Korean Studies, vol. 17 (1993)

Contents

ARTICLES

Generational Differences and Political Development in South Korea
Wonmo Dong, 1
Political development in Korea--especially progress toward pluralistic political institutions--very much depends on the capacity of Korean society to deal with the complex problems of intergenerational differences. This article first outlines the sharp differences in attitudes and behavior between the younger, postwar generation (cholmun sedae) and the older, prewar generation (kisong sedae); then examines the contributions and limitations of the political activism of the younger generation, which has been both a primary catalyst for social reform and a primary source of political instability over the past few decades. The conclusion offers tentative prognoses for the remainder of the 1990s.

Vanguards and Violence: A Comparison of the U.S. and Korean Student Movements
Foon Rhee, 17
At first glance, U.S. students during the 1960s and Korean students during the 1980s seem to have little in common. Yet across generations, across cultures, and across political histories, the two student movements share much: in their demographic and sociological origins, in their ambition to transform society, and in their parallels to a model of student movements that emphasizes generational conflict. However, the two student movements diverge in other ways: in levels of violence and repression, in longevity, and in their final goals. The differences are, in the end, more profound than their similarities, but they help explain the place of the Korean movement and hint at its prospects. And since students play such a major role in Korean politics, they say something about the country's future as well.

Electoral Dynamics in South Korea Since 1981
Søren Risbjerg Thomsen and Hyun-woo Kim, 39
The analysis of election results from South Korea presented in this paper is one part of a cross-national study of electoral dynamics in several countries, including the Nordic countries, Britain, Italy, the United States, and Japan. The object of the study is primarily to assess the general applicability of the logit methodology for ecological analysis of election results, formulated by Thomsen (1987). In a "most different systems research design," as recommended by Przeworski and Teune (1970), South Korea was chosen as a supposed extreme case marked by volatile electoral behavior during the critical transformation from authoritarian regime to emergent democracy (Billet, 1990; Han, 1989). It is, of course, possible to find more extreme cases in third world countries, but one advantage with the case of Korea is that direct election fraud in counting the votes has been a minor problem in recent elections (c. Park, 1988a, p. 64).

The general approach in the analysis is to identify possible causes of the electoral dynamics at four different levels: the national, the regional, the local district, and the individual levels. While actual election results are well suited for the study of electoral dynamics on the first three levels, the estimation of individual voting behavior by the method of ecological inference is more controversial. However, in a country like South Korea, where survey results on individual voter mobility is either not available or of questionable validity, we believe that ecological estimates of voter mobility can provide important clues concerning the possible motives of the individual voters.

Asian-Pacific Feminist Coalition Politics: The Chongshindae/Jugunianfu ("Comfort Women") Movement
Alice Yun Chai, 67
This article examines the Chongshindae/Jugunianfu issue from an Asian-Pacific feminist perspective. The Chongshindae/Jugunianfu were women (primarily Korean) who were drafted by the Japanese military during the Pacific War, ostensibly to serve as laborers, but mostly to serve as sex slaves. They are referred to euphemistically as Jugunianfu (military "comfort women") in Japanese, and Chongshindae (Women's Volunteer Labor Corps) in Korean. This article discusses (1) historical links between Japan's Pacific War military sex slaves and their contemporary parallels, (2) reasons why the military sex slavery issue has been buried for almost half a century, (3) the social context for politicization of the issue, and (4) global feminist and grassroots coalition politics: the Chongshindae/Jugunianfu movement in Korea and Japan that has recently spread to other East and Southeast Asian countries.

Chinese Diction in Korean Shijo Verse
David R. McCann. 92
Premodern Korean literature comprises vernacular works such as the shijo and kasa verse forms, as well as prose tales, memoirs, diaries, and other materials. It also includes a vast amount of writing in classical Chinese, both poetry and prose, formal and informal. Although these two strands, vernacular Korean and classical Chinese, are generally considered in mutual isolation in studies of Korean literature, they commingle in various ways. The Korean language makes use of a large store of words of Chinese origin. Korean literary works, whether written in the vernacular or in classical Chinese, frequently cite Chinese literary or cultural/historical examples. Given the apparent influence of Chinese upon Korean, how has the Korean identity articulated and sustained itself? This study of Korean shijo verse explores the very permeable boundaries between the two realms to see if--and, if so, how--the areas of transition may mark the outlines of what is Korean in Korean literature.

A Historical Study of Korean Noun Compounds
Eung-Jin Bae, 105
One of the most controversial issues in Korean phonology seems to be the sai-sios phenomenon in compound words. Cook (1987) states that "hundreds and perhaps thousands of pages could have been spared had sai-sios NOT been written in the first place." Sai-sios has been described in terms of t-epenthesis, boundaries, brackets, gemination, strata in lexical phonology, C-slots in CV phonology, empty X-slots, or a laryngeal feature postulated as a denominal adjective morpheme. Most of the phonological analysis of sai-sios is based on data from Modern Korean. This paper attempts to account primarily for consonants inserted in noun compounds in fifteenth-century Korean. I am not concerned with the syntactic functions of sai-sios. I will examine noun compounding as reflected in two publications of the fifteenth century, the Ponyok Nogoltae (1510?) and the Nogoltae Onhae (1670). Fol1owing Baek (1991), I assume that an articulatory pause accompanied by a glottal stop occurs between the two members of noun compounds and that sai-sios has provided a convenient means to represent this articulatory pause. I will show that this articulatory pause gives rise to a range of phonetic variations and processes both in fifteenth-century Korean and in Modern Korean, processes such as t-epenthesis, glottalization, gemination, and others.