeongmi Treaty), which transferred remaining governing powers to the Japanese Resident General, and thereby allowed him to dissolve the Korean army. The attempt to use international law was not limited to the Korean government. From 1905 through to 1907, guerrilla forces known as the Righteous Armies (Uibyeong), joined after 1907 by former members of the Korean army, battled the Japanese army, despite being vastly outnumbered and outgunned. In 1908, one of the guerrilla leaders, Yi In- Yeong, applied to foreign embassies in Seoul for recognition as an army at war under international law, but this effort ended in vain. While armed resistance continued, peaking in 1908 with around 70,000 Koreans participating in 1,450 clashes, there was a dramatic decline after a sustained offensive by the Japanese in 1909 to stamp out insurgents (Kang 2004). A third area involves untying the Gordian knot of causality, motivations, and agency in the years 1905–1910. One challenge has been to recognise and study the full range of responses to colonisation among Koreans at a depth beyond the compilation of a cata- logue of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ historical figures. If some of the guerrillas from the Righteous Armies made their way to Manchuria and the borderlands in the north to continue armed resistance, a minority of Korean organisations, such as the Iljinhoe, welcomed colonisation as a platform for equality and integration of Korea and Japan as a propel- lant for modernisation and as a bulwark against Western imperialism (Moon 2013). Such Pan-Asianists and other prominent ‘pro-Japanese’ figures, such as Yi Wanyong, have been dismissed as rapacious and corrupt traitors that do not merit research, other than as objects of condemnation and vituperation, leaving their motivations relatively under-analysed. Another challenge has been the need to sift through the seemingly contradictory beliefs within each individual. For instance, while An Junggeun is widely celebrated as a national hero in contemporary South Korea for his assassination of Itō Hirobumi at the train station in Harbin, China in October 1909, the narrative requires some finessing to integrate the facts that while An was indeed angered by Japan’s exploit- ation of Korea, as outlined in his Fifteen-Point explanation for killing Itō, he was also a Pan-Asianist, who believed that China, Korea, and Japan had to unite to defeat Western imperialism. Further complicating matters is that some scholars underline the fact that Itō was not in favour of colonisation and sought to maintain a protectorate status against the wishes of rival politicians such as Yamagata Aritomo and the Japanese army, resulting in Itō resigning from the Residency General in April 1909 (Moriyama 1987), while others argue that Itō acceded to colonisation plans in 1909 prior to stepping down from his post in Korea (Ogawara 2010). Korean activists also assassinated a US advisor to the Japanese Residency General, Durham Stevens, in San Francisco in 1908, but the historical reality remains that the two assassinations did not prevent Korea’s colonisation. Considering the causes of Korea’s colonisation requires care and precision in order to avoid post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy; render assessments of the relative importance of individual pol- itical actors, agency, and single events against more cumulative structural dynamics in general; and analyse the more specific possibility that individuals such as Itō and The History of Korea, 1905–1945 21 Stevens may not have been such major players on the Korean political stage, at least by 1909, as depicted in textbook accounts. 3. Modern Nationalism The question of when modern nationalism in Korea emerged is inextricably tied to the relative weight placed on the March First Movement of 1919. On 8 February 1919, Korean students in Tokyo, inspired in part by Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech in 1918 supporting the principle of national self-sovereignty and the sudden death of the former Emperor, Gojong, in January of the same year, read out loud a dec- laration of independence. On 1 March 1919, thirty-three leaders from various religions and denominations signed a declaration of independence in a restaurant, which in turn was read out loud by a student in Pagoda Park in Seoul, attracting large crowds. Gojong’s funeral, which was scheduled for 3 March, also drew large crowds that chanted for independence. Peaceful demonstrations rapidly spread throughout Korea, so that by May, nearly all corners of the Peninsula had demonstrations. Most experts agree that between one and two million people, young and old, students and workers, men and women, participated in the Movement, which lasted from March to the end of the year. The Government General responded with violence, leading to several massacres of un- armed civilians, mass arrests, torture, and subsequent international attention. One of the atrocities was the Jeamni massacre on 15 April 1919, in which villagers were herded into the local church, locked in, and burnt to death by Japanese military police. Despite the Government General’s attempts to cover up the massacre, the Canadian missionary Dr Frank W. Schofield was able to relay the information concerning the events to the international media (Clark 1989). There are three notable points of debate in research on the March First Movement. First, timing of the emergence of modern nationalism is a point of some dispute. While universally acknowledged as the largest mass demonstration for national independence in modern Korean history, some scholars view the March First Movement as a culmin- ation of a grassroots nationalism that first emerged during the late nineteenth cen- tury, while others view it as evidence of a new, modern national identity that emerged after colonisation. Regardless of whether the spotlight is directed towards latent class consciousness evident from the nineteenth century, or a new twentieth-century anti- colonial collective identity, there is agreement among academics that the oppression under the initial years under Governors Terauchi Masatake (1910–1916) and Hasegawa Yoshimichi (1916–1919), a period labelled ‘Military Rule’, was a major causal factor in fuelling the development of modern Korean nationalism. The colonial state, renamed the Government General of Korea, used strict controls over economic activity, cen- sorship of the press, heavy presence of military police, violence, and systematic im- prisonment of any dissidents to establish colonial rule. In the notorious ‘105 Persons 22 Hyung-Gu Lynn Incident’, the Government General arrested over 700 Korean Christians who were largely members of the aforementioned Sinminhoe for allegedly plotting to assassinate Terauchi. Despite public protests from Western Christian missionaries that the case had been entirely fabricated by the Government General, 105 people were sentenced during the trials held in 1912 (they were eventually given amnesty in 1915 due to international pressure; Kim 2016). A second point of dispute has concerned the core causes of March First and, by proxy, modern nationalism. The mainstream historiography has stressed the combin- ation of the oppressive nature of the Japanese colonial period from 1910 to 1919, widely circulating rumours to the effect that the former Emperor Gojong had been poisoned by the Japanese, and the catalytic effect of an external stimulus, in the form of Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech of 1918 in which the US president expressed support for the prin- ciple of self-sovereignty for the South (Manzela 2007). In contrast, scholars hewing to a grassroots or people’s (minjung in Korean) history perspective argue that the font of na- tionalism should be traced to peasant rebellions of the 1800s, in particular the Donghak Peasant Rebellion of 1894–1895. In the North Korean historiography, the external stimulus takes an alternative form, namely the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, which in this account inspired farmers and workers to rise up against the Japanese colonial overloads. Others, while keeping an eye on international contexts, trace the emergence of modern ethnic nationalism to the late nineteenth century, at least among intellectuals and political elites, as they grappled with the Social Darwinist conception of compe- tition among races and states, in contrast to research which argues that the transition from regionalised forms of identity (e.g. provincial, city, village, etc.) to national ones occurred during the Military Rule period (Kim 2010). Third, even with the widespread acknowledgement of the significance of the March First Movement, there have been calls to diversify research on it beyond the tracing of the development of modern Korean nationalism and its impact on politics. There are at least three burgeoning areas of research in South Korean academia, fuelled in part by its hundredth anniversary of the March First Movement in 2019—local history, socio-economic contexts, and international connections. There has been an exponen- tial growth in the number of local histories that map the ways in which the Movement spread to and manifested in towns and villages, as well as descriptions of the range of Japanese police response in these locales (e.g. Heo 2018). Studies of socio-economic factors as background conditions for the Movement have increased since the 2010s, pointing to the surge in production from the First World War boom, combined with stagnant wages and inflation as supplements to colonial oppression as the sources of resentment and alienation among the general Korean populace (Pak 2014). On the international dimensions, researchers have investigated reactions and activities of indi- vidual Western missionaries, as well as the variances in views of foreign powers among the thirty-three original signatories who anticipated some form of support from Wilson (e.g. Choe Rin, Choe Namseon), as well as others who declined to participate (e.g. Yun Chi-ho) because they anticipated no actual support from any of the Western powers. Other studies have focused on concrete efforts to recruit foreign aid, such as the case of The History of Korea, 1905–1945 23 Yeo Un-hyeong, who met with Charles Crane, a close advisor to Wilson, in Shanghai during 1918 to push for US support of the Korean independence movement (Jeong 2017). Historians have also scrutinised the tactical indifference of the United States during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, where the Korean delegates’ efforts to gain the support of Western governments for Korean independence ended in vain, despite spending January to August in Paris (Kim, S. 2009). March First did not result in Korean independence, but it did prompt a major shift in Japanese colonial policy. The new Governor, Saitō Makoto (1921–1927; 1929–1931), appointed after an overhaul of the top positions within the Government General in the aftermath of the March First Movement, oversaw under the banner of ‘Cultural Rule’ the implementation of an array of policies that combined clearer incentives and indirect oppressions, for example allowing the publications of privately run Korean newspapers and periodicals, while at the same time strengthening censorship protocols (Kang 1979). But the independence movement continued within Korea through the 1920s and 1930s, covering the spectrum from non-violent demonstrations to assassination attempts, everyday forms of resistance to advocacy via emerging mass media (Sin 2005). In fact, Saitō was the target of a bombing attempt upon his arrival in Seoul in September 1919 and evaded several other attempts on his life through the 1920s. At the same time, many Korean organisations refocused their activities to overseas advocacy or fighting guerrilla wars along the northern border, and there would not be a repeat of the scale of the March First Movement until liberation in 1945. This is not to say that there were no independence movements within Korea, but that mass demonstrations of similar scales did not occur. For instance, when Sunjong, Gojong’s successor, died in April 1926 and the funeral was scheduled for June of the same year, the Government General braced for a repeat of the March First Movement, mobilising some 7,000 troops into the Seoul area. Student activists did in fact coordinate with socialists to organise demonstrations for independence in what came be called the June 10th Movement, which resulted in around 1,000 people being imprisoned. In another case, from November 1929 to March 1930, student-organised demonstrations spread from the city of Gwangju throughout Korea, with an estimated 54,000 Koreans in 320 schools participating in what later became known as the Gwangju Student Independence Movement (Yun 2010). 4. Political Polarisation and Diversification Another major thread of research has scrutinised the political divisions that crystallised during the 1920s and 1930s as explanatory factors for the loss in momentum of the independence movement within Korea by the late 1930s and as the fountain- head for the post-1945 division of the Peninsula. Even if Cold War calculations and the 24 Hyung-Gu Lynn physical presence of US troops in the South and Soviets in the North were the ostensible reasons, domestic divisions had laid the foundations for the post-liberation period. While acknowledging the impact of international forces and Cold War structures on the politics of the Peninsula, in-depth research that details the extent to which com- munism and socialism gained traction during the colonial period has helped to gen- erate an understanding of the origins of the Korean War beyond simply a proxy war between the United States and China/Soviet Union (Cumings 1981). Within the broad rubric of political polarisation and diversification, there are three intertwined scales and areas of research: the right–left relationship; fractures within each grouping; and the role of technology in politics. The first area, right–left separation, has been the most densely researched, due in part to the convenient linkages to the division of the Peninsula. The inability to generate support from foreign governments despite the massive scale and scope of the March First Movement presented several choices among activists: an exodus from Korea to focus on independence activities from overseas locales; working within the incentive structures of Cultural Rule and weighing the possibility of advocating for self-rule, ra- ther than independence, as a first step; enduring institutionalised discrimination; or exploring alternative ideologies such as socialism, communism, and anarchism. The 1920s witnessed the rapid growth of socialism, communism, and anarchism among intellectuals and students through underground publications and organisations, as well as through classrooms for Korean students in Japan and Comintern (Communist International) meetings for those in the Soviet Union and China. Moreover, the Comintern also initially encouraged communists in East Asia to embrace anti-colonial nationalism and social projects in order to generate support and momentum, allowing for cooperation with ‘revolutionary’ religious organisations (Tikhonov 2017). Thus, within Korea, when the industrialist Kim Seongsu, who founded the Korean daily news- paper Donga Ilbo in 1920, helped launch the Korean Goods Promotion Movement in 1923, communists and socialists were highly critical, labelling it a co-option of the inde- pendence movement by profiteering bourgeoise. Yet at the same time, leftists continued to cooperate with a minority of Christians and Buddhists who were sympathetic to their social action agendas. The period of relative pragmatism ended when, after multiple attempts at establishing a party that were extinguished by the colonial police, the Korean Communist Party was officially launched in 1925. This widened political rifts as the Comintern, which had begun taking a more radical turn, urged the newly established party to view the March First Movement as a ‘failed bourgeoise revolution’ and to take an explicitly anti-religious stance, particularly against Christianity (Sin 2019). The second field of internal disputes has been studied on a more fine-grained scale. Despite the polarisations noted above, an organisation that presented a unified front of left and right, the Singanhoe (New Root/Trunk Society) operated within Korea from 1927 to 1931, alongside a sister organisation for women, the Geunuhoe. Some of its left- leaning members supported the Wonsan General Strike of 1929 that brought the city to a halt, and also triggered subsequent work stoppages in other cities throughout Korea. This in turn triggered intensified police crackdowns and arrests of leftist Singanhoe The History of Korea, 1905–1945 25 members, while those who had kept themselves at a distance from the Strike were not subject to overt harassment (Yi 1993). In addition to police repression, internal disputes over ideology and tactics also diluted the group’s cohesion. The Comintern retracted its recognition of the Korean Communist Party in 1928, citing its ‘reformist’ tendencies to compromise ideals, which in turn amplified divisions among factions within the socialist and communist camps based on their willingness to continue in the united front or not. The Geunuhoe split from the Singanhoe and ultimately dissolved due to a fallout between the Christian and socialist factions, and the constant marginalisation by male colleagues (Jang 2019). Division in the anarcho–communist camp and subsequent conflicts between these two groups accelerated the evaporation of cohesion in the left. Within the nationalist or bourgeoise groups, left and right divisions emerged, centred on the issue of whether or not to pursue colonial self-rule (based in large part on the Home Rule debates in Britain regarding Ireland) as an intermediary step towards long-term independence (Pak 1992). Third, the print and communications technologies, the medium by which the ‘imagined community’ of the nation state was formed (Anderson 1983), had a double function in colonial Korea. On the one hand, the diffusion of print, and to a lesser ex- tent, radio and film, helped to diffuse a standardised version of Korean identity and language. Two Korean-language daily newspapers were established in 1920, while nu- merous other magazines and periodicals were also published during the decade. Radio was introduced to Korea in 1927, with the broadcasts of one station using both Japanese and Korean languages. A dedicated Korean-language station was added in 1933. While all media were under strict censorship, which was particularly stringent on references to Marxism and communism, and on radio, their diffusion has been central to the notion of ‘colonial modernity’, the emergence of various forms of modernity under co- lonial conditions (Shin and Robinson 1999). On the other hand, print forums became increasingly focused or segregated, resulting in magazines that were affiliated with com- mercial print, socialism, socialism, or labour associations. For example, communist publications persisted largely underground and discrete from the mainstream due to the legal restrictions. Governor Minami Jirō (1936–1942) implemented an array of wartime mobilisa- tion policies, resulting in coerced assimilation policies and increased oppression that sharpened the divide not only between left and right, but also between those who remained in Korea and those who moved overseas. Bans on the use of Korean in public places such as schools and government offices, enforced name change policy, discour- agement of the wearing of traditional white clothing, the drafting of Korean youths into the Japanese Imperial army, the mobilisation of women and men into labour corps for munitions factories and mines, the closure of privately run Korean-language daily newspapers in 1940, and the implementations of the notorious ‘comfort women’ system were just some of the policies that had lasting and traumatic impacts on collective memory (Higuchi 2001). In addition, state-controlled Korean-language publications featured writings exhorting Koreans to contribute to the war effort by public figures who had previously been leaders of the centrist or bourgeoise independence and women’s 26 Hyung-Gu Lynn movements (e.g. Yi Gwangsu, Yun Chi-ho, and Kim Hwallan/Helen). At the same time, the police engaged in divide-and-conquer tactics, simply imprisoning and torturing some communists and socialists, while ‘converting’ others to issue public apostasies of left-wing ideologies. The complex imbrications of ideologies, tactics, gender, class, and apostasy were bundled under a narrative emphasising unified Korean opposition to Japanese colonial rule in post-1945 South Korea, obscuring the issue of who exactly was a collaborator or not. The South Korean government did hold a series of trials in 1948–1949 to judge those who had collaborated with the Japanese colonial rulers. However, due to Syngman Rhee prioritising anti-communism and bureaucratic utility over truth and reconcili- ation, none of those charged served their sentences; and yet, communism remains il- legal in twenty-first-century South Korea. In North Korea, the government undertook a more extensive liquidation of ‘collaborator’ assets to expedite the process of entirely abolishing private ownership of land (Kim 2013). 5. Developmental State When the South Korean economy was struggling in the 1950s, seemingly perpetu- ally dependent on US aid, many observers pointed to period of 1905–1945 as having truncated economic development and growth. When the frame switched in the 1980s to explaining the sources of South Korea’s ‘Miracle on the Han’, revisionist scholars pointed to the state-directed colonial period economy as the wellspring for capitalist devel- opment via the effectiveness of the colonial state’s industrial policies; the provision of opportunities for entrepreneurial experience in a market economy; and the consequent growth in human capital (Woo-Cumings 1999). The concept of ‘colonial modernisation’ as an alternative to ‘colonial exploitation’ has been debated intensively in South Korea, in part due to the largely overlooked fact that the arguments for colonial modernisation or the Government General as genesis of the developmental state echo reports published in 1946 by Suzuki Takeo, a Japanese economist who had been a professor at Keijo [Seoul] Imperial University from 1928, who had been commissioned by the Japanese Foreign Ministry. The debates have centred on whether increases in production occurred and in what specific industries, who profited from the secular increases in output, whether Koreans who were not collaborators benefitted, and the causal mechanisms behind this development and growth. As a result, a steady stream of empirical, conceptual, and di- dactic research and commentary has been produced on the political economy of the period in Korean and Japanese, in contrast to the sporadic scale and scope of output on the subject in English. The colonial state was undoubtedly interventionist in social, economic, and pol- itical arenas. Governor Ugaki Kazushige (1927; 1931–1936) explicitly prioritised in- dustrial and agricultural growth in the 1930s; the statistics indicate significant growth in manufacturing and heavy industries during this decade. Campaigns to promote The History of Korea, 1905–1945 27 primary industries, such as the 1931 slogan promising ‘sheep in the north and cotton in the south’ accompanied increased investment into manufacturing and heavy industries from Japanese conglomerates. Large-scale, capital-intensive industry conglomerated in the northern regions of Korea in the form of mining operations, hydroelectric dams, and chemical industries, with the city of Hamhung becoming home to one of the largest fertiliser factories in the world during the 1930s (Kang 1985). However, whether the economic development and growth can be attributed to effective planning by a group of uber-bureaucrats appears less clear than much of the developmental state literature seems to assume. The first issue is that economic development had multiple actors, not just the co- lonial state. Even in the 1920s, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese labourers, Japanese conglomerates based in Tokyo, Korean entrepreneurs, and Japanese settlers who operated small-to-medium firms held a diverse range of rights and interests. This resulted in cases where Japanese entrepreneurs wanted more Government General promotion of specific industries, yet also demanded protection of their rights against Korean competition (Uchida 2011). Moreover, some Korean-operated textile firms, such as the Kyeongseong Spinning, using cotton and wool produced in the southern parts of the colony, grew in the 1920s and 1930s during a time when the Government General was more focused on agricultural projects, such as the Rice Production Increase Plan in Korea that ran from 1925 to 1934. Second, publications in English have been sparse on specifics in terms of institutions and individuals responsible for the economic planning in the Government General. The overwhelming majority of substantive studies on colonial decision-making and policy implementation processes have been published in Japanese and Korean (Jang 2007; Yi 2013). Therefore, there is a keen need for more precise, in-depth research published in English on the workings of the Government General in terms of personnel continuity and decision-making processes to assess whether origins of the developmental state can be traced to the colonial period. Third, logically, the years between 1945 (the end of Japanese colonial rule) and 1962, when the South Korean President Park Chung-hee launched his First Five-Year Plan, need to be analysed to mount a persuasive case that the colonial state was the proto- type of the developmental state. Indeed, Korean-language scholarship has seen an in- crease in the number of studies on capital accumulation, the impact of aid, economic plans and planning, and multiple other dimensions of state and private-sector eco- nomic activity in the 1950s (Yi 2012). In addition, there are promising avenues that focus on the lasting legacies of the colonial period transmitted through individual experiences imprinted into key individuals such as Park Chung-hee (Eckert 2016) that might allow for less emphasis on direct bureaucratic continuity and more focus on human capital. A similar chronological jump also allows for assertions of continuities between the colonial period and North Korea’s economic plans of the 1950s and 1960s without any examination of the specific institutions, economic theories, or individuals (e.g. Choe Yonggeon, allegedly the architect of the country’s economic plans) who were essential 28 Hyung-Gu Lynn to its operations during the 1950s and the 1960s. Details on internal debates, primary policy challenges, and changes over time over this period (e.g. gradual constriction of private enterprises that occurred in the 1950s; disputes between agriculture first and heavy industry first factions) have been elucidated in numerous publications in Korean (Yi 2004). A loose parallel to the human capital or imprinting approach for North Korea is the view of the country as a ‘guerrilla state’, in which organisational structures, strategies, and tactics of the country mirror through direct memory and experience those of the Korean guerrilla units that fought against the Japanese army during the colonial period (Wada 1998). The fact that North Korea’s economy plateaued in the mid-1970s also remains largely unaddressed in the attempts to apply the colonial devel- opmental state model to North Korea’s economic planning during the 1960s, triggering interesting questions about the half-life of the colonial developmental state and the limited utility of using continuity or path dependence as an analytical tool. 6. Monarchy to Republic One area of emerging research is the question of when and how the monarchy ended and republicanism began in Korea. If the transition from monarchy to republic in a re- cent case such as Nepal occurred only after a brutal ten-year civil war (1996–2006), the process for Korea was less clear and more protracted. When South Korea was ruled by a string of strongmen, such as Syngman Rhee during the 1950s, and Park Chung-hee in the 1960s and 1970s, several social scientists asserted that the colonial period was an interregnum that restricted access to meaningful political participation for Koreans, and thereby disabled the growth of democracy. The empirical evidence paints a more complex picture: there were Koreans appointed as provincial governors, one served a term as Education Bureau Director in the Government General (roughly the equiva- lent of a Cabinet minister), others were employed in large numbers in the Government General (albeit generally around half the total of the Japanese officials and concentrated in the lower ranks, with lower wages), and one former gangster employed by the colo- nial police to break up labour union meetings, Pak Chungeum, who made his way to Japan and was eventually elected to the Imperial Diet in 1932 and 1937 (Matsuda 1995). The genealogical pursuit of the origins of republicanism has gravitated around the activities and limits of the Provisional Government of the Republic Korea, which was established in Shanghai on 11 April 1919 as a conglomeration of several Korean polit- ical organisations in exile. Detailed studies of its activities and internal tensions, such as the reasons why the first president of the Provisional Government, Syngman Rhee, was impeached in 1925 and why prominent figures such as Sin Chaeho left it to pursue writing and anarchism after repeated disagreements with Rhee about ideology and pol- itical tactics have been increasing in number (Seo 2012). Other works have focused on the Provisional Government’s efforts to organise armed battles against Japan in China, the carrying out of assassination plans against Japanese officials, and the activities of The History of Korea, 1905–1945 29 Kim Gu, who was the President from 1927 on, lobbying efforts in the international polit- ical arena, among other subjects. More conceptually, there has been a continuing debate as to whether March First signalled the beginning of republicanism rather than 1926, 1945, or 1948, given that the demonstrators chanted for independence rather than mourned Gojong’s death, and the fact that the Provisional Government was inspirited in large part by the scale and the scope of the movement in Korea (Yi 2019). Close readings of the Provisional Government’s Constitution, the explicit reference in its name to ‘republic’ and its other texts have been parsed by scholars as origins for the Republic of Korea (South Korea). This argument is complicated by the relative paucity of research on the so-called Yi Gang incident, when Gojong’s fifth son, Yi Gang, attempted to join the Provisional Government in Shanghai but was caught in Dandong in 1919 and returned to Korea by the colonial police. Nonetheless, available records indicate that debates between republicans and monarchists lasted intermittently into the late 1920s (Pak 2007). The end of monarchy in de jure terms occurred when Japan colonised Korea in 1910 (although there is as yet unresolved debate among historians and law specialists con- cerning the legality of the 1910 Treaty), but a subject that has been relatively understudied is the process of how monarchy as a form of governance and the Korean Imperial family as possible leaders within it faded from elite and public percep

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