Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea |
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Authors: | Jamie Doucette Se-Woong Koo |
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Institution: | 1. Geography, School of Environment, Education, and Development, University of Manchester, UK;2. MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA |
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Abstract: | This article analyses the disputed election of President Park Geun-hye and her administration’s confrontation of left-nationalist politicians and other social movements during her first year in office. We argue that the Park administration’s policies resonate with contemporary discussions of “post-democratisation,” a process whereby social rights are increasingly subordinated to market logics and state power insulated from popular challenges. Under the conservative governments of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, this process has been animated by a mode of confrontation known in South Korea as “politics by public security.” This politics targets social conflict and political dissent as threats to national security and has involved both illegal interventions by state institutions – such as the 2012 electoral interference by state agencies including the National Intelligence Service – and a cultural politics that affirms but revises the narrative of Korean democratisation by obfuscating the nature of the democracy movement and by attempting to restore the honour of conservative forces associated with former dictatorships. In order to better understand this conjuncture, we explore its origin within a tacit alliance between both former public security prosecutors-cum-conservative politicians and a movement of conservative intellectuals known as the New Right. |
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Keywords: | South Korea post-democracy electoral interference Park Geun-hye democratisation post-politics |
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