State and Society in Contemporary Korea (review)

196KOREAN STUDIES, VOL. 19 much animosity still exists in Korea concerning interpretations by some Japanese about Japan's ancient role in Korea, especially because interpretations of this sort did serve imperialistic ends. But we must always remember that what scholars find true (if they can definitively find the truth) must remain free from bruised sensibilities. Whether Japan owned Korea or Korea owned Japan, or neither, should remain an academic matter. Against the backdrop of traditional Japanese Ultranationalist claims that they once controlled many Korean affairs, we see the unfolding of the horserider hypothesis. Egami developed the best-known version after the war, and Ledyard in the 1970s strengthened it significantly. Hong sees himself as building upon their foundation. He overdoes his polemics against Japanese historians , especially since probably a good majority of them now accept the hypothesis in some form. He rightly understands that most archaeologists still reject the horserider hypothesis. So, should you plunk down your hard-earned cash for this book? I think that readers interested in the topic will find much to think about, and may even find the book wholly convincing. Even those who do not accept the horserider hypothesis will find the book thought-provoking, even though at times maddening . Leon Serafim University of Hawai'i at Mânoa State and Society in Contemporary Korea, edited by Hagen Koo. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. 258 pp. $32.50 cloth, $13.95 paper. This volume of papers produced under the auspices of the Social Science Research Council fills a gap in the literature on contemporary Korea by stressing the social and class underpinnings of Korean development. As underscored by the volume's editor, Hagen Koo, much of our understanding of contemporary Korea is derived from work that focuses almost exclusively on the overwhelming power of the Korean state, its authoritarian and autonomous character, and its developmentalist prowess, especially as seen in South Korea's remarkable rates of economic growth. The problem with this statecentered preoccupation, according to Koo, is that scholars have too often ignored the fact that "the state is embedded in society and draws its essential characteristics from society itself (p. 5). In order to understand the leviathan state and its policy actions in both North and South Korea, he argues, we must analyze and account for this embeddedness. This volume rises to the occasion laudably—bringing society back in, so to speak—as it contextualizes and BOOK REVIEWS197 sharpens our understanding of contemporary Korean development through a focus on the dynamic, historically grounded relationships between state and society. The volume, which focuses mainly on South Korea but includes one piece on North Korea, begins with a well-crafted overview essay in which Koo identifies class and social conflict as analytically central to the task of investigating state-society relations. He reminds us that even in the presence of a strong and all-powerful state, which frequently acts in the interests of the economic or bureaucratic elite, civil society has been—and continues to be— alive and well. Part of the originating purpose of the volume, in fact, is to shed light on the long-forgotten history of social and class activism in Korea, and the ways citizen mobilization and reaction have shaped both the state and the varying stages of Korean economic development over the last several decades, a theme to which Koo returns in the volume's concluding chapter. A provocative piece by Jang Jip Choi, entitled "Political Cleavages in South Korea," elaborates on several of these themes. He offers a comprehensive analysis of changing social and class conditions in South Korea after World War II and how they molded critical political cleavages which, in turn, drove both the South Korean state's economic policy actions and its highly repressive measures. In an account that begins with examination of conditions in the two decades following the Korean War, then lingers on the period of the 1970s, and extends to the near present, Choi proposes three consecutive sets of tensions that underlay state-society conflicts in each of these critical historical junctures: democracy vs. dictatorship, just distribution vs. just developmentalism , and reunification. The essay's narrative structure suggests a historicist logic: the way...