Dates: January 23, 2025 at 3:00 P.M. - 5:00 P.M. at the Center for Korean Studies Auditorium & January 24, 2025 at 10: A.M. - 12:00 P.M. at the Center for Korean Studies Conference Room

Turbulent events in December 2024 have plunged Korean politics into crisis and revived debates about the continued legacy of authoritarian politics on the peninsula. While often understood as a symptom of ‘conservative democratization,’ this legacy, I argue, requires a critical, political economic analysis. For income inequality, unaffordable housing, super-sized conglomerates, and prosecutor-party nexus have helped fuel cycles of optimism and disillusionment with liberal and conservative administrations alike. Consequently, the failure of the liberal President Moon Jae-in to effectively address these issues following the 2016-17 Candlelight Revolution helped revive a tarnished conservative bloc and offer lessons for the present conjuncture. The failure of Moon’s ‘candlelight administration,’ I argue, can be seen through three interlinked phenomena: the narrowing, depoliticized vision of what constitutes ‘economic democracy’ among key reformers, the ambiguous space accorded to workers within Moon’s reform plans, and a problematic ‘politics of personality’ that has been used to pursue legitimacy in lieu of effective alliance-building and substantive policy change.

 Dr. Jamie Doucette is Reader in Human Geography at the University of Manchester. His research interests are centred around the geographical political economy of development and democratization in Korea and East Asia. This talk is based on his recent monograph The Postdevelopmental State: Dilemmas of Economic Democratization in Contemporary South Korea (University of Michigan Press, 2024). 

Center for Korean Studies events are free and open to all. For further information, including information regarding disability access, telephone the Center for Korean Studies at 808-956-7041. Organized by the Center for Korean Studies and supported by the Doo Wook & Helen Nahm Choy Fund. The University of Hawai‘i is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution.