In the aftermath of South Korea’s recent presidential election, while the public, regardless of party alignment, was still reeling from Yun Sŏkyŏl’s victory, there emerged a startling voting pattern. Almost sixty percent of men under the age of thirty had voted for the far right-wing candidate. This was a group that had been important in the historic Candlelight Movement of 2016–2017, which ousted the ultra-conservative president Pak Kŭnhye and brought in the presidency of the center-right Mun Jaein, anticipating the lengthy rule of Mun’s party, the Democratic Party. Five years is a long time in liberal politics, but the fact that in the period of a single presidential term the majority of South Korea’s young men rejected the Democratic Party and its capable, if not slightly slick, candidate Yi Chaemyŏng and found resonance in far right-wing politics was bewildering—and symptomatic of a cultural fissure in the country. The on-going MeToo movement in South Korea is a crucial rectifying process, but it has also mademore audible the discontent of underprivileged men who experience disadvantages in university admission, secure employment, and social life, largely due to the economic class and geographic region they were born into. They see—misrecognize—the new culture of feminism, with its sophisticated use of art, scholarly research, and social media, as another layer of unfairness over which they have little influence (when in reality it will uplift them, too). At the same time, we are observing that the conservative turn of young men is a global phenomenon driven by the conditions of labor precarity. And naturally,
{"title":"Editor's Note","authors":"C. Kim","doi":"10.1353/ks.2021.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2021.0000","url":null,"abstract":"In the aftermath of South Korea’s recent presidential election, while the public, regardless of party alignment, was still reeling from Yun Sŏkyŏl’s victory, there emerged a startling voting pattern. Almost sixty percent of men under the age of thirty had voted for the far right-wing candidate. This was a group that had been important in the historic Candlelight Movement of 2016–2017, which ousted the ultra-conservative president Pak Kŭnhye and brought in the presidency of the center-right Mun Jaein, anticipating the lengthy rule of Mun’s party, the Democratic Party. Five years is a long time in liberal politics, but the fact that in the period of a single presidential term the majority of South Korea’s young men rejected the Democratic Party and its capable, if not slightly slick, candidate Yi Chaemyŏng and found resonance in far right-wing politics was bewildering—and symptomatic of a cultural fissure in the country. The on-going MeToo movement in South Korea is a crucial rectifying process, but it has also mademore audible the discontent of underprivileged men who experience disadvantages in university admission, secure employment, and social life, largely due to the economic class and geographic region they were born into. They see—misrecognize—the new culture of feminism, with its sophisticated use of art, scholarly research, and social media, as another layer of unfairness over which they have little influence (when in reality it will uplift them, too). At the same time, we are observing that the conservative turn of young men is a global phenomenon driven by the conditions of labor precarity. And naturally,","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"130 1","pages":"iii - v"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85650683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Power of the Brush: Epistolary Practices in Chosŏn Korea by Hwisang Cho (review)","authors":"Owen Stampton","doi":"10.1353/ks.2022.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2022.0013","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"61 1","pages":"345 - 348"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85751864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The decade of the 1960s is remembered for worldwide political upheavals, with South Korea's April Revolution of 1960 being one early episode. Protesters of the April Revolution appropriated a variety of songs, including the national anthem, Korean War songs, school songs, and children's songs. But these appropriated protest songs have received scant scholarly attention. Four years later in 1964, college students launched a protest movement known as the 6.3 Uprising to stop the military government's implementation of a deeply unpopular normalization treaty with Japan. The movement added a few original songs to the protest music repertoire, but they have since fallen into obscurity. Protest music scholarship in South Korea has largely overlooked the legacy of the 1960s, favoring more polished musical interventions by the pre-Korean War leftist movement and the People's Song Movement of the 1980s. This paper examines the forgotten protest songs of the 1960s from daily newspaper archives and other sources. Recognizing the multitude who pushed forward the April Revolution, I argue that South Korea's protest songs—"people's songs" or minjung kayo—are best understood as songs of the multitude.
摘要:20世纪60年代是世界政治动荡的十年，1960年韩国的四月革命是早期的一个事件。四月革命示威队盗用了国歌、6•25战争歌曲、学校歌曲、儿童歌曲等多种歌曲。但这些被挪用的抗议歌曲却很少受到学术关注。四年后的1964年，大学生发起了一场被称为“6.3起义”的抗议运动，以阻止军政府实施与日本极不受欢迎的正常化条约。这场运动在抗议音乐曲目中加入了一些原创歌曲，但它们后来变得默默无闻。韩国的抗议音乐研究在很大程度上忽视了20世纪60年代的遗产，倾向于朝鲜战争前的左翼运动和20世纪80年代的人民歌曲运动(People’s Song movement)对音乐的更精致的干预。本文从日报档案和其他来源研究了20世纪60年代被遗忘的抗议歌曲。考虑到推动四月革命的群众，我认为韩国的抗议歌曲——“人民之歌”或民正歌——最好被理解为群众之歌。
{"title":"Songs of the Multitude: The April Revolution, the 6.3 Uprising, and South Korea's Protest Music of the 1960s","authors":"Pil Ho Kim","doi":"10.1353/ks.2022.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2022.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The decade of the 1960s is remembered for worldwide political upheavals, with South Korea's April Revolution of 1960 being one early episode. Protesters of the April Revolution appropriated a variety of songs, including the national anthem, Korean War songs, school songs, and children's songs. But these appropriated protest songs have received scant scholarly attention. Four years later in 1964, college students launched a protest movement known as the 6.3 Uprising to stop the military government's implementation of a deeply unpopular normalization treaty with Japan. The movement added a few original songs to the protest music repertoire, but they have since fallen into obscurity. Protest music scholarship in South Korea has largely overlooked the legacy of the 1960s, favoring more polished musical interventions by the pre-Korean War leftist movement and the People's Song Movement of the 1980s. This paper examines the forgotten protest songs of the 1960s from daily newspaper archives and other sources. Recognizing the multitude who pushed forward the April Revolution, I argue that South Korea's protest songs—\"people's songs\" or minjung kayo—are best understood as songs of the multitude.","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"52 1","pages":"107 - 134"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86683940","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Music has the potential to stir feelings on both conscious and subconscious levels. Because audiences learn how to interpret musical clues, it does not matter whether the original intent of a piece of music bears any relation to the medium or narrative in which it is newly embedded. When it is used in a movie viewed by people other than the intended audience, however, music can disrupt the narrative flow. Where its purpose is to promote, as in commercials, music must therefore align well with its target audience. Alignment is behind the three key features of music in television commercials that Claudia Bullerjahn (2006) identifies: motivation, opportunity, and ability. While the first and second features relate to the use of music to attract and to convey information, respectively, the third relates to the use of music to help the target audience digest the information on account of a good "fit." But how do these features play out in TV commercials in South Korea, where celebrities, including K-pop idols, dominate the advertising world? Do the images that celebrities portray correspond with the commercials' music and target audience? In this study I explore the combined use of music and K-pop idols in South Korean commercials since 2009 and examine how advertisers ensure the commercial message is clear and persuasive. I argue that when a popular K-pop idol endorses many different products, rather than resulting in overexposure, this has a cumulative effect on the efficacy of the individual marketing campaigns.
{"title":"What's for Sale? Selling Songs and K-pop Idols in Korean Commercials","authors":"Roald Maliangkay","doi":"10.1353/ks.2022.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2022.0007","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>Music has the potential to stir feelings on both conscious and subconscious levels. Because audiences learn how to interpret musical clues, it does not matter whether the original intent of a piece of music bears any relation to the medium or narrative in which it is newly embedded. When it is used in a movie viewed by people other than the intended audience, however, music can disrupt the narrative flow. Where its purpose is to promote, as in commercials, music must therefore align well with its target audience. Alignment is behind the three key features of music in television commercials that Claudia Bullerjahn (2006) identifies: motivation, opportunity, and ability. While the first and second features relate to the use of music to attract and to convey information, respectively, the third relates to the use of music to help the target audience digest the information on account of a good \"fit.\" But how do these features play out in TV commercials in South Korea, where celebrities, including K-pop idols, dominate the advertising world? Do the images that celebrities portray correspond with the commercials' music and target audience? In this study I explore the combined use of music and K-pop idols in South Korean commercials since 2009 and examine how advertisers ensure the commercial message is clear and persuasive. I argue that when a popular K-pop idol endorses many different products, rather than resulting in overexposure, this has a cumulative effect on the efficacy of the individual marketing campaigns.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138534629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In the 1920s, colonial Korean children had different opportunities and materials to sing. Newly established missionary schools adapted hymns for children, and the colonial schools run by the Japanese regime considered song time to be essential to children's emotional and intellectual development. It is from this diverse ecology of musical offerings that original Korean sung poems, or tongyo, emerged. Tongyo were short poems written by often prominent writers that were then set to music by Korean composers, many of whom studied Western music in Japan. Tongyo composers wrote works that, unlike Christian hymns (ch'ansongga) and Japanese school songs (changga), were written in the Korean language and were intended for Korean voices but were structured by what was then novel Western musical conventions. Through an analysis of tongyo by two seminal figures, Yun Kŭgyŏng and Chŏng Sunch'ŏl, this paper illuminates the musical grammar by which Yun and Chŏng re-oriented the sensibilities of their young singers. This comparison reveals the challenges of fitting western tonalities to the Korean language, thereby questioning the prevalent assumption that tongyo were national forms whose value hinges on their effortless communication of authentic Korea emotions.
{"title":"When Songs Don't Work: Western Tonalities and Korean Breath in Children's Songs of the Colonial Period","authors":"Yoonah Hwang, Dafna Zur","doi":"10.1353/ks.2022.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2022.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In the 1920s, colonial Korean children had different opportunities and materials to sing. Newly established missionary schools adapted hymns for children, and the colonial schools run by the Japanese regime considered song time to be essential to children's emotional and intellectual development. It is from this diverse ecology of musical offerings that original Korean sung poems, or tongyo, emerged. Tongyo were short poems written by often prominent writers that were then set to music by Korean composers, many of whom studied Western music in Japan. Tongyo composers wrote works that, unlike Christian hymns (ch'ansongga) and Japanese school songs (changga), were written in the Korean language and were intended for Korean voices but were structured by what was then novel Western musical conventions. Through an analysis of tongyo by two seminal figures, Yun Kŭgyŏng and Chŏng Sunch'ŏl, this paper illuminates the musical grammar by which Yun and Chŏng re-oriented the sensibilities of their young singers. This comparison reveals the challenges of fitting western tonalities to the Korean language, thereby questioning the prevalent assumption that tongyo were national forms whose value hinges on their effortless communication of authentic Korea emotions.","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"194 1","pages":"42 - 8"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72764723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Since its founding in 1948, the North Korean state has devoted considerable resources to the development of ideological and historical narratives across media to imbue its people with the ethos of collectivity through spectacle. Especially noteworthy is how sound has functioned to resuscitate the memory of the Korean War and in the process unify those of disparate generations and occupations into a coherent national community. Adopting an intermedial analytical lens, and informed by participant observation undertaken in Pyongyang, this paper examines three retellings of the Battle of Incheon (1950): the 1952 short story "Burning Island," the 1982 film Wolmi Island, and the 2017 revolutionary opera Three Days of Wolmi Island. While the short story used the sounds of explosions to trigger a shared sense memory of the Korean War, the film used music and sound to universalize the heroic role of the Wolmi Island defenders across all sectors of society, and idealize self-sacrifice in a new era. Then, as tensions between the United States and the DPRK reached a boiling point in 2017, North Korea revived the story as a revolutionary opera to remind all citizens of the devastation of the Korean War, and their obligation to defend the nation from imperial aggression. In examining the transference of sound across these media, we shed light on how North Korean writers and artists have employed various forms of sonic culture in increasingly affective ways to enhance an in-group mentality and emphasize the need for unwavering commitment to the Korean Workers' Party.
{"title":"From McArthur’s Landing to Trump’s Fire and Fury: Sonic Depictions of Struggle and Sacrifice in a North Korean Short Story, Film, and Opera","authors":"Alexandra Leonzini, P. Moody","doi":"10.1353/ks.2018.0035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2018.0035","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Since its founding in 1948, the North Korean state has devoted considerable resources to the development of ideological and historical narratives across media to imbue its people with the ethos of collectivity through spectacle. Especially noteworthy is how sound has functioned to resuscitate the memory of the Korean War and in the process unify those of disparate generations and occupations into a coherent national community. Adopting an intermedial analytical lens, and informed by participant observation undertaken in Pyongyang, this paper examines three retellings of the Battle of Incheon (1950): the 1952 short story \"Burning Island,\" the 1982 film Wolmi Island, and the 2017 revolutionary opera Three Days of Wolmi Island. While the short story used the sounds of explosions to trigger a shared sense memory of the Korean War, the film used music and sound to universalize the heroic role of the Wolmi Island defenders across all sectors of society, and idealize self-sacrifice in a new era. Then, as tensions between the United States and the DPRK reached a boiling point in 2017, North Korea revived the story as a revolutionary opera to remind all citizens of the devastation of the Korean War, and their obligation to defend the nation from imperial aggression. In examining the transference of sound across these media, we shed light on how North Korean writers and artists have employed various forms of sonic culture in increasingly affective ways to enhance an in-group mentality and emphasize the need for unwavering commitment to the Korean Workers' Party.","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"9 1","pages":"-"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74441576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Paradox of Genealogy: Family Politics and the Publishing Surge of Chokpo in Colonial Korea","authors":"Yanghee Hong","doi":"10.1353/ks.2018.0034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2018.0034","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"108 1","pages":"-"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81558245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Music has the potential to stir feelings on both conscious and subconscious levels. Because audiences learn how to interpret musical clues, it does not matter whether the original intent of a piece of music bears any relation to the medium or narrative in which it is newly embedded. When it is used in a movie viewed by people other than the intended audience, however, music can disrupt the narrative flow. Where its purpose is to promote, as in commercials, music must therefore align well with its target audience. Alignment is behind the three key features of music in television commercials that Claudia Bullerjahn (2006) identifies: motivation, opportunity, and ability. While the first and second features relate to the use of music to attract and to convey information, respectively, the third relates to the use of music to help the target audience digest the information on account of a good "fit." But how do these features play out in TV commercials in South Korea, where celebrities, including K-pop idols, dominate the advertising world? Do the images that celebrities portray correspond with the commercials' music and target audience? In this study I explore the combined use of music and K-pop idols in South Korean commercials since 2009 and examine how advertisers ensure the commercial message is clear and persuasive. I argue that when a popular K-pop idol endorses many different products, rather than resulting in overexposure, this has a cumulative effect on the efficacy of the individual marketing campaigns.
{"title":"What’s for Sale? Selling Songs and K-pop Idols in Korean Commercials","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/ks.2018.0036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2018.0036","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Music has the potential to stir feelings on both conscious and subconscious levels. Because audiences learn how to interpret musical clues, it does not matter whether the original intent of a piece of music bears any relation to the medium or narrative in which it is newly embedded. When it is used in a movie viewed by people other than the intended audience, however, music can disrupt the narrative flow. Where its purpose is to promote, as in commercials, music must therefore align well with its target audience. Alignment is behind the three key features of music in television commercials that Claudia Bullerjahn (2006) identifies: motivation, opportunity, and ability. While the first and second features relate to the use of music to attract and to convey information, respectively, the third relates to the use of music to help the target audience digest the information on account of a good \"fit.\" But how do these features play out in TV commercials in South Korea, where celebrities, including K-pop idols, dominate the advertising world? Do the images that celebrities portray correspond with the commercials' music and target audience? In this study I explore the combined use of music and K-pop idols in South Korean commercials since 2009 and examine how advertisers ensure the commercial message is clear and persuasive. I argue that when a popular K-pop idol endorses many different products, rather than resulting in overexposure, this has a cumulative effect on the efficacy of the individual marketing campaigns.","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"27 1","pages":"-"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83451102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article constitutes a first step toward filling a crucial gap in English-language studies of Koryŏ Saram literature. I focus on the early formative period, which began in the 1920s in tandem with the establishment of Soviet power in the Russian Far East. Its protagonists are Cho Myŏng-hŭi, the proletarian writer from colonial Korea who crossed the border to the Soviet Union in 1928, in addition to the first generation of Soviet-Korean writers centered on the Korean-language newspaper Sŏnbong. This first, Far East, phase of Koryŏ Saram literature was violently terminated during the Stalinist purges with the deportation of the population to Central Asia in 1937, which was in turn preceded by the execution of thousands of Koryŏ Saram intellectuals and writers, including Cho. The rise of proletarian literature was one of the major developments of Korean literature of the early twentieth century. Among proletarian KAPF (Korean Proletarian Artists’ Federation) writers, Cho stands out from this group as the only writer who migrated—and so soon after writing “Naktong River”(1927), a landmark work of Korean proletarian literature—to the Soviet Union, the source and center of world socialism. Aside from his ideological commitment, what little has been known of Cho’s migration and Soviet period (1928–1938) has been understood within the dominant image of Cho as a fierce anti-colonial nationalist writer. But Cho’s efforts to lay the foundations of a Soviet Korean literature during his decade in the Russian Far East complicate the traditional notion of the exiled or diasporan writer longing for the homeland.
{"title":"Dual Homeland: Cho Myŏng-hŭi and the Origins of Koryŏ Saram Literature","authors":"S. Lim","doi":"10.1353/ks.2018.0032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2018.0032","url":null,"abstract":"This article constitutes a first step toward filling a crucial gap in English-language studies of Koryŏ Saram literature. I focus on the early formative period, which began in the 1920s in tandem with the establishment of Soviet power in the Russian Far East. Its protagonists are Cho Myŏng-hŭi, the proletarian writer from colonial Korea who crossed the border to the Soviet Union in 1928, in addition to the first generation of Soviet-Korean writers centered on the Korean-language newspaper Sŏnbong. This first, Far East, phase of Koryŏ Saram literature was violently terminated during the Stalinist purges with the deportation of the population to Central Asia in 1937, which was in turn preceded by the execution of thousands of Koryŏ Saram intellectuals and writers, including Cho. The rise of proletarian literature was one of the major developments of Korean literature of the early twentieth century. Among proletarian KAPF (Korean Proletarian Artists’ Federation) writers, Cho stands out from this group as the only writer who migrated—and so soon after writing “Naktong River”(1927), a landmark work of Korean proletarian literature—to the Soviet Union, the source and center of world socialism. Aside from his ideological commitment, what little has been known of Cho’s migration and Soviet period (1928–1938) has been understood within the dominant image of Cho as a fierce anti-colonial nationalist writer. But Cho’s efforts to lay the foundations of a Soviet Korean literature during his decade in the Russian Far East complicate the traditional notion of the exiled or diasporan writer longing for the homeland.","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"7 1","pages":"-"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80586945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The power of the president is a concept which is largely cultural and historically constructed. Although the prominent scholar Richard Neustadt claims that “presidential power is no more than the power to persuade,” in South Korea, it has become far greater through the country’s peculiar blend of history and culture. The Korean War and the influence of the Cold War, the prevalent authoritarianism, security threats from North Korea and the Confucian tradition, have all contributed strongly to the emergence of a strong presidency. From its first days in 1948 and the successive authoritarian regimes to the democratic days of 1987, South Korea’s political system has fostered the power of its president. But if power relies on each president’s individual will and capacity, their personal ability is still firmly embedded in the state’s historical and cultural context. Thus, every president since 1948 has exercized substantial power in most state affairs, much greater than Neustadt would concede. In the past, the South Koreans’ long-term experience of authoritarianism persuaded them to leave their destiny in the president’s controlling hands. Hence, even though the country modelled its presidential system on that of the United States, the actual power of its president is much greater than that of the American president and from the outset South Korea developed a presidential system all of its own.
{"title":"Monopolizing Authority: The Construction of Presidential Power in South Korea","authors":"Hyangjoon Lee","doi":"10.1353/ks.2018.0033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2018.0033","url":null,"abstract":"The power of the president is a concept which is largely cultural and historically constructed. Although the prominent scholar Richard Neustadt claims that “presidential power is no more than the power to persuade,” in South Korea, it has become far greater through the country’s peculiar blend of history and culture. The Korean War and the influence of the Cold War, the prevalent authoritarianism, security threats from North Korea and the Confucian tradition, have all contributed strongly to the emergence of a strong presidency. From its first days in 1948 and the successive authoritarian regimes to the democratic days of 1987, South Korea’s political system has fostered the power of its president. But if power relies on each president’s individual will and capacity, their personal ability is still firmly embedded in the state’s historical and cultural context. Thus, every president since 1948 has exercized substantial power in most state affairs, much greater than Neustadt would concede. In the past, the South Koreans’ long-term experience of authoritarianism persuaded them to leave their destiny in the president’s controlling hands. Hence, even though the country modelled its presidential system on that of the United States, the actual power of its president is much greater than that of the American president and from the outset South Korea developed a presidential system all of its own.","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"211 1","pages":"-"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73196280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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