A Cultural Analysis of the Relationship Between Nationalism and Populism: The Case of South Korea

This study focuses on the relationship between nationalism and populism by analysing the political history of Korea. Populism studies have merely dealt with the cases in East Asia on those issues, as general literature remains a normative understanding of those issues and democracy, overlooking the tentative research cases in the region. The comparative studies of populism develop with a minimalist definition, emphasising the antagonism between the homogenous groups—‘the elite’ and ‘the people’. However, this minimalist definition homogenised heterogeneous natures of ‘the elite’, ‘the people’, and their forms of confrontations in different regional and historical contexts. This study expands the cases for populism studies while clarifying the relationship between nationalism and populism. The historical experience of people in South Korea is an excellent example of analysing the interaction between the nation-state and society. This thesis contributes to introducing new dimensions, the temporality of political economy and the spatiality of political cleavage.

With nation and state decoupled, the meanings of the people varied significantly across Korean political history, causing the populistic elements in the country. A strong and administrative-oriented state vis-à-vis society resulted in the absence of horizontal confrontation between the Left and Right, instead conceptualising social demands as national, strengthened by a vertical antagonism between society and the state. The rapid development of the national economy enforced this verticality. Korean history has been prevalent with the imagination of power relations between the state high above and the people or society below. Analysing political history in South Korea provides an opportunity to innovate the recent definition of populism regarding its global political activism of nationalism and democracy.