DISCOURSES of CIVIL SOCIETY in SOUTH KOREA :DEMOCRATISATION in an EMERGING INFORMATION SOCIETY By
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DISCOURSES OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN SOUTH KOREA :DEMOCRATISATION IN AN EMERGING INFORMATION SOCIETY by HEE-JEONG LEE A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Sociology School of Government and Society College of Social Sciences University of Birmingham January 2012 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis presents a late-Durkheimian theoretical framework on civil society as a sphere of solidarity and applies it to the development from modern society to an „information society‟. The framework is used to identify the cultural codes that exist in different information societies and to show their role in integrating or dividing the members of civil society. The framework is applied to South Korean civil society entering an information age coincident alongside processes of democratisation. Three policy debates relating to information are used as case studies to show the coexistence of, and conflicts between, a „developmental code‟ based on economic growth and anti-communism deriving from the authoritarian period of state-sponsored capitalism, and a later „democratic code‟ based on human rights. The three cases are: the Electronic National Identification Card, the National Education Information System and the credit information system. The thesis argues that the values of a „democratic‟ code are becoming more dominant in recent South Korean society, despite continuous challenge for its validity. The cases provide evidence that democratisation and informatization can operate in tandem to establish the dominance of the democratic code in public discourse in South Korean civil society. ACKNOWLEDGEDMENTS In the long journey of my PhD period from Korea to the UK, I have become more deeply indebted to mentors, friends, colleagues and family members than I can acknowledge here. I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet them and to learn from their wisdom and advice. First and foremost, my grateful thank you goes to the never-ending patience and support of my supervisor, Professor John Holmwood. This research would have not been possible without his good advice and fatherly guidance. I would also like to thank another supervisor, Dr. Will Leggett, who helped me to finish this research. Furthermore, I would like to extend my gratitude to my supervisor in Korea, Professor Jung-Sun Kim, who taught me everything I need to be a sociologist. I would like to thank Professor Sunwoong Park as well who introduced me to a new area of sociology. My gratitude also goes to many colleagues with whom I shared time at the University of Birmingham: Zac Dixon, Sarah Hislam, Po-wei Chen and Shasha Zhang. I thank my friends in Birmingham whose presence enriched my life for many years of this research in the UK: Mandy Gill, Noula Knight, Helen Bates, Judith Smith and Wendy Ijioma. I especially feel lucky to have known Seung-gyu Lee with whose help I was able to complete the details of the thesis process. My family deserves my final gratitude. I thank my husband, Kwang Park, whose affection and encouragement made my research possible. My son, Juhyung Park, sacrificed so many things in his childhood while his mother was working on her endless PhD. Thank you, Juhyung. One last, but not less important, thank you goes to my parents, Sang Wook Lee and Kyeong Ok Kwak, who have both patiently supported me my whole life. It is to them that I dedicate this dissertation. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................... V ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................................... VII INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1 CIVIL SOCIETY, CULTURE AND SOCIAL CHANGE .......................... 12 1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 13 1.2 The system of modernity and its societal community ................................................ 16 1.2.1 The evolution of modern society .............................................................................. 17 1.2.2 The emergence of the societal community ............................................................... 19 1.2.3 Societal community as a distinctive component of the system of modernity .......... 21 1.3 Civil society and political culture................................................................................. 25 1.3.1 Civil society as a realm of solidarity: Jeffrey C.Alexander ...................................... 27 1.3.1.1 Civil society as a sphere of solidarity .................................................................. 27 1.3.1.2 Multiple spheres, modes of incorporation in civil society .................................. 31 1.3.1.3 The relative autonomy of culture: “Discourse of civil society” .......................... 32 1.3.2 Multicultural understanding of political culture ....................................................... 36 1.3.2.1 The extension of the framework of “discourse of civil society” ......................... 37 1.3.2.2 Tension of codes from multiple discourses and multiple civil spheres ............... 40 1.4 Networked societal community: Manual Castells ...................................................... 43 1.4.1 The network society and the Internet as the material support for networked individualism ............................................................................................................ 45 1.4.2 Social movements in the Information Age ............................................................... 48 1.5 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 51 CHAPTER 2 SOUTH KOREA AND RECENT CHANGE ............................................... 54 2.1 Overview ........................................................................................................................ 55 2.2 Politics in South Korea in the post-war period .......................................................... 57 2.2.1 The historical change of Korean governments ......................................................... 57 2.2.2 Authoritarianism versus democracy ......................................................................... 64 i 2.2.3 The influence of Confucianism and familialism on authoritarianism and democracy .................................................................................................................................. 68 2.2.4 Changes in civil society ............................................................................................ 75 2.3 Social structure of the South Korea polity .................................................................. 79 2.3.1 The change of economic structure ............................................................................ 79 2.3.2 The change of governmental policies ....................................................................... 82 2.3.3 The change of political structure .............................................................................. 85 2.4 Civil society as information society ............................................................................. 89 2.4.1 The change of civil society ....................................................................................... 89 2.4.2 How to see the Information-related policies............................................................. 92 2.5 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 94 CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY ......................................................................................... 96 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 97 3.2 Overview of disputes over information-related policies in Korea .......................... 100 3.2.1 The dispute over the Electronic National Identification Card ................................ 101 3.2.2 The dispute over the National Education Information System............................... 102 3.2.3 The dispute over the credit information system ..................................................... 103 3.3 Research methodology ................................................................................................ 104 3.3.1 Case studies for testing theories ............................................................................. 105 3.3.2 Narrative ................................................................................................................. 109 3.3.3 Discourse ................................................................................................................ 113