TY  - BOOK
AU  - SHAW Meredith
TI  - Godzilla vs Pulgasari: anti-Japanism and anti-Communism as dueling antagonisms in South Korean politics
PY  - 2022///
KW  - SOUTH KOREA
KW  - ANTI-COMMUNISM
KW  - JAPAN
KW  - SECURITIZATION THEORY
KW  - PARTISAN POLITICS
KW  - POSTCOLONIAL RECONCILIATION
N2  - South Korea's persistent enmity towards its erstwhile colonizer Japan has been a compelling topic of East Asian international relations scholarship for decades. This article argues that the historical evolution of South Korea's democracy offers a vital and overlooked piece of this puzzle. Given that it emerged from one of the most virulently anti-communist dictatorships of the Cold War period, in a society facing an ongoing threat from communist North Korea, any left-of-center opposition movement faced an uphill battle against severe anti-communism. In such circumstances, the only way for a leftist opposition party to survive was by pitting its stronger anti-Japan reputation against conservatives' anti-communism. After South Korea's democracy stabilized, liberals tried and failed to overturn the anti-leftist institutions left over from the Cold War and then sought equilibrium through parallel rhetoric targeting pro-Japanese elements. Today, neither left nor right can afford to allow a final amicable settlement with its respective target of antagonism. Through analyses of domestic political rhetoric targeting alleged pro-Japanese or pro-communist elements, this paper demonstrates how these competing antagonisms achieved an uneasy equilibrium that undergirds South Korean political dynamics to this day
UR  - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-east-asian-studies/article/godzilla-vs-pulgasari-antijapanism-and-anticommunism-as-dueling-antagonisms-in-south-korean-politics/13AE2F00765E811EBDBFC5D7A86A6265
ER  -