This book is an English translation of the authoritative autobiography by the late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. The 2000 Nobel Peace Prize winner, often called the Asian Nelson Mandela, is best known for his tolerant and innovative “Sunshine Policy” towards North Korea. Written in the five years between the end of his presidency and his death in 2009, this book offers a poignant first-hand account of Korea’s turbulent modern history. It spans the pivotal time span between the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945) and reconciliation in the Korean Peninsula (2000-2009). In between are insightful insider descriptions of everything from wars and dictatorships to the hopeful period of economic recovery, blooming democracy, peace, and reconciliation. Conscience in Action serves as an intimate record of the Korean people’s persistent and heroic struggle for democracy and peace. It is also an inspiring story of an extraordinary individual whose formidable perseverance and selfless dedication to the values he believed in led him to triumph despite more than four decades of extreme persecution.
The Korean economy is beset with problems caused by increasingly tough international competition on the one hand, and years of undemocratic, strong-armed resource allocation practices on the other. This revised edition offers an analysis and critique of the current state of Korea's economy by Kim Dae Jung, the president of South Korea, has spent decades deeply involved in Korean politics. In this book, he outlines his goals for reinvigorating his country's economy and making South Korea a leading economic power in the global marketplace.Chapters: My Vision for the Korean Economy; The Goal and Basic Principles of my Reform Program; A Brief History of the Post-War Korean Economy; The Economic Policies of Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan; Korea's Economy under Roh Tae Woo; Price Stability: A Foundation for Sustained Growth; Parasitic Land Speculation and the Housing Problem; Liberalization of the Financial Sector: The Keystone to Further Reforms; Reforming the Fiscal Structure for Equity and Efficiency; The Export Crisis and a Fundamental Solution; Large Enterprises vs. Small-Medium-Sized Firms: Toward a Division of Roles; From an Authoritarian to a Cooperative Labor-Management Relationship; How Can We Revive Our Dying Rural Economy?; Education, Science and Technology for the 21st Century; Distributional Justice and Social Welfare; Summing Up: The Road to Becoming the World's Eighth Largest Economic Power.Co-published with The Center for International Affairs, Harvard.
This revised edition examines North and South Korea's political, socio-economic, and cultural history from the Neolithic period to the early 21st century, including issues of recent political unrest and preparations for the 2018 Winter Olympics. Korea continues to be featured in the news, especially after the succession of Kim Jong-un as leader of North Korea and his threats of nuclear attack. Yet the reported instability of the North is contrasted by the rapid modernization revolution of the South. Author Djun Kil Kim analyzes how tragic experiences in the regions' collective history—particularly Japanese colonial rule and the division of the country—have contributed to the dichotomous state of affairs in the Koreas. This comprehensive overview traces the development of two contradistinctive nations—North and South Korea—with communism in the north and democracy and industrialization in the south transforming the geopolitical and geo-economic condition of each area. Author Kim explores specific doctrines that revolutionized Korea: Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism in the mid-7th and the late 14th centuries; and communism and American functionalism in the 20th century. The second edition includes an updated timeline, new biographical sketches of notable people, and an additional chapter covering the events of 2004 through the present day.
South Korea provides an intellectual challenge in the fields of social movements and democracy in that intense mobilization and the strong influence of social movements have accompanied steady democratization for more than two decades, despite major theories having predicted otherwise. This book examines how social movements in previously authoritarian contexts evolve after democratic transition, using South Korea as a case study. It explores how democratic change influences the form of social movements, and how social movements affect the pace and direction of democracy in turn. It explains how South Korean social movements were able to attain strong political influence by focusing on four causal factors: the configuration of major political actors during the transition period, the relational dynamics among social movement groups, the relationship between social movements and institutionalized political actors, and the impact of transnational forces in the post-transition period. Unlike previous scholarship, the book takes a historical, actor-centered, and process-oriented approach that closely follows the interactions among contending actors through event sequences, rather than being driven by abstract theoretical frameworks. In doing so, it analyses uses a broad range of evidence, including police records, untapped activist documents, presidential memoirs, newspaper accounts and original data sets. Shedding light on the complex political reality that gave rise to a contentious civil society in South Korea after democratization, this book also illuminates the institutional conditions that can help promote domestic peace and stability. Therefore it will be of great use to students and scholars of Korean Studies, Korean politics and social movements, as well as policy makers.
A history of the divided region, from prehistoric times to present day, examining at political, social, cultural, economic, and diplomatic developments. Contemporary North and South Korea are nations of radical contrasts: one a bellicose totalitarian state with a failing economy; the other a peaceful democracy with a strong economy. Yet their people share a common history that extends back more than three thousand years. In this comprehensive new history of Korea from the prehistoric era to the present day, Jinwung Kim recounts the rich and fascinating story of the political, social, cultural, economic, and diplomatic developments in Korea’s long march to the present. He provides a detailed account of the origins of the Korean people and language and the founding of the first walled-town states, along with the advanced civilization that existed in the ancient land of “Unified Silla.” Clarifying the often complex history of the Three Kingdoms Period, Kim chronicles the five-century long history of the Choson dynasty, which left a deep impression on Korean culture. From the beginning, China has loomed large in the history of Korea, from the earliest times when the tribes that would eventually make up the Korean nation roamed the vast plains of Manchuria and against whom Korea would soon define itself. Japan, too, has played an important role in Korean history, particularly in the 20th century; Kim tells this story as well, including the conflicts that led to the current divided state. The first detailed overview of Korean history in nearly a quarter century, this volume will enlighten a new generation of students eager to understand this contested region of Asia. “Using the latest sources, including recently declassified Communist documents, Jinwung Kim’s book holds promise of becoming the textbook of choice. Benefiting from his direct and intimate knowledge of the country, he writes with great clarity, providing rich and interesting descriptions of political, social, cultural, economic, and diplomatic developments throughout the history of Korea.” —James I. Matray, California State University, Chico “A clearly written, comprehensive, and impressively detailed work.” —Journal of Asian Studies
As Asian countries emerge as global economic powers, many undergo fundamental political transformations. In Korean Democracy in Transition: A Rational Blueprint for Developing Societies, HeeMin Kim evaluates the past thirty years of political change in South Korea, including the decision of the authoritarian government to open up the political process in 1987 and the presidential impeachment of 2004. Kim uses rational choice theory -- which holds that individuals choose to act in ways that they think will give them the most benefit for the least cost -- to explain events central to South Korea's democratization process. Kim's theoretical and quantitative analysis provides a context for South Korea's remarkable transformation and offers predictions of what the future may hold for developing nations undergoing similar transitions. Although there are studies in the field of Korean politics that provide an overview of this important period, there are none that offer the theoretical and analytical rigor of this study. Combining theoretical perspectives with policy-relevant discussion, Korean Democracy in Transition sheds new light on the Korean model of democratization and makes a significant contribution to the field of comparative politics.
This book examines how inter- and intra-party coalition-building affects governability in South Korea. Focusing on the Kim Dae-jung administration (1998-2003) as a case study in the failure of a government to turn electoral success into stable governability, or ability to implement reform policies, the book’s research draws on two bodies of literature which, though focusing on the same dependent variable (cabinet or government stability), have rarely been used in tandem: coalition research on parliamentary systems and studies of divided government in presidential systems. Youngmi Kim argues that a weak institutionalization of the ruling party and the party-system accounts for political instability and inefficient governability in Korea and in doing so her study makes a number of key contributions to the field. Theoretically it proposes a framework which integrates a rationalist approach with one that acknowledges the role of political culture. It further enhances the understanding of factors affecting governability after coalition-building across regime types and aims to build on recent demands for broader cross-regime analysis of minority/divided government and of the determinants of governability. This has important comparative implications as coalition-building within (semi-) presidential systems has occurred in other post-authoritarian contexts. The book finally provides a new dataset which fills a gap in a field where Western cases constitute the main focus of research. The Politics of Coalition in Korea will be of interest to students and scholars of Korean studies, Korean politics, Asian studies and Asian politics. Youngmi Kim is Assistant Professor at the Departments of Public Policy, and International Relations and European Studies at Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.
Featuring contributions by some of the leading experts in Korean studies, this book examines the political content of Kim Jong-Il's regime maintenance, including both the domestic strategy for regime survival and North Korea's foreign relations with South Korea, Russia, China, Japan, and the United States. It considers how and why the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) became a hermit kingdom in the name of Juche (self-reliance) ideology, and the potential for the barriers of isolationism to endure. This up-to-date analysis of the DPRK's domestic and external policy linkages also includes a discussion of the ongoing North Korean nuclear standoff in the region.
This book brings Korea's finest foreign policy minds together in contemplating the risks and rewards of finally ending the 70 year stalemate between North and South Korea through reunification. While North Korea is in conflict with the United States over denuclearization and regime security, the South Korean government is focusing on economic development preparing for the day when the two Koreas are unified. This book will help scholars, activists and policy-makers from all over the world systematically understand the current diplomatic and security issues in the Korean peninsula.
There are two great mysteries in the political economy of South Korea. How could a destroyed country in next to no time become a sophisticated and affluent economy? And how could a ruthlessly authoritarian regime metamorphose with relative ease into a stable democratic polity? South Korea was long ruled with harsh authoritarianism, but, strangely, the authoritarian rulers made energetic use of social policy. The Korean State and Social Policy observes South Korean public policy from 1945 to 2000 through the prism of social policy to examine how the rulers operated and worked. After the military coup in 1961, the new leaders used social policy to buy themselves legitimacy. That enabled them to rule in two very different ways simultaneously. In their determination to hold on to power they were without mercy, but in the use of power in governance, their strategy was to co-opt and mobilize with a sophistication that is wholly exceptional among authoritarian rulers. It is governance and not power that explains the Korean miracle. Mobilization is a strategy with consequences. South Korea was not only led to economic development but also, inadvertently perhaps, built up as a society rich in public and civil institutions. When authoritarianism collapsed under the force of nationwide uprisings in 1987, the institutions of a reasonably pluralistic social and political order were there, alive and well, and democracy could take over without further serious drama. This book is about many things: development and modernization, dictatorship and democracy, state capacity and governance, social protection and welfare states, and Korean history. But finally it is about lifting social policy analysis out of the ghetto of self-sufficiency it is often confined to and into the center ground of hard political science.
What role did civil society play in Korea's recent democratization? How does the Korean case compare with cases from other regions of the world? What is the current status of Korean democratic consolidation? What are the prospects for Korean democracy?In December 1997, for the first time in the history of South Korea (hereafter Korea), an opposition candidate was elected to the presidency. Korea became the first new democracy in Asia where a horizontal transfer of power occurred through the electoral process. Sunhyuk Kim's study of democratization in Korea argues that the momentum for political change in Korea has consistently emanated from oppositional civil society rather than from the state. He develops a civil society paradigm and utilizes Korea's three authoritarian breakdowns (only two of which resulted in democratic transitions) to illustrate the past and present influences of Korean civil society groups on authoritarian breakdowns, democratic transitions, and post-transition democratic consolidations. One of the first systematic attempts to apply a civil society framework to a democratizing country in East Asia, The Politics of Democratization in Korea will be of use to political scientists and advanced undergraduate and graduate students working in comparative politics, political theory, East Asian politics, and the politics of democratization.
This book analyzes, from a historical comparative perspective, the Korean economic development model, the extent to which it has changed from its classical model, and what constitutes its changes and continuity. Unlike studies claims the dissolution of Korean developmentalism, the book holds that the Korean state maintains its characteristics of state-led capitalism despite significant changes in policies and instruments rather than converge toward an AngloSaxon-style free market system. It emphasizes that the continuity of state-led capitalism is compatible with institutional change. Some institutionalists insist that the continuity of Korean developmentalism is based on path dependency. In contrast, this book argues that Korean capitalism could sustain its state developmentalism by changes in policies and instruments to improve national industrial competitiveness in the changed context of international competition. This book will be of interest to East Asian scholars, comparative economists, and those curious about the future of the Korean peninsula.
Divided Nations and Transitional Justice" is a collection of significant writings contributed by the late president Kim Dae-jung of the Republic of Korea and former president Richard von Weizsaecker of Germany. This book presents insightful views, lifetime career experiences, and expertise of the two prominent leaders in the critical fields of unification, peace, and justice and reconciliation. It centers on the cases of Korea, Germany and Japan, and considers how these countries have moved to address and come to terms with their wartime past. This book moves to deliver messages of hope and vision on how to further the values of peace, reconciliation and cooperation in the twenty-first century.
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