Two Key Historical Moments of the Early 1960s: A Preliminary Reconsideration of 4.19 and 5.16

Perspective Two Key Historical Moments of the Early 1960s: A Preliminary Reconsideration of 4.19 and 5.16 Woo Jin Yang South and North Korea appear now to have entered a new phase in their respective paths to modernity. Over the years, the two countries have pursued contrasting, but in some respects, similar, nationalist strategies to modernize themselves. The central feature of their strategies was nationalist mobilization of economic and social resources to bring about social change. This dynamic is now under dissolution in South Korea (hereafter, Korea). Gradual but steady democratization of Korean politics since the late 1980s—following years of successful economic development—ushered in a full-fledged modern state that caused the nationalist age beginning in the early 1960s, during which Korean society pursued the nationalist aim of building a modern nation. This success opened the way in the 1990s for reflecting on the nationalist age. In the fields of history and social sciences, there has been recent interest in critical reassessments of the processes of nation-building and modernization . Since the early 1990s, scholars have attempted to reevaluate the recent past, a trend that reflects the changing atmosphere of Korean society. With the collapse of twentieth-century socialism and the debacle of North Korea, combined with widespread apprehension about dramatic transformations in Korean society, academic society underwent change as well. This inclination toward self-review resulted in attempts to overcome nationalist historiography , which until then had enjoyed a dominant position in the field. Throughout the 1980s—a decade that witnessed the height of democratization movements and other forms of political resistance—radical nationalist interpretations of history held sway across Korea. Using concepts such as Woo Jin Yang is professor of Economics at Hanshin University, South Korea. The Journal ofKorean Studies 10, no. 1 (Fall 2005):121-43 121 122Woo Jin Yang distorted development, dependent economy, and (neo)colonial state, these scholars argued that nation-building and modernization in Korea would fail in the long run. However, such negative perceptions of the past and predictions for the future were incompatible with changing realities of Korean society in the 1990s. It was only natural, therefore, that critical perspectives on the nationalist understanding of both the process and the outcome of modernization would begin to be articulated, and would elicit a variety of reactions in academic circles. In the fields of history and social sciences, for example, scholars abroad and in Korea have engaged in a sincere but bitter debate on the question of colonial legacy in Korea's modernization.1 The change in Korea's academic climate made it possible to reassess modernization with substantially less ideological or political burden, and gave rise to works that criticized or sought to correct earlier studies' ideological excesses. At the same time, it became evident that several basic premises upon which earlier histories relied could no longer be sustained; scholars needed to develop new viewpoints and frameworks. One should note, ofcourse, that such changes did not stem solely from the shifting climate within the Korean academic world, but may be seen as a corollary to postmodern reflections on history as an episteme. Proposing a new framework to understand the recent past in a consistent way has become an urgent challenge for scholars of modern Korea. As a part of this search for alternative frameworks, I will focus in this essay on two historical moments in the early 1960s, known respectively as 4.19 and 5.16. These moments heralded a period of economic development and modernization under a distinctive kind of nationalist mobilization. The Korean economy's exceptional growth since the mid-1960s was the primary component of the modernization process, which in turn culminated in the democratization of political and social life beginning in the late 1980s. Many scholars strove to elucidate the reasons for Korea's rapid economic development , and these efforts helped to clarify the role of the state and the world market in economic development.2 What these approaches failed to illuminate, however, was the significance of a new matrix opened by historical turning points such as 4.19 and 5.16, or the place of the ensuing economic development in a broader context of longterm social...