Description
Colonial neighborhood associations, tasked with the national mobilization of local Koreans, advanced programs of mass enlightenment that privileged state interests over individual rights, in the process blurring the line between morality and state authority and superimposing patriarchal familial dynamics on societal relations. Despite their different ideological orientations, the neighborhood associations of two postliberation Koreas shared the same enlightenment mission with their earlier forms, and this commonality is critical to understanding the authoritarian direction taken by South and North Korea. The neighborhood association entrusted each state with promoting community-based morality and spirit of voluntarism as an alternative to amoral laissez-faire capitalism and the individual right-based West. Consequently, the state retained its supremacy over the populace at the most basic level of community organization, and Koreans were encouraged to be voluntary active to state calls, culminating into two authoritarianisms of the 1970s-Korean style democracy and "our own style" socialism.
About the Author
Shinyoung Kwon received a PhD in history from the University of Chicago and did postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge.
Book Information
ISBN 9780824896232
Author Shinyoung Kwon
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint University of Hawai'i Press
Publisher University of Hawai'i Press
Weight(grams) 272g