Namhee Lee. The Making of : Democracy and the Politics of Representation in . Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007. xiii + 349 pp. $39.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8014-4566-8.

Reviewed by Sung Chull Kim

Published on H-Peace (April, 2008)

In social sciences, in general, the dichotomous unifed class or social group. The author's notion formula of state-society (or state-civil society) re‐ of minjung is based on historical observation; it is, lations has been dominant in examining such so‐ she notes, a "materially or historically grounded" cial interactions as alliance, confrontation, and notion (p. 6). The people of minjung are those who representation. In The Making of Minjung, have been "oppressed" but are "capable of rising Namhee Lee examines actors and the sphere of up" against oppression (p. 5). The notion becomes social activism that contributed to democratiza‐ rather clear as the author introduces such coun‐ tion in South Korea. Rather than relying on the bi‐ terimages as military dictatorship, corporate con‐ nary of state and society, Lee, instead, provides an glomerates, and foreign powers. Cultured and ed‐ excellent analysis through which she illustrates ucated people do not belong to minjung in so far the historically embedded notion of minjung, a so‐ as they maintain their interests in accordance cial composite of oppressed people. The author with those of these counterimage groups. examines minjung's evolution in the history of the A key question in this study is what renders divided Korea, the ideal and strategy of minjung, the people of minjung distinctive in the process of alliance in minjung, and a major historical con‐ democratization in South Korea. For the author, juncture. As Lee notes in the concluding chapter, minjung has been a victim of "failed history" (p. minjung's patriotism and nationalism has been, in 37) and "negative modernity" (p. 39), and, more part, subsumed under the identity of the Korean important, has attempted to correct this distor‐ state, rather than remaining confrontational to tion. Living in the arduous history of Japanese the state (pp. 296-299). In this sense, The Making colonial rule, liberation by U.S.-led allied forces, of Minjung overcomes the limitations of the di‐ national division, the Korean War, and the mili‐ chotomous state-society analysis. tary dictatorship and its modernization drive, the A difculty of defning minjung lies in the fact main segment of the Korean population eventual‐ that it refers to a general people but not a single H-Net Reviews ly came to realize a need to rectify distorted and anti-Americanism and the rise of Chusapa, a failed parts of their history. group of young intellectuals indulging in the of‐ Minjung's rectifcation of history needed cial North Korean ideology of self-reliance. mentors and movement. The sphere of rectifca‐ There are a couple of questions that the book tion or "counterpublic sphere," to use the author's leaves for readers. First, why did , and term, was undongkwon (which literally means not some other place, rise up? The socioeconomic sphere of movement), in which young intellectu‐ variable to which the author points does not pro‐ als played an important role in questioning the le‐ vide a complete picture of the uprising. In view of gitimacy of the military regime, distributive jus‐ a series of events in 1979 and 1980, the Gwangju tice, and the other region of the divided Korea Uprising was preceded by links between the (that is, North Korea) (p. 147). What Lee cautious‐ "counterpublic sphere," which Lee accounts for in ly notes is that intellectuals have maintained a a great detail, and the political sphere, which she contradictory status; intellectuals were not only does not adequately analyze in this book. The Y. contributors to and benefciaries of moderniza‐ H. factory incident in 1979 represented an al‐ tion, but also became mentors of a critical reeval‐ liance among all sorts of oppositional forces, such uation of this modernization. The extreme case of as workers, politicians, students, and dissidents. the latter was the self-negation of social status Given this situation, Kim Dae Jung, a prominent among intellectuals. In the 1970s, they began their dissident who represented Gwangju and Cholla movement by running night schools for workers province, returned to politics in the spring of and searching for their new identity, and, in the 1980; whether intended or not, he stood in the , they were "reborn as revolutionary work‐ middle of the vortex creating an alliance in ers" by disguising their status to be hired as facto‐ Gwangju. In other words, both the reasons for the ry workers (pp. 256-257). military's targeting of Gwangju and the explosive The author's insight sheds light on the most sources for a powerful uprising already lay in important conjuncture of the minjung project and Gwangju prior to the eruption of the uprising. undongkwon. The 1980 Gwangju Uprising was the Second, in the process of the democratic tran‐ culmination of this resistance in which students, sition, what is the location of the white-collar mid‐ workers, and the urban poor fought military re‐ dle class as benefciaries of distorted moderniza‐ pression. While acknowledging a long tradition of tion? Massive participation of the middle class in alliance between intellectuals and workers, Lee the June 1987 demonstration provided an impor‐ stresses the signifcance of this uprising in further tant momentum for the transition toward democ‐ cementing the two groups in the following years. racy. If the minjung project was aimed at transi‐ The historical importance of Gwangju was not tion, it is necessary to account for the relationship limited to the empowerment through alliance be‐ between the outcomes of distorted modernization tween them; after the uprising, minjung delved per se and the resultant empowerment of the new into the question of "what is the United States for class--and its political impact on the state against Korea," a question that is related to the issue of which minjung resisted. identity among Koreans (p. 50). Witnessing the Even with its drawbacks, The Making of Min‐ U.S. failure to intervene in the military repression jung is a penetrating work on the democratic tran‐ on Gwangju, minjung came to realize American sition in South Korea. Lee's outstanding insights responsibility for the "ugly history" of national di‐ shed new light on the actors and spheres of this vision and military dictatorship in the South (p. transition, synthesizing social and ideological fac‐ 125). In the 1980s, the Gwangju Uprising triggered tors of the events related to this development.

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Citation: Sung Chull Kim. Review of Lee, Namhee. The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea. H-Peace, H-Net Reviews. April, 2008.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14398

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