著者

金 賢九

出版者

一般財団法人 アジア政経学会

雑誌

アジア研究 (ISSN:00449237)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.65, no.2, pp.1-18, 2019-04-30 (Released:2019-06-05)

参考文献数

42

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This paper explains the origins of Korea’s political conservatism by examining the emergence and transformation process of ilminism, the governing ideology of the First Republic of Korea (1948–1960). Ilminism was a nationalistic ideology that emphasized the needs and security of the state over those of individuals and classes, and advocated development through the vehicle of a socialist controlled economy, to develop and protect the nation and the state. The First Republic emerged as the tensions of the Cold War were intensifying in the Korean Peninsula. Under the rule of the US-supported military government, as right-leaning factions gained ground over the left in the struggle over sovereignty, leftist ideologies all but disappeared in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. Ultimately, the confrontation between “communism” and “liberalism” was recast as one between “communism” and “anti-communist nationalism,” with three main results. First, the surplus of nationalism and the lack of other ideologies transformed the Cold War confrontation in the region after the liberation, engendering a right-leaning bias in the ideological space of Korean politics. Second, the political establishment mobilized nationalism to maintain the status quo. Third, the dominance of nationalism has inhibited the emergence of liberalism. This process has formed the foundations of Korean political conservatism, wherein the dogmatism of nationalism imposes the notoriety of “anti-communist nationalism” on all diverging ideologies, including liberalism. Therefore, contrary to conventional views that trace southern anti-communist nationalism only to the Korean War, this paper connects the phenomenon to the political dynamics that emerged during the First Republic of Korea.