1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910781208303321

Autore

Lee Namhee

Titolo

The making of minjung [[electronic resource] ] : democracy and the politics of representation in South Korea / / Namhee Lee

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca [N.Y.], : Cornell University Press, 2007

ISBN

0-8014-6169-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (365 p.)

Disciplina

320.95195

Soggetti

Political participation - Korea (South) - History

Political culture - Korea (South) - History

Social movements - Korea (South) - History

Student movements - Korea (South) - History

Democratization - Korea (South) - History

Korea (South) Politics and government 1960-1988

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction : minjung, history, and historical subjectivity -- The construction of minjung -- Anticommunism and North Korea -- Anti-Americanism and chuch'e sasang -- The undonggwŏn as a counterpublic sphere -- Between indeterminacy and radical critique : madanggŭk, ritual, and protest -- The alliance between labor and intellectuals -- "To be reborn as revolutionary workers" : Gramscian fusion and Leninist vanguardism -- The subject as the subjected : intellectuals and workers in labor literature -- Conclusion : the minjung movement as history.

Sommario/riassunto

In this sweeping intellectual and cultural history of the minjung ("common people's") movement in South Korea, Namhee Lee shows how the movement arose in the 1970's and 1980's in response to the repressive authoritarian regime and grew out of a widespread sense that the nation's "failed history" left Korean identity profoundly incomplete. The Making of Minjung captures the movement in its many dimensions, presenting its intellectual trajectory as a discourse and its impact as a political movement, as well as raising questions about how intellectuals represented the minjung. Lee's portrait is based on a wide



range of sources: underground pamphlets, diaries, court documents, contemporary newspaper reports, and interviews with participants. Thousands of students and intellectuals left universities during this period and became factory workers, forging an intellectual-labor alliance perhaps unique in world history. At the same time, minjung cultural activists reinvigorated traditional folk theater, created a new "minjung literature," and influenced religious practices and academic disciplines. In its transformative scope, the minjung phenomenon is comparable to better-known contemporaneous movements in South Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. Understanding the minjung movement is essential to understanding South Korea's recent resistance to U.S. influence. Along with its well-known economic transformation, South Korea has also had a profound social and political transformation. The minjung movement drove this transformation, and this book tells its story comprehensively and critically.