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Colonel Jiyul Kim: Pan-Korean Nationalism and Anti-Great Power-ism

[Colonel Jiyul Kim is the Director of Asian Studies at the U.S. Army War College. This article does not represent the views and policies of the U.S. Government, the Department of Defense or the U.S. Army.]

... Pan-Korean nationalism and anti-Great Power-ism are closely associated with changing notions of identity and nationalism. These are ideological forces that are driven by cultural factors such as the symbolism of historical experience or, more precisely, memory of that history. What is happening in contemporary South Korean politics is a struggle that is as much over the past as it is about the future.
Pan Korean nationalism is the term I use to describe the sense of Korean nationalism in South Korea that embraces north and south. Anti-Great Power-ism refers to the desire of Koreans to escape from the sort of Great Power exploitation and victimization, actual and perceived, that the Korean peninsula has experienced since the latter half of the 19th century. These two ideas are closely linked, but how that linkage is conceptualized and given political expression, based on how history is remembered and should be rectified, has resulted in a deep division between the young and the old. The most important generational divide is between those who remember the Korean War and those who do not.

The young tend to imagine and invoke an understanding of the post Korean War situation on the peninsula that is a product of the post Cold War status quo in which North Korea is no longer the evil aggressor, but an equal victim of Great Power politics. This has led to a new terminology, “South-South Conflict” (nam-nam kaltung) that describes the deep division and disunity that now exists between the young, many of whom would embrace and help the North, and the old, who hew to the anti-Communist anti-North Korea line that took root during the Korean War. To be sure there are exceptions, for example, the recent appearance of the New Right that is comprised of young South Koreans who reject both the left as anti-democratic and anti-capitalist and the traditional right as corrupt. But such exceptions still remain politically small and relatively marginalized.[3]

South Korea is therefore in a transitional period. The post-Korean War generation has matured and is poised to assume political leadership. In many ways the election of Roh Mu-hyon as President in 2002 was the first step in this transition. Above all they reject the previous political paradigm that had functioned under the aegis of the Cold War and was based on intimate ties to the United States. They seek to realize the long held dream of achieving self-determination, a Korea that is master of its own fate and destiny, a destiny that promises greatness. In their eyes, such a destiny can only be predicated on peaceful reunification....
Read entire article at Japan Focus