BiblioVault - Books about Korea

Deliverance and Submission

Evangelical Women and the Negotiation of Patriarchy in South Korea

Kelly H. Chong

Harvard University Press, 2008

South Korea is home to one of the most vibrant evangelical Protestant communities in the world. This book investigates the meanings of—and the reasons behind—an intriguing aspect of contemporary South Korean evangelicalism: the intense involvement of middle-class women. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Seoul that explores the relevance of gender and women’s experiences to Korean evangelicalism, Kelly H. Chong not only helps provide a clearer picture of the evangelical movement’s success in South Korea, but interrogates the global question of contemporary women’s attraction to religious traditionalisms.

In highlighting the growing disjunction between the forces of social transformation that are rapidly liberalizing modern Korean society, and a social system that continues to uphold key patriarchal structures on both societal and familial levels, Chong relates women’s religious involvement to the contradictions of South Korea’s recent socio-cultural changes and complex engagement with modernity. By focusing on the ways in which women’s religious participation constitutes—both spiritually and institutionally—an important part of their effort to negotiate the problems and dilemmas of contemporary family and gender relations, this book explores the contradictory significance of evangelical beliefs and practices for women, which simultaneously opens up possibilities for gender negotiation/resistance, and for women’s redomestication.

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The Developmental Role of the Foreign Sector and Aid

Anne O. Krueger

Harvard University Press, 1979

This volume analyzes the role of trade and aid in Korea’s modernization and development from 1945 to 1975. After regarding the four major sub-periods of Korean development—1945-50; 1953-60; 1961-64; and 1965 to the present—the author discusses the efficiency of Korean economic policies, arguing that the inefficiencies of the 1950s at both the micro and the macro levels stand in the sharp contrast to the apparently efficient economic policies of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

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Divided Korea

The Politics of Development, 1945–1972

Joungwon Alexander Kim

Harvard University Press, 1975

Divided Korea is a comparative study of development in North and South Korea, beginning at the time of Korea’s independence from Japan in 1945 and ending in 1972. Looking at events in the two areas of Korea from the perspective of those who seek to create a configuration of power through which to govern and promote the development of Korea, the author draws interesting parallels between the challenges affecting the Southern and Northern efforts at consolidation.

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Divided Korea

Toward a Culture of Reconciliation

Roland Bleiker

University of Minnesota Press, 2005

In 2002, North Korea precipitated a major international crisis when it revealed the existence of a secret nuclear weapons program and announced its withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Earlier in the year, George W. Bush had declared North Korea part of the “axis of evil,” and soon afterward his administration listed the country as a potential target of a preemptive nuclear strike. Pyongyang’s angry reaction ensured the complete deterioration of relations on the Korean peninsula, where only two years before the leaders of North and South Korea had come together in a historic summit meeting.

Few international conflicts are as volatile, protracted, or seemingly insoluble as the one in Korea, where mutual mistrust, hostile Cold War attitudes, and the possibility of a North Korean economic collapse threaten the security of the entire region. For Roland Bleiker, this persistently recurring pattern suggests profound structural problems within and between the two Koreas that have not been acknowledged until now. Expanding the discussion beyond geopolitics and ideology, Bleiker places peninsular tensions in the context of an ongoing struggle over competing forms of Korean identity. Divided Korea examines both domestic and international attitudes toward Korean identity, the legacy of war, and the possibilities for-and anxieties about-unification.

Divided Korea challenges the prevailing logic of confrontation and deterrence, embarking on a fundamental reassessment of both the roots of the conflict and the means to achieve a more stable political environment and, ultimately, peace. In order to realize a lasting solution, Bleiker concludes, the two Koreas and the international community must first show a willingness to accept difference and contemplate forgiveness as part of a broader reconciliation process.

Roland Bleiker is professor of international relations at the University of Queensland. From 1986 to 1988 he served as chief of office for the Swiss delegation to the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission in Panmunjom.

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