scholarly journals Candlelight for Our Country’s Right Name: A Confucian Interpretation of South Korea’s Candlelight Revolution

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sungmoon Kim
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
South Korea ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Moral Discourse ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Political Event ◽  
Conceptual Tool ◽  
Korean History ◽  
Modern Korean History ◽  
Asian Context

The candlelight protest that took place in South Korea from October 2016 to March 2017 was a landmark political event, not least because it ultimately led to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. Arguably, its more historically important meaning lies in the fact that it marks the first nation-wide political struggle since the June Uprising of 1987, where civil society won an unequivocal victory over a regime that was found to be corrupt, unjust, and undemocratic, making it the most orderly, civil, and peaceful political revolution in modern Korean history. Despite a plethora of literature investigating the cause of what is now called “the Candlelight Revolution” and its implications for Korean democracy, less attention has been paid to the cultural motivation and moral discourse that galvanized Korean civil society. This paper captures the Korean civil society which resulted in the Candlelight Revolution in terms of Confucian democratic civil society, distinct from both liberal pluralist civil society and Confucian meritocratic civil society, and argues that Confucian democratic civil society can provide a useful conceptual tool by which to not only philosophically construct a vision of civil society that is culturally relevant and politically practicable but also to critically evaluate the politics of civil society in the East Asian context.

Presidents Have Problems Too: The Logic of Intra-branch Delegation in East Asian Democracies

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 659-684 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEEYANG RHEE BAUM
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Power Systems ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Administrative Reform ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Administrative Procedure ◽  
Ability To Act

This article addresses the codification of formal rules and procedures of governance through Administrative Procedure Acts (APAs). The recent enactment of APAs in two new democracies, South Korea and Taiwan, highlights an apparent paradox. Because administrative reform limits the executive's power, it is clear why legislatures in separation-of-power systems would favour APAs. But it is less clear why presidents would support them. Why would a president accept a law designed to restrict her ability to act freely? The answer is that presidents have agency problems too. The more intra-branch conflict they face during their administrations, the more likely they will support administrative reform. Thus, instead of tying the hands of future administrations, presidents also use APAs to overcome current control problems. Three recently democratized East Asian countries, two with APAs (South Korea and Taiwan) and one without (Philippines), support this ‘reining in’ theory. Conflict within the executive branch may be an important ingredient in democratic consolidation. APAs result from political struggle.

Delayed Reconciliation and Transitional Justice in Korea

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 294-315
Author(s):  
Ja-hyun Chun ◽  
Jung-Sun Han
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Violent Event ◽  
Korean History ◽  
Psychological Healing ◽  
Modern Korean History ◽  
National Reconciliation

The Jeju April 3rd Incident of 1948, which resulted in the largest number of casualties in modern Korean history other than in war, was a national tragedy. The complexity of the incident and its importance in Korean history explain the failure to discuss it publicly until the late 1980s. For this reason, existing studies have largely focused on uncovering the truth about this incident. Even though national reconciliation is an important topic in South Korea, a more structured study from a transitional justice perspective has not been undertaken of this violent event that led to a divided country. Thus, this study provides a theoretical framework for the conditioning of the institutionalisation, national narratives and psychological healing that are required to establish national reconciliation. The paper, then, applies this framework to the Jeju April 3rd Incident. Finally, it evaluates the limitations and challenges of national reconciliation in South Korea.

scholarly journals The East Asian Rediscovery of ‘Sin’

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Chow
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
South Korea ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
World War ◽  
Intellectual Foundations ◽  
Asian Context ◽  
Existential Concerns

Christian teachings on ‘sin’ have met a number of barriers in their historical encounters with the East Asian context. However, since the end of World War II, indigenous Christianities in China, Japan and South Korea have experienced growing interests in this hated doctrine. ‘Sin’ has become a valuable category to address the existential concerns found in those societies. This has developed in an East Asian discourse about intellectual foundations and, in certain instances, has resulted in a revival of Christian belief. This paper will discuss the development of this rediscovery and connect it to a re-evaluation of millennia-old understandings of the existence of evil.

scholarly journals ‘I heard a dog cry’: More-than-human interrelatedness, ethnicity and zootherapy in South Korean civil society discourse about dog meat consumption

Ethnography ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-87
Author(s):  
Julien Dugnoille
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
South Korea ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Meat Consumption ◽  
Animal Products ◽  
Folk Beliefs ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human World ◽  
Post Industrial

Korean diet is heavily based on meat. This is connected to a discursive tradition that associates the consumption of specific animal products with medicinal virtues. When justifying the use of nonhuman animals as curative commodities, Koreans often engage with ideologies about zootherapy, pure blood and ethnicity beyond the human world. Furthermore, alongside civil and state society discourse about South Korea’s ‘uniqueness’ as a nation (cf. concepts of jeong, uri, han, gi and Minjok literature), my participants also mobilized folk beliefs about care and necessary harm in the handling, treatment and processing of nonhuman animal bodies. Bringing together classic anthropological debates about primordial and instrumental ethnicity with a human geographical analysis of the shaping of East Asian post-industrial more-than-human landscapes, this paper examines civil society discourses about more-than-human interrelatedness, cultural uniqueness and bloodlines connected to dog meat consumption in South Korea.

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