Danielle Chubb
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231161367
- eISBN:
- 9780231536325
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231161367.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
This book traces the development of various policy disputes and perspectives from the period of South Korea’s democratic transition and provides an understanding of how policymakers have managed ...
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This book traces the development of various policy disputes and perspectives from the period of South Korea’s democratic transition and provides an understanding of how policymakers have managed inter-Korean relations. It shows how, in South Korea, the contentious debate over relations with the North transcends traditional considerations of physical and economic security. It also describes how political activists play a critical role in shaping the discussion of these issues as they pursue the separate yet connected agendas of democracy, human rights, and unification. The book focuses on four case studies—the 1980 Kwangju uprising, the June 1987 uprising, the move toward democracy in the 1990s, and the decade of “progressive” government that began with the election of Kim Dae Jung in 1997. It tracks activists’ complex views on reunification along with the rise and fall of more radical voices encouraging the adoption of a North Korean style of socialism. It shows that, while these specific arguments have dissipated over the years, their vestiges can still be found in recent discussions over how to engage with North Korea and bring security and peace to the peninsula. The book shows how the historical trajectory of norms and beliefs can have a significant effect on a state’s threat perceptions and security policy.Less
This book traces the development of various policy disputes and perspectives from the period of South Korea’s democratic transition and provides an understanding of how policymakers have managed inter-Korean relations. It shows how, in South Korea, the contentious debate over relations with the North transcends traditional considerations of physical and economic security. It also describes how political activists play a critical role in shaping the discussion of these issues as they pursue the separate yet connected agendas of democracy, human rights, and unification. The book focuses on four case studies—the 1980 Kwangju uprising, the June 1987 uprising, the move toward democracy in the 1990s, and the decade of “progressive” government that began with the election of Kim Dae Jung in 1997. It tracks activists’ complex views on reunification along with the rise and fall of more radical voices encouraging the adoption of a North Korean style of socialism. It shows that, while these specific arguments have dissipated over the years, their vestiges can still be found in recent discussions over how to engage with North Korea and bring security and peace to the peninsula. The book shows how the historical trajectory of norms and beliefs can have a significant effect on a state’s threat perceptions and security policy.
Jini Kim Watson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280063
- eISBN:
- 9780823281510
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280063.003.0013
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics
This chapter analyzes recent cultural production that "looks back" on the Cold War capitalist-authoritarian postcolonial regimes of South Korea and Singapore: Hwang Sŏk-yŏng’s fictionalization of the ...
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This chapter analyzes recent cultural production that "looks back" on the Cold War capitalist-authoritarian postcolonial regimes of South Korea and Singapore: Hwang Sŏk-yŏng’s fictionalization of the 1980 Kwangju Uprising in The Old Garden[Oraedoin Chŏngwŏn] (2000), and Tan Pin Pin’s banned documentary on political exiles, To Singapore with Love (2014). Both texts invite us to reckon with state violence, imprisonment and political exile from “the wrong side of history,” that is, from the perspective of political dissidents, communists, and student leaders whom neoliberal History can only view as anachronistic and superfluous to the arrival of capitalist modernity. The essay argues for the figure of anachronism as an aesthetic strategy which indexes the fraught continuities between an apparently “past” era of decolonization and our neoliberal present. It rethinks the tasks of postcolonial theory in light of Cold War bipolarity, and explores the way residues of imagined futures remain persistent and unresolved components of the present.Less
This chapter analyzes recent cultural production that "looks back" on the Cold War capitalist-authoritarian postcolonial regimes of South Korea and Singapore: Hwang Sŏk-yŏng’s fictionalization of the 1980 Kwangju Uprising in The Old Garden[Oraedoin Chŏngwŏn] (2000), and Tan Pin Pin’s banned documentary on political exiles, To Singapore with Love (2014). Both texts invite us to reckon with state violence, imprisonment and political exile from “the wrong side of history,” that is, from the perspective of political dissidents, communists, and student leaders whom neoliberal History can only view as anachronistic and superfluous to the arrival of capitalist modernity. The essay argues for the figure of anachronism as an aesthetic strategy which indexes the fraught continuities between an apparently “past” era of decolonization and our neoliberal present. It rethinks the tasks of postcolonial theory in light of Cold War bipolarity, and explores the way residues of imagined futures remain persistent and unresolved components of the present.
