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The Rise of Bureaucratic Authoritarianism in South Korea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Hyug Baeg Im
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In this paper, I investigate why a bureaucratic-authoritarian (hereafter BA) regime emerged in South Korea during the early 1970s. The regime transition was the outcome of conflict among key political actors who were constrained, although not in a deterministic way, by the change in the Korean economic structure. It can be understood as the outcome of strategic choices made by key political actors among alternatives that satisfied structural constraints.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , January 1987 , pp. 231 - 257
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1977

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References

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27 Sang Jin Han of Seoul National University discussed the specificity in the rise of the Korean BA regime in “Gwanryojeug kwunwijueuiwa hangugsahoe” [Bureaucratic authoritarianism and Korean society], Study Group on Sociology of Seoul National University, eds., Hangugsahoeeui Juntonggwa Byunhwa [Tradition and change in Korean society] (Seoul: Bummunsa, 1983), 261–97.Google Scholar

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41 Ibid., chap. 5

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43 Ibid., 51.

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57 The concept of the “overdeveloped” state was initially formulated by Hamza Alavi. According to Alavi, the postcolonial state inherited an overdeveloped state apparatus (both bureaucratic-military and economic) in relation to civil society, and therefore was capable of subordinating indigenous classes. See Alavi, , “The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh,” New Left Review 74 (July-August 1972), 59–81Google Scholar. Here I use the term “overdeveloped” in a modified sense. In South Korea, an overdeveloped state apparatus was not inherited from the Japanese colonial state, but was built to carry out American security interests in the cold-war era.

58 Choi (fn. 51), 311–14.

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69 Although popular activation increased, the strength of the popular sector and the perception of the popular threat to the ruling power bloc were in every sense moderate to low.

70 This kind of alternative strategy was, indeed, presented by the opposition party candidate, Dae Jung Kim, in the 1971 election. For Kim's strategy, see Kim, Dae Jung, Kim Dae Jung tseeui Daejung Gyungje [Mr. Dae Jung Kim's Mass Economy] (Seoul: Bumwoosa, 1971).Google Scholar

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