| Abstract: | Abstract I intend to show the characteristics and limitations of South Korea’s social movements in the 1960s and examine its formative potentialities in the growth of social movements thereafter. Whereas the 1960s in the Western world is characterized by the surge of ‘new social movements’ and waves of upheaval in the Third World, it would not be the case of South Korea. The ‘subject’ of the movements looks similar, but the context and raised issues proved markedly different. Some old‐school left‐wingers who conceived the strategy of socialistic national liberation survived the emergence of new ‘liberal’ generations in South Korea’s 1960s. The structural crisis of Korea’s anticommunist ruling class caused by the democratization movements and the growth of nationalism at the turn of the 1960s instigated the military coup of 1961, which finally brought Yushin dictatorship in 1972. Although South Korea’s social movements remained isolated from the world through the ‘long 60s’, it may be viewed as a significant part of the division of the ‘liberal consensus’ in the American‐led East‐Asian bloc. |
