In recent decades, neoliberalism has transformed South Korean society, going far beyond simply restructuring the economy. In response, a number of civic organizations that emerged from the democratization movement with a conscious emphasis on social change have sought to address socioeconomic and political problems caused or aggravated by the neoliberal transformation. Examining how “citizens’ organizations” in South Korea negotiate with the market and neoliberal governance, Seungsook Moon offers new ways to understand the intricate relationship between democracy and neoliberalism as modes of ruling. She provides in-depth qualitative studies of three different types of organizations: a large national advocacy organization run by professional staff activists, two medium-size local branches of a national feminist organization run by mostly volunteer activists, and a small local organization run by volunteer activists with a focus on foreign migrants. Bringing together these rich empirical cases with deft theoretical analysis, Moon argues that neoliberalism and democracy are entwined in complex ways. Although neoliberalism undermines democratic practices of social equality by shrinking or destroying public resources, institutions, and space, it also can facilitate participatory practices that arise to fill needs left by privatization and deregulation as long as those practices do not seriously challenge the workings of capitalism. Showing how neoliberalism simultaneously enables and constrains civic activism, this book illuminates the contradictions of social engagement today, with global implications.

​Igniting the Internet is one of the first books to examine in depth the development and consequences of Internet-born politics in the twenty-first century. It takes up the new wave of South Korean youth activism that originated online in 2002, when the country’s dynamic cyberspace transformed a vehicular accident involving two U.S. servicemen into a national furor that compelled many Koreans to reexamine the fifty-year relationship between the two countries. Responding to the accident, which ended in the deaths of two high school students, technologically savvy youth went online to organize demonstrations that grew into nightly rallies across the nation. Internet-born, youth-driven mass protest has since become a familiar and effective repertoire for activism in South Korea, even as the rest of the world has struggled to find its feet with this emerging model of political involvement. Igniting the Internet focuses on the cultural dynamics that have allowed the Internet to bring issues rapidly to public attention and exert influence on both domestic and international politics. The author combines a robust analysis of online communities with nuanced interview data to theorize a “cultural ignition process”—the mechanisms and implications for popular politics in volatile Internet-driven activism—in South Korea and beyond. She offers a unique perspective on how local actors experience and remember the cultural dynamics of Internet-born activism and how these experiences shape the political identities of a generation who has essentially come of age in cyberspace, the so-called digital natives or millennials. South Korea’s debates on the nature of youth-driven Internet protest reverberated around the world following the events in Tahrir Square in 2010 and Zuccotti Park in 2011. Igniting the Internetoffers numerous points of comparison with countries following a path of technological development and urban youth formation similar to that of South Korea with a thorough consideration of general structural changes and locally specific triggers for Internet activism. Readers interested in social movement theory and new media in social context as well as students and scholars of Korean studies will find the work both far-reaching and insightful.

One of the signal events in global politics in the last decade has been the transformation of political and civic activism. Not only is the new activism qualitatively different in character from what it was in 2000; its intensity and frequency have dramatically increased. Activists are developing a new type of civic movement, applying innovative forms of direct action against governments and often operating without leaders or even any well-defined set of aims. In Civic Activism Unleashed, Carnegie scholar Richard Youngs examines the changing shape of contemporary civic activism. He shows how the emerging civic activism has important implications for the whole concept of civil society-and for the relationship between citizens, political institutions, and states. Youngs contends that the rise and spread of these new forms of direct-action civic activism, and the way the trend has driven the dramatic events in global politics in recent years, requires us to update our understanding of what civil society actually is and which types of organizations are in its vanguard. He further looks at the global impact of recent civic activism and offers a set of variables to help explain cases of success and failure. Youngs' larger aim is to explore in depth the new forms of civic activism that are emerging around the world and assess how they differ from more established practices of civil society activity. Theoretically ambitious and global in scope, Civic Activism Unleashed forces us to reconsider the nature of contemporary social and civic activism and how it is reshaping contentious politics in countries across the world.

This book explores how political opportunities afforded by democratization, including the relative balance of power between conservative and progressive civic actors, shape power relations between men and women in post-authoritarian Korea. Jones reveals that organized women can make a difference - depending on their strategic choices and alliances, and the manner in which they negotiate evolving political institutions. Moreover, democratic consolidation need not be led by political parties, but can provide surprising opportunities for an organized civil society to press for a deepening of political and human rights.

Civil Society and the State in Democratic East Asia: Between Entanglement and Contention in Post High Growth focuses on the new and diversifying interactions between civil society and the state in contemporary East Asia by including cases of entanglement and contention in the three fully consolidated democracies in the area: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The contributions to this book argue that all three countries have reached a new era of post high growth and mature democracy, leading to new social anxieties and increasing normative diversity, which have direct repercussions on the relationship between the state and civil society. It introduces a comparative perspective in identifying and discussing similarities and differences in East Asia based on in-depth case studies in the fields of environmental issues, national identities as well as neoliberalism and social inclusion that go beyond the classic dichotomy of state vs 'liberal' civil society.

This book explores the evolution of social movements in South Korea by focusing on how they have become institutionalized and diffused in the democratic period. The contributors explore the transformation of Korean social movements from the democracy campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s to the rise of civil society struggles after 1987. South Korea was ruled by successive authoritarian regimes from 1948 to 1987 when the government decided to re-establish direct presidential elections. The book contends that the transition to a democratic government was motivated, in part, by the pressure from social movement groups that fought the state to bring about such democracy. After the transition, however, the movement groups found themselves in a qualitatively different political context which in turn galvanized the evolution of the social movement sector. Including an impressive array of case studies ranging from the women's movement, to environmental NGOs, and from cultural production to law, the contributors to this book enrich our understanding of the democratization process in Korea, and show that the social movement sector remains an important player in Korean politics today. This book will appeal to students and scholars of Korean studies, Asian politics, political history and social movements.

How popular culture is engaged by activists to effect emancipatory political change One cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like. Civic imagination is the capacity to conceptualize alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions; it also requires the ability to see oneself as a civic agent capable of making change, as a participant in a larger democratic culture. Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination represents a call for greater clarity about what we’re fighting for—not just what we’re fighting against. Across more than thirty examples from social movements around the world, this casebook proposes “civic imagination” as a framework that can help us identify, support, and practice new kinds of communal participation. As the contributors demonstrate, young people, in particular, are turning to popular culture—from Beyoncé to Bollywood, from Smokey Bear to Hamilton, from comic books to VR—for the vernacular through which they can express their discontent with current conditions. A young activist uses YouTube to speak back against J. K. Rowling in the voice of Cho Chang in order to challenge the superficial representation of Asian Americans in children’s literature. Murals in Los Angeles are employed to construct a mythic imagination of Chicano identity. Twitter users have turned to #BlackGirlMagic to highlight the black radical imagination and construct new visions of female empowerment. In each instance, activists demonstrate what happens when the creative energies of fans are infused with deep political commitment, mobilizing new visions of what a better democracy might look like.