In The Origin of the 1960s Korean Developmental Regime: Manchurian Modern, Suk-Jung Han traces the current Korean dynamism through Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in northeast China from 1932 to 1945, which has been frozen as the sacrosanct stage of nationalist resistance. Han proposes the factor of colonial diffusion in the lineage of East Asian state-formation, which has been overlooked in the discussion of the modern state-building. He also traces the cultural flow from the Manchurian setting, which contained the seed of the future cultural prowess of Korea.
This open access book analyses the development problems of sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) from the eyes of a Korean diplomat with knowledge of the economic growth Korea has experienced in recent decades. The author argues that Africa's development challenges are not due to a lack of resources but a lack of management, presenting an alternative to the traditional view that Africa's problems are caused by a lack of leadership. In exploring an approach based on mind-set and nation-building, rather than unity – which tends to promote individual or party interests rather than the broader country or national interests – the author suggests new solutions for SSA's economic growth, inspired by Korea's successful economic growth model much of which is focused on industrialisation. This book will be of interest to researchers, policymakers, NGOs and governmental bodies in economics, development and politics studying Africa's economic development, and Korea's economic growth model.
This book examines the contested re-readings of “Korea” in early Chinese historical records and their influence on the formation of Korean-ness in later periods. The earliest written records on “Koreans” are found in Chinese documents produced during the Han dynasty, from the third century BCE to the third century CE. Since then, these early Chinese records have been used as primary sources for writing early Korean history in Korea, China, and Japan. This study analyzes the various reinterpretations and utilizations of these early records that became more diverse by the late nineteenth century, when the reconstruction of ancient history became a crucial part of the formation of Korean national consciousness. Korea’s modern historiography was complicated by a thirty-five year colonial experience (1910–1945) under Japan. During this period, Japanese colonial scholars attempted to depict Korean history as stagnant, heteronymous, and replete with factional strife, while Korean nationalist historians strove to construct an indigenous Korean nation in order to mobilize Koreans’ national consciousness and recover political sovereignty. While focused on Korea and Northeast Asia, the links between historiography and political ideology investigated in this study are pertinent to historians in general.
In 1961 South Korea was mired in poverty. By 1979 it had a powerful industrial economy and a vibrant civil society in the making, which would lead to a democratic breakthrough eight years later. The transformation took place during the years of Park Chung Hee's presidency. Park seized power in a coup in 1961 and ruled as a virtual dictator until his assassination in October 1979. He is credited with modernizing South Korea, but at a huge political and social cost. South Korea's political landscape under Park defies easy categorization. The state was predatory yet technocratic, reform-minded yet quick to crack down on dissidents in the name of political order. The nation was balanced uneasily between opposition forces calling for democratic reforms and the Park government's obsession with economic growth. The chaebol (a powerful conglomerate of multinationals based in South Korea) received massive government support to pioneer new growth industries, even as a nationwide campaign of economic shock therapy-interest hikes, devaluation, and wage cuts-met strong public resistance and caused considerable hardship. This landmark volume examines South Korea's era of development as a study in the complex politics of modernization. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources in both English and Korean, these essays recover and contextualize many of the ambiguities in South Korea's trajectory from poverty to a sustainable high rate of economic growth.
The Korean communities in Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires were the first overseas Korean communities that the new Republic of Korea initiated and supported. The initiative was taken to relieve the economic suffering of the poverty-stricken country in the 1960s. Among South American countries that were open to Korean immigrants, Brazil and Argentina attracted the most, which included even undocumented Korean migrants from neighboring countries. The two Korean communities (about 45,000 people in Sao Paulo and 20,000 in Buenos Aires) represent almost two thirds of the Korean residents in Latin America. Over the years, global forces emanating mainly from East Asia, North America, and South America have affected the Korean communities. The intensity and directions of the triangular pulls and pushes have varied, reflecting changing global socioeconomic conditions. This has created tension and ambiguity among the Korean migrant and host communities. Looking at the two communities comparatively, the focus will be on the effects of the global pulls on Korean identity formation, community development patterns, integration efforts, social mobility, education for children, remigration, return migration, and relationships with the host communities. Wherever applicable, the experiences of Korean communities are compared with that of other East Asian communities, namely the Chinese and Japanese in Latin America.
The Historical Dictionary of North Korea, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and several hundred cross-referenced dictionary entries.
This first volume in a two-part study examines the origins of South Korean authoritarianism as personified by the militant political leader. For South Koreans, the twenty years from the early 1960s to late 1970s were the best and worst of times—a period of unprecedented economic growth and of political oppression that deepened as prosperity spread. In this masterly account, Carter J. Eckert finds the roots of South Korea’s dramatic socioeconomic transformation in the country’s long history of militarization—a history personified in South Korea’s paramount leader, Park Chung Hee. In Park Chung Hee and Modern Korea, Eckert reveals how the foundations of Park’s leadership were established during the period of Japanese occupation. As a cadet in the Manchurian Military Academy, Park and his fellow officers absorbed the Imperial Japanese Army’s ethos of victory at all costs and absolute obedience to authority. When Park seized power in 1961, he applied this ethos to the project of Korean modernization. Korean society under Park exuded a distinctively martial character, Eckert shows. Its hallmarks included the belief that the army should intervene in politics in times of crisis; that a central authority should manage the country’s economic system; and that the state should maintain a strong disciplinary presence in society, reserving the right to use violence to maintain order. “A milestone in the literature of modern East Asia.” ―Bruce Cumings, author of Korea’s Place in the Sun
Cornerstone of the Nation is the first historical account of the complex alliance of military and civilian forces that catapulted South Korea’s conjoined militarization and industrialization under Park Chung Hee (1961–1979). Kwon reveals how Park’s secret program to build an independent defense industry spurred a total mobilization of business, science, labor, and citizenry, all of which converged in military-civilian forces that propelled an unprecedented model of modernization in Korea. Drawing on largely untapped declassified materials from Korea and personal interviews with contemporaneous participants in the nascent defense industry, as well as declassified US documents and other external sources, Kwon weaves together oral histories and documentary evidence in an empirically rich narrative that details how militarization shaped the nation’s rapid economic, technological, political, and social transformation. Cornerstone of the Nation makes the case that South Korea’s arms development under Park may be the most durable and yet least acknowledged factor behind the country’s rise to economic prominence in the late twentieth century. Through an analysis that simultaneously engages some of the most contested issues in Korean historiography, development literature, contemporary politics, and military affairs, this book traces Korea’s distinct pathway to becoming a global economic force.
This comprehensive and balanced history of modern Korea explores the social, economic, and political issues it has faced since being catapulted into the wider world at the end of the nineteenth century. Placing this formerly insular society in a global context, Michael J. Seth describes how this ancient, culturally and ethnically homogeneous society first fell victim to Japanese imperialist expansionism, and then was arbitrarily divided in half after World War II. Seth traces the postwar paths of the two Koreas with different political and social systems and different geopolitical orientations as they evolved into sharply contrasting societies. South Korea, after an unpromising start, became one of the few postcolonial developing states to enter the ranks of the first world, with a globally competitive economy, a democratic political system, and a cosmopolitan and dynamic culture. By contrast, North Korea became one of the world's most totalitarian and isolated societies, a nuclear power with an impoverished and famine-stricken population. Considering the radically different and historically unprecedented trajectories of the two Koreas, Seth assesses the insights they offer for understanding not only modern Korea but the broader perspective of world history."
