North Korea
North Korea

Author: Heonik Kwon

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2012-03-12

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1442215771

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This timely, pathbreaking study of North Korea’s political history and culture sheds invaluable light on the country’s unique leadership continuity and succession. Leading scholars Heonik Kwon and Byung-Ho Chung begin by tracing Kim Il Sung’s rise to power during the Cold War. They show how his successor, his eldest son, Kim Jong Il, sponsored the production of revolutionary art to unleash a public political culture that would consolidate Kim’s charismatic power and his own hereditary authority. The result was the birth of a powerful modern theater state that sustains North Korean leaders’ sovereignty now to a third generation. In defiance of the instability to which so many revolutionary states eventually succumb, the durability of charismatic politics in North Korea defines its exceptional place in modern history. Kwon and Chung make an innovative contribution to comparative socialism and postsocialism as well as to the anthropology of the state. Their pioneering work is essential for all readers interested in understanding North Korea’s past and future, the destiny of charismatic power in modern politics, the role of art in enabling this power.

Consolidating Democracy in South Korea
Consolidating Democracy in South Korea

Author: Larry Jay Diamond

Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9781555878481

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A review of the dilemmas, tensions and contradictions arising from democratic consolidation in South Korea. It explores the turbulent features of Korean democracy in its first decade, assesses the progress that has been made, and identifies the key obstacles to effective democratic governance.

Gender and the Political Opportunities of Democratization in South Korea
Gender and the Political Opportunities of Democratization in South Korea

Author: N. Jones

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-02-23

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1403984611

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This book explores how political opportunities afforded by democratization, including the relative balance of power between conservative and progressive civic actors, shape power relations between men and women in post-authoritarian Korea. Jones reveals that organized women can make a difference - depending on their strategic choices and alliances, and the manner in which they negotiate evolving political institutions. Moreover, democratic consolidation need not be led by political parties, but can provide surprising opportunities for an organized civil society to press for a deepening of political and human rights.

The Guerilla Dynasty
The Guerilla Dynasty

Author: Adrian Buzo

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-02-19

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0429976097

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Throughout the 1990s, North Korea has operated under a skeptical international eye, due largely to the countrys rigorous self-imposed isolation, its on-going confrontation with South Korea, a controversial nuclear arms program, and the near-total collapse of its economy. North Koreas leaders have chosen to face the world with its Stalinist political culture and ideological framework intact, for better or worseand by most reports, almost exclusively for the worst. How did this situation come to be, and what are its consequences? In The Guerilla Dynasty, Adrian Buzo gives us an accessible, up-to-date, and rigorously researched account of the political, economic, and foreign policy developments in North Korea since 1945.

Political Leadership in Korea
Political Leadership in Korea

Author: Dae-Sook Suh

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2014-05-01

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 0295802804

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Included in this volume are studies of the traditional leadership of the Yi dynasty as well as twentieth-century legislative, party, and bureaucratic leadership, and an evaluation of views of political leaders in South Korea, as well as two studies of the Communist system in North Korea.

Leader Symbols and Personality Cult in North Korea
Leader Symbols and Personality Cult in North Korea

Author: Jae-Cheon Lim

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-03-24

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 1317567412

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The legitimacy of the North Korean state is based solely on the leaders’ personal legitimacy, and is maintained by the indoctrination of people with leader symbols and the enactment of leadership cults in daily life. It can thus be dubbed a "leader state". The frequency of leader symbols and the richness and scale of leader-symbol-making in North Korea are simply unrivalled. Furthermore, the personality cults of North Korean leaders are central to people’s daily activity, critically affecting their minds and emotions. Both leader symbols and cult activities are profoundly entrenched in the institutions and daily life, and if separated and cancelled, the North Korean state would be transformed. This book analyses North Korea as a "leader state", focusing on two elements, leader symbols and cult activities. It argues that these elements have been, and continue to be, the backbone of North Korea, shaping North Korean culture. To reveal the "leader state" character, the book specifically examines North Korea’s leadership cults, its use of leader symbols in these cults, and the nature of the symbolism involved. How has the North Korean state developed the cult of the Kim Il Sung family? How does the state use leader symbols to perpetuate this cult? How has the state developed myths and rituals that sustain the cult in daily life? What leader images has state propaganda manufactured? How does the state’s manipulation of leader symbols affect the symbolism that is assigned to the leader’s actions? In answering these questions, this book sheds new light on the strength and resilience of the North Korean state, and shows how it has been able to survive even the most difficult economic period of the mid-1990s. Leader Symbols and Personality Cult in North Korea will be essential reading for students and scholars of North Korea, Korean politics, Asian politics, political sociology and visual politics.

Nation Building in South Korea
Nation Building in South Korea

Author: Gregg Brazinsky

Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com

Published: 2009-09-14

Total Pages: 590

ISBN-13: 1458723178

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Brazinsky explains why South Korea was one of the few postcolonial nations that achieved rapid economic development and democratization by the end of the twentieth century. He contends that a distinctive combination of American initiatives and Korean agency enabled South Korea's stunning transformation. Expanding the framework of traditional diplomatic history, Brazinsky examines not only state-to-state relations, but also the social and cultural interactions between Americans and South Koreans. He shows how Koreans adapted, resisted, and transformed American influence and promoted socioeconomic change that suited their own aspirations. Ultimately, Brazinsky argues, Koreans' capacity to tailor American institutions and ideas to their own purposes was the most important factor in the making of a democratic South Korea.

Domestic Constraints on South Korean Foreign Policy
Domestic Constraints on South Korean Foreign Policy

Author: Scott A. Snyder

Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations

Published: 2018-01-01

Total Pages: 106

ISBN-13: 0876097336

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These essays support the argument that strong and effective presidential leadership is the most important prerequisite for South Korea to sustain and project its influence abroad. That leadership should be attentive to the need for public consensus and should operate within established legislative mechanisms that ensure public accountability. The underlying structures sustaining South Korea’s foreign policy formation are generally sound; the bigger challenge is to manage domestic politics in ways that promote public confidence about the direction and accountability of presidential leadership in foreign policy.

Top-Down Democracy in South Korea
Top-Down Democracy in South Korea

Author: Erik Mobrand

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2019-04-19

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 0295745487

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While popular movements in South Korea rightly grab the headlines for forcing political change and holding leaders to account, those movements are only part of the story of the construction and practice of democracy. In Top-Down Democracy in South Korea, Erik Mobrand documents another part – the elite-led design and management of electoral and party institutions. Even as the country left authoritarian rule behind, elites have responded to freer and fairer elections by entrenching rather than abandoning exclusionary practices and forms of party organization. Exploring South Korea’s political development from 1945 through the end of dictatorship in the 1980s and into the twenty-first century, Mobrand challenges the view that the origins of the postauthoritarian political system lie in a series of popular movements that eventually undid repression. He argues that we should think about democratization not as the establishment of an entirely new system, but as the subtle blending of new formal rules with earlier authority structures, political institutions, and legitimizing norms.