Challenges to Nation-building through Free Elections Korean Case

Nation-building: modern concept Nation-building, nation-state, election→ by-products of modernism Those are the concepts with civil society at the centre of them. Civil society→ civil rights including suffrage

Civil Rights and War Civil rights are won in negotiation with state. An extreme case of this negotiation takes place during war. The proposition ‘War makes a state’ by Charles Tilly→ War has two roles in building a nation:

Two Roles of War 1) Protecting the people inside from outside enemies and eliminating the rivals within the territory, the state becomes completed as a subject with monopolistic supremacy in the society and as a political community with the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force. Charles Tilly, “Citizenship, identity, and social history” in Charles Tilly ed, Citizenship, identity, and social history, (Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 1990), p.96.

2) In carrying out a war effort, the state protects its citizens for the price of exploiting resources, while the citizens actively demand and increase their rights. A compromise over a state’s exploitation always creates a new right, a special right and a protection system. As a result, state-building by means of war is a process of strengthening the state’s power, but at the same time, a process in which the state protects the society within the territory, the citizens increase their rights, and a mutual relationship between a modern state and a civil society is organically formed, which leads to forming a new type of national identity.

Korean War (1950-1953) Korea became independent from Japanese colonial rule in 1945. Political elites in the South wanted to establish a separate state in the South. No civil society No support from grassroots ROK established in 1948 with no popular support, violently suppressing popular resistance

In order to legitimise and justify the separate state, domestic elites and the US held the first General Election in 1948. 74% of the population were registered in the election and among them, 91% were coercively registered→ The suffrage was not a creation of citizens’ rights, but a top-down mobilisation.

Back to “the proposition ‘War makes a state”, the Korean War brought about the growth of the state’s coercive organisations on which the new state could increase its national capability in controlling the society. BUT, the war did not contribute to the formation of civil society. The state received most of the resources for the war from the United States, not from its citizens through negotiation or compromise. Nation-building of half Korea was made not based on the growth of civil society or civil rights or free elections, but by coercive mobilisation, punishment and massacre.

Growth of Civil Society (in the late 1980s) Massive popular sacrifice and massive protests with university students

Gwangju Massacre(1980)

June Uprising(1987)

Economic growth→ middle class Collapse of the Communist bloc→ military government’s anti-communist propaganda weakened. Direct presidential election Transfer of power from military government to civilian government Instituitionalise protections for civil rights and free elections

Nation-building: modern concept? To Koreans, nation is not a modern concept, but rather, an ethnic concept. According to the Constitution of the ROK, people in the North are the same citizens as the people in the South. The ground of this is ethnicity. Nation-building of Korea has not finished yet. It is still going on. No civil society, no free elections in the North as it was in the South a few decades ago.

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