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Research on Korean Communism: Promise versus Performance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Samuel S. Kim
Samuel S. Kim
Affiliation:
Monmouth College
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Abstract

Research on Korean communism is clearly subsumed under a new field of inquiry known as “comparative study of communism” or “studies of comparative communism.” Developed in the wake of the Sino-Soviet conflict, the comparative study of communism claims greater conceptual and methodological potency through the use of “value-neutral” models and theories developed in the social and behavioral sciences. The author critically examines the performance of current scholarship on North Korean politics in light of the promise of the comparative study of communism. Specifically, he first identifies key normative, conceptual, and methodological problems that plague the current lines of inquiry in the field. He then probes the areas of substantive strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in our present knowledge about the North Korean political system, focusing on two issues of normative and policy importance to both domestic and foreign policy—legitimacy and chuch'e. The author suggests several alternative methods and approaches for liberating the field from its intellectual isolationism and for charting a path toward a cumulative, orderly, and systematic way of building a body of knowledge about Korean communism.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , January 1980 , pp. 281 - 310
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1980

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References

1 Transliteration of Korean into English throughout this paper follows the McCune-Reischauer system, except for the names of prominent Koreans whose personal preferences are known: Syngman Rhee, Kim II Sung, Park Chung Hee, as well as the authors of Pukhan Oekyo-ron, do not follow the McCune-Reischauer system of romanization.

2 See Fleron, Frederic J. Jr., ed., Communist Studies and Social Sciences: Essays on Methodology and Empirical Theory (Chicago: Rand McNally 1969)Google Scholar; Johnson, Chalmers, ed., Change in Communist Systems (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1970)Google Scholar; Kanet, Robert E., ed., The Behavioral Revolution and Communist Studies (New York: Free Press 1971)Google Scholar.

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6 Ibid., 67.

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12 Scalapino, Robert A., “The Two Koreas—Dialogue or Conflict?” in Barnds, William J., ed., The Two Koreas in East Asian Affairs (New York: New York University Press 1976), 75Google Scholar.

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23 Cited in Koh, B. C., “Chuch'esông in Korean Politics,” Studies in Comparative Communism, vii (Spring/Summer 1974), 89Google Scholar.

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25 Mao Zedong sixiang wansui [Long Live Mao Zedong's Thought], (n.p., 1969), 416.

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27 For my analysis leading to this conclusion, see “The Developmental Problem of Korean Nationalism,” in Kim, Se-Jin and Cho, Chang-hyun, eds., Korea: A Divided Nation (Silver Spring, Md.: Research Institute on Korean Affairs 1976), 10–37Google Scholar.

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35 The WOMP is a transnational enterprise of scholars that is designed to diagnose global crises and project them over the last quarter of the twentieth century; to build models of preferred futures based on such planetary values as peace, economic well-being, social justice, and ecological balance; and to suggest transition strategies of implementing a preferred world order. See Falk, Richard A., A Study of Future Worlds (New York: Free Press 1975)Google Scholar; Mendlovitz, Saul H., ed., On the Creation of a fust World Order (New York: Free Press 1975)Google Scholar.

36 Sakamoto, Korea As a World Order Issue, WOM P Occasional Paper No. 3 (1978).