Civil Society in East Asian Countries
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VYTAUTAS MAGNUS UNIVERSITY Civil Society in East Asian Countries CONTRIBUTIONS TO DEMOCRACY, PEACE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT Proceedings of the Conference 2018 Kaunas, 2018 Editor in-Chief Dr. Linas Didvalis (Vytautas Magnus University) Reviewers Julie Gilson (University of Birmingham) Aurelijus Zykas (Vytautas Magnus University) Ugnė Marija Andrijauskaitė (Vytautas Magnus University) The publication was approved on March 28, 2018 by the council of Faculty of Humanities of Vytautas Magnus University. Sponsor Project coordinator The bibliographic information about the publication is available in the National Bibliographic Data Bank (NBDB) of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. ISBN 978-609-467-326-9 (Print) ISBN 978-609-467-325-2 (Online) https://dx.doi.org/10.7220/978-6094673252 © Vytautas Magnus University, 2018 © Centre for Asian Studies, 2018 3 Contents About Authors ................................................................5 LINAS DIDVALIS. Civil Society in East Asia: Recent Topics and Trends ...............7 BRUCE GROVER. The Emergence of a Civil Society Movement and its Fragility in post-World War I Era: a Study of Independent Labor Education in the Interwar Period ................................................15 JAN NIGGEMEIER. The Other Labour Movement: Community Unions as Strategic Field Challengers in Japanese Labour Activism .........................33 HAO-TZU HO. Growing Food in a Post-colonial Chinese Metropolis: Hong Kong’s Down-to-earth Civil Society ........................................49 RUNYA QIAOAN. Harmony at Play: Environmental NGOs’ Policy Advocacy in China ............................................................65 SUNHYUK KIM. Civil Society in South Korea: Contributions to Democracy and Future Challenges ............................................83 YU-REE KIM. The Role of South Korean Civil Society in the North-South Korea Relations .............................................97 5 About Authors Linas Didvalis is a lecturer of political science, sustainable development and East Asian studies at the Department of Regional Studies and the Department of Cultural Studies of Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania. His research interests are sustainability issues in East Asia region, environmental movements in Japan, Korea and China, and Japan’s environmental policies. Didva- lis received his Ph.D. from International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan. Bruce Grover is a doctoral candidate at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He is a member of the LGF research group on ‘Religion and Global History’ at Heidelberg and focuses primarily on political thought and action in interwar period Japan. Hao-Tzu Ho is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at Durham University. She was a visiting doctoral researcher at Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at The University of Hong Kong (2016-17). She received her MSc in Anthropology and International Development from the LSE. Her current research focuses on urban anthropology, contemporary East Asian societies, political economy, sustainable movement, happiness and wellbeing. Sunhyuk Kim is a professor in the Department of Public Administration at Korea University, Seoul, Korea. He is the author of The Politics of Democratization in Korea and Economic Crisis and Dual Transition in Korea. Kim has published numerous articles on Korean politics in journals such as Democratization, Journal of International and Area Studies, Asian Survey, Journal of Northeast Asian Studies, Asian Perspective, Korea Journal and many others, and has contributed to a number of edited collections. Kim holds a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University. His research interests include civil society, democratization, and regional cooperation. Yu-Ree Kim is currently Korean Foundation Visiting Professor of the Vytautas Magnus University (VMU), Kaunas, Lithuania. Before joining the VMU, she worked as a Research Fellow of the Re- search Institute for North Korea and Northeast Asia at Korea Eximbank, Seoul, Korea. Previously she had been a researcher and lecturer at the Institute for International Affairs at Seoul National University, a Korea Foundation Junior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. in 2012, and also worked at the Korea Institute for Future Strategies as a researcher from 2006 to 2008. She holds a Ph.D. in International Studies from Seoul National University in the Republic of Korea. Her research interests are the Inter-Korean relations, DPRK foreign relations, and international cooperation in East Asia, among others. Jan Niggemeier is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at the Graduate School of East Asian Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. He focuses on labour issues, environmentalism, gender and other ar- eas of social movement activism in Japan and East Asia. He holds a MSc in Asian Studies from 6 Lunds Universitet and a MA in Japanese Studies and Language from Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg and Keio University. Runya Qiaoan is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Masaryk University (Brno), a researcher at Mendel University (Brno) and she is also an analyst at Institute of Asia Studies (Bratislava). Runya holds a Master’s Degree of Sociology from Masaryk University and a Bachelor’s Degree of Philosophy from Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou). Besides, she has been on exchange at University of Toronto, National Chengchi University and Utrecht University. In the past five years, she has been studying and living in the Czech Republic, Canada, Taiwan and the Netherlands. Runya’s research interests include civil society and NGOs, cultural sociology and China-Central Eastern Europe re- lations. Runya’s publications include papers and book reviews in international scientific journals, such as The China Quarterly, Journal of Cognition and Culture and Europe-Asia Studies. LINAS DIDVALIS. Civil Society in East Asia: Recent Topics and Trends 9 LINAS DIDVALIS Civil Society in East Asia RECENT TOPICS AND TRENDS Abstract: This article proposes an argument that research on civil society in East Asia has been attracting increasingly more attention from scholars of various fields that leads to more diverse and complex academic output. To verify the claim, this article provides an overview of recent topics and trends of research in the field both in quantitative and qualitative terms. This allows to indicate the main trends and spot less used approaches and overlooked researched areas. The results proved the initial argu- ment to be largely true, especially starting with the new millennia when the number and variety of scholarly works jumped to unprecedented heights. Since the interest shows no particular signs of slowing down, we can expect that the research output at the beginning of 21st century will allow us to enjoy growing complexity and variety in the field. Keywoards: civil society, East Asia, research trends Pilietinė visuomenė Rytų Azijoje: naujausios tematikos ir tendencijos Santrauka: Straipsnyje iškeliamas argumentas, kad Rytų Azijos pilietinės visuomenės tyrimai sulaukia vis daugiau įvairių sričių mokslininkų dėmesio, ir tai didina akademinių publikacijų įvairovę bei plečia jų kompleksiškumą. Siekiant patvirtinti šį teig- inį, straipsnyje pateikiama kokybinė ir kiekybinė naujausių Rytų Azijos pilietinės visuomenės tyrimų tematikų ir tendencijų apžvalga. Tai leidžia išskirti pagrindines kryptis, atkreipti dėmesį į mažiau paplitusias prieigas, pastebėti netyrinėtas sritis. Gauti rezultatai iš esmės patvirtino pirminį teiginį, ypač vertinant šio tūkstantmečio pradžią, kai tyrimų skaičius ir įvairovė pasiekė anksčiau nematytas aukštumas. Vertinant tai, kad susidomėjimas Rytų Azijos pilietinės visuomenės tema nerodo atslūgimo ženklų, galima tikėtis, kad šios srities tyrinėjimai XXI a. pradžiugins vis augančiu sudėtingumu ir įvairove. Reikšminiai žodžiai: pilietinė visuomenė, Rytų Azija, tyrimų tendencijos. Introduction This article proposes an argument that research on civil society in East Asia1 has been attracting increasingly more attention from scholars of various fields that led to more diverse and complex ac- ademic output. This follows a more general trend that was indicated by some authors. For example, Edwards (2004: 11) states that the end of the Cold War “gave the idea of civil society a prominence it had not enjoyed since the Enlightenment”. This prominence gave boost to scholarship that approach civil society from political, legal, social and many other perspectives, and keep the field expanding and further developing. To verify the claim, this article provides an overview of recent topics and trends of research in the aforementioned field both in quantitative and qualitative terms. The review covers only publications 1 East Asia is defined here as a region that is comprised of People’s Republic of China, Republic of China, Republic of Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and Japan. 10 CIVIL SOCIETY IN EAST ASIAN COUNTRIES: CONTRIBUTIONS TO DEMOCRACY, PEACE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. 2018 made in English language and acknowledges the limitations tied with such a choice that was mainly made due to practical reasons: lack of access to non-English academic databases and author’s limited knowledge of Chinese and Korean languages. Although few would doubt that internationalization of academic publications has progressed significantly in the recent decades, research published in ver- nacular languages can still offer a rich ground for those who would like to perform a similar