Contribution to Book
Leadership for Emancipatory Peace: Lessons from the South Korean Student Movement
Peace Leadership: The Quest for Connectedness
(2018)
Abstract
There are multiple difficulties of definition and interpretation associated with peace leadership, and as non-violent means to “peace” is generally regarded as integral to peacebuilding, many are excluded from being considered peace leaders despite their goal of ending structural violence and deadly conflict. This chapter addresses these biases by re-examining the South Korean student activism of the 1980s as a movement for emancipatory peace. We argue that these activists were peace leaders because they sought to redress the structural violence experienced by the “downtrodden masses” (minjung) and extended confrontation with North Korea. To do so, they had to challenge the repressive South Korean regime and its powerful patron, the United States. In developing the counter-hegemonic “minjung historiography” the intellectuals and students of this movement sought to mobilize the “downtrodden masses” in South Korea to change the structural constraints on social justice and the peaceful reunification of North and South Korea. Their ultimate marginalization and the lack of substantive, emancipatory peace today points to the limits of the “liberal peace” as maintained by global institutions and international power relations, but most importantly, the urgent need for an elicitive approach to peace and peace leadership.
Keywords
- Peace and Conflict,
- South Korea,
- North Korea,
- peace leadership,
- minjung movement,
- emancipatory peace,
- democratization
Disciplines
Publication Date
July, 2018
Editor
Stan Almaladas & Sean Byrne
Publisher
Routlege
ISBN
978-1138188136
Citation Information
Su-Mei Ooi and Siobhan McEvoy-Levy. "Leadership for Emancipatory Peace: Lessons from the South Korean Student Movement" LondonPeace Leadership: The Quest for Connectedness (2018) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/sumei_ooi/20/