Mass-Participatory Economy: A Democratic Alternative for Korea (review)

Book Reviews Mass-Participatory Economy: A Democratic Alternativefor Korea, by Kim Dae Jung. Lanham, Maryland: Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, and the University Press of America, 1985. xi, 81 pp. $17.75 cloth. Kim Dae Jung has been one of the most prominent and controversial leaders of the political opposition in South Korea in the last two decades, and is certainly the one best known outside Korea. He was narrowly defeated by Park Chung Hee in the hotly contested elections of 1971, receiving 46 percent of the popular vote in spite of widespread electoral fraud perpetrated by the government . Having gone into self-imposed exile, he was kidnapped by Korean government agents while on a speaking tour of Japan, and eventually imprisoned for violating the election law. His civil rights were restored in 1980 after the assassination of Park, but he was again imprisoned and sentenced to death following the military coup led by ar^ny general Chun Doo Hwan. His death sentence was later commuted to life in prison, and subsequently to a twenty year term. In 1982 he was released and allowed to travel to the United States for medical treatment. He returned to Korea to face house arrest in 1985. Kim has offered to remove himself as a candidate for president if the Chun regime revises the current constitution to permit direct popular election of that office. He remains one of the most popular and influential political figures in contemporary South Korea. Mass-Participatory Economy is a much needed English language introduction to the political and economic philosophy of so significant a figure. Its central premises and concepts have their genesis in Kim's earlier writings, principally his 1970 master's thesis from Kyung Hee University and his 1971 Korean language work, Kim Dae Jung ssi ui Taejung Kyongje. There is, therefore, a remarkable continuity, which is at the same time laudable and disturbing, in his apprehension of Korea's political and economic difficulties, as well as the policy proposals posited as solutions. It is laudable in that Kim remains committed to his early ideals, such as democratization and social equality. It is disturbing in that he has apparently not updated his grasp of international political economy in light of the developing refinement of dependency and world system literature. Had he done so, I think that many of the proposals, if not the criticisms, contained herein would be significantly modified. Nevertheless, the book is of value to laymen and specialists alike in that it describes the causes and consequences 66BOOK REVIEWS of various government policies, and also prescribes strategies for redefining Korea's political economy along lines that are politically democratic and economically equitable. One should not be taken aback by the brevity of the text, for it discusses the nexus between the control of economic resources and the manipulation of political power far better than many scholarly works several times its length. Since 1945, the two most passionately pursued goals in both North and South Korea have been security and development. The central premise of Kim's work is that the regime's faulty definition or comprehension of the latter jeopardizes the former. The critique is that successive authoritarian regimes have defined development primarily in terms of GNP growth—the expansion of industrial productivity—rather than in terms of the equitable distribution of the benefits of growth to all segments of Korean society. The consequence of such social inequity and sectoral imbalance has been economic dislocation and political instability. Kim fears such conditions invite an attack by North Korea. His critique is cogent, in that South Korea remains plagued by unrest and instability in spite of the spectacular economic gains registered during the last twenty-five years, and must devote vast sums to the maintenance of a 575,000 man military establishment to deter any potential aggression from the north as well as to maintain domestic order. According to Kim, such single-minded pursuit of growth was facilitated by the systematic imposition of an authoritarian order which advantages some—the military, big business, state technocrats— and disadvantages others—industrial workers, farmers, small and medium businessmen. He argues that by excluding key segments of the population...