In the main text and endnotes of this book all Korean, Chinese, and Japanese names appear in the text with the family name preceding the given name (the references follow the English-language practice of given name first). Also, the conventional transliterations for Korean, Chinese, and Japanese are used.

In order to understand the democratization of Korean politics and the “Koreanization” of democracy over the last seven decades since the establishment of South Korea in 1948, it is necessary to examine the ideological terrain of contemporary Korean politics, the characteristics of which have taken shape in the ongoing process of Korea’s accommodation of four major ideologies of...

Let me express my appreciation for the invaluable support and help I received in the process of publishing this volume in English. First of all, I must acknowledge that I was able to write and publish this book with the generous support of the National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-342-2009-1-B-00003). It was a great honor and pleasure to be...

More than seventy years have passed since Korea’s liberation from Japanese occupation in 1945 and almost that long since the establishment of separate governments in South and North Korea in 1948. In the aftermath of liberation, Korea faced adverse world historical conditions. The Korean Peninsula was divided and...

Since liberation in 1945, contemporary Korean political thought has comprised four major ideologies: liberalism (liberal democracy), conservatism, nationalism, and radicalism. This chapter presents their evolution and interaction in light of the democratic transition that began in 1987. Korean politics would follow a road to democracy whose path would be determined by the four ideologies competing...

This chapter examines the ideological terrain of contemporary Korean politics in terms of four major ideologies—liberalism, conservatism, nationalism, and radicalism—focusing primarily on the period from liberation until 1993, when...

In order to understand the concept of the sanctification of nationalism as it applies to Korea, we first need to review the evolution of nationalism in Western Europe. There, notably in England and France, nationalism as a secondary...

Part 2 examines Park Chung-hee’s political thought by analyzing his discourse on democracy, antiliberal conservatism for modernization, and nationalism, while at the same time reviewing how and to what extent...

The goal of this chapter is to shed light on the conservative and liberal (or antiliberal)One may well wonder if we can find liberalism...

Park Chung-hee’s nationalism is the subject most proliferating in the research of his political thought. Given the purpose of this chapter, what attracts our attention in the studies of Park’s nationalism are those that focus on the...

In part 1 I describe the evolution and characteristics of contemporary political ideology in Korea. After outlining the ideological evolution from immediately after liberation to the present, I highlight nonsimultaneity and sanctification as the two most conspicuous characteristics of the Korean ideological landscape prior to...

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