The Specter of the Past: Reconstructing Conservative Historical Memory in South Korea *

Methods and Data

This article employs qualitative research methods combining ethnographic observation, in-depth interviews, and archival research. I undertook one and a half years of field research in Seoul between December 2016 and July 2020. Seeking a view from inside, ⁷ I listened to right-wing intellectuals and tried to understand why they believe what they do. I attended right-wing protests, political meetings, and special lectures organized by right-wing politicians and activists. I conducted in-depth interviews with thirty-one intellectuals involved in right-wing activism in both online and off-line settings, including college professors, journalists, lawyers, and political analysts in think tanks. Lastly, I analyzed news articles, columns, and op-ed pieces in conservative newspapers and magazines, as well as books and personal memoirs written by right-wing authors. I have used three major conservative newspapers—the Chosun Ilbo, the Dong-A Ilbo, and the JoongAng Ilbo—as sources for mainstream conservative views. I also examined the Monthly Chosun (Wŏlgan Chosun)—a sister monthly magazine published by the Chosun Ilbo—for the postauthoritarian period (1987–present). Collectively these publications illustrate conservative intellectuals’ worldviews and perspectives on national history and political identity.

This wide range of data allowed me to closely observe the on-the-ground internal dynamics of right-wing groups and the views and feelings shared by their members: how they make sense of Korean politics and history (including both Koreas), what views they have of the Korean nation, how they define democracy, and what they think it means to belong to the Right in South Korea. I tried to account for ideological bias in the data by consulting a wide range of sources. For example, where possible I cross-checked and confirmed information from conservative sources, often consulting liberal as well as conservative authorities in order to minimize bias and obtain the most accurate picture possible of right-wing politics.

In the following section, I will discuss existing scholarship on the rise of the Far Right and suggest how studying the South Korean case of conservative intellectuals invoking historical justifications can bridge gaps in the literature. After sketching how the official history was written by the authoritarian regimes, I describe the new democratic governments’ efforts to come to terms with the past in the postauthoritarian period and the strong backlash from the Right. Through two cases of battles over historical figures and memory—Syngman Rhee and the founding of the Republic of Korea, and Park Chung Hee and the national modernization project—I analyze the historical narratives promoted by New Right intellectuals.

Conservative Intellectuals and National Identity

The resurgence of Far Right parties and movements has become a global trend during the past decade, threatening democratic institutions and norms in developed countries, particularly in Europe and the United States. Existing studies commonly see this phenomenon as a backlash to increasing economic inequality, political insecurity, and cultural concerns in the context of globalization and neoliberalism. ⁸ In a globalized and postindustrial economy, workers and low-level managers whose economic positions are deteriorating develop a sense of resentment and frustration toward an establishment that is seemingly unable to offer solutions. The simplistic and nativist rhetoric of the Far Right often appeals to those who feel betrayed by mainstream politics. Far Right movements and leaders are able to exploit working people’s sense of deprivation and social injustice by accusing immigrants of “stealing” jobs and abusing the generous benefits of Western welfare states. They also highlight the (alleged) incompatibility of immigrant behavioral norms and cultural values with those of the native population. ⁹ The core political programs and ideologies that the Far Right commonly shares are thus ethno-nationalist xenophobia and antiestablishment populism. ¹⁰ Many studies also argue that the Left’s shift to the center and a general failure to manage social discontent combined to open up fertile ground for the Far Right. ¹¹

Despite its explanatory power, existing scholarship on the Far Right has some weaknesses. First, Western-centric scholarship—dominated by studies on both Western and Eastern European countries as well as the United States—has a limited capacity to explain non-Western countries where the Far Right is gaining traction but immigration is not a prominent political issue. Moreover, Asian cases are generally missing in the study of the Far Right, even though the Far Right has always been part of mainstream politics, particularly in South Korea and Japan as an anticommunist bulwark under American hegemony after the end of World War II. Through the South Korean case, this article will add a comparative perspective to the existing literature.

Second, the existing literature has difficulty explaining why, despite similar structural forces—neoliberal economics, rising social inequality, increasing migration, and economic integration—the Far Right in some countries is more successful than in others. ¹² The success of Far Right politics depends on the extent to which the political opportunity structure—for instance, electoral rules, party competition, the media environment, ideological structures—is favorable to the Far Right. ¹³ Further, it also depends on the mobilization capacity of Far Right actors and organizations, which includes membership in Far Right organizations, the strength of alliances among different groups, the proximity of political organizations to ordinary citizens, and so on. Thus, particular domestic contexts such as political configurations and institutional arrangements shape the patterns of Far Right politics in different countries. Looking at how the Right in South Korea tries to accrue political currency by mobilizing particular historical figures and events, I will shed light on the importance of the politics of the past in right-wing activism.

Lastly, many empirical studies focus on Far Right parties and their electoral performances. ¹⁴ There has been considerably less attention to nonparty sectors and civil society. The success of Far Right politics does not depend only on the parties themselves but also on ways in which Far Right parties work together with other rightist organizations and networks to promote their values and ideas. In highlighting the roles of right-wing intellectuals, this essay trains its attention on nonparty and nonstate actors, who are relatively autonomous from particular political institutions but no less important in building ideological infrastructure.

Some scholarship emphasizes the importance of historical experience and national identity—and particularly, the ways in which the past is perceived and framed—in shaping contemporary Far Right politics. ¹⁵ For example, David Art demonstrates how differences in the ways in which Germany and Austria confronted their Nazi past have shaped divergent support for the Far Right in those two countries. ¹⁶ In Germany, the “contrition frame,” widely shared among political elites and ordinary citizens, effectively marginalized the Far Right party that pursued National Socialism and revisionist interpretations of the Hitler era. By contrast, in Austria the “victim frame”—a defense of Austrian history rooted in apologetic interpretations of the fascist period—became a part of the Right’s agenda, polarizing public opinion about the Nazi past. Instead of enforcing antifascist discursive norms as in Germany, the introduction of nationalist-chauvinist language into mainstream politics created a more hospitable political environment for the Far Right in Austria. An unsettled past often becomes a contested space, and political elites and intellectuals alike can exploit the past by framing historical events in ways that achieve their immediate political gains and legitimize their worldviews. Far from fading into history, ideas about and interpretations of the past can significantly shape the political present by creating intense debates and ideational contestation. Thus, historical interpretation often becomes an important tool with which political elites and entrepreneurs attempt to mobilize support.

Further questions can be raised as to who leads public debates on the lessons of history—who shapes the discursive space. These conversations are often sparked by political elites and then filtered down to the general population. ¹⁷ Elite messages are both disseminated and framed by the mass media, which in turn shape public opinion. Although in democratic societies ordinary citizens can participate in public deliberation and discussion, and although the internet has created a new space for ordinary citizens to engage in political debates, everyone’s voice is not given the same weight. It is mainly social and political elites who lead discussion in a particular direction. Among the various groups of elites, in this article I particularly focus on intellectuals.

In contrast to the literature on progressive and transformative social movements, which emphasizes the roles of ideas and intellectuals, ¹⁸ the study of right-wing politics and activism tends to ignore them. Intellectuals are often considered to be critical of power or, as Said put it, thinkers who “speak truth to power.” ¹⁹ “True” intellectuals defend universal values and uphold the rights of man against the claims of the state and the social order; hence they dare to challenge authority and raise their voices, as seen in the case of the Dreyfus affair. ²⁰ Conservative activists and thinkers, on the other hand, aim to uphold the existing social order, and those on the far right often use racist and discriminatory rhetoric against minority groups—that is, they are speaking for power. In this sense, those on the right do not seem to perfectly fit within the category of intellectuals as it is commonly understood. Yet, if we are not restricted to this normative sense of intellectuals and view them rather as “men of ideas”—those who take ideas very seriously and seek to provide moral standards, as Coser put it—we can find many examples on the right. ²¹

Throughout the article, I use the term “intellectuals” in a neutral way to refer to those who possess expertise in the production of moral and political ideas. ²² As ideological brokers, intellectuals—academics, journalists, writers, political analysists, and activists—play a leading role in setting agendas, producing knowledge, and building a collective identity. ²³ Intellectuals provide interpretive frames that enable individuals to locate, perceive, and identify both historical and current events. As Benford and Snow noted, these frames help to render events or occurrences meaningful and thereby guide actions and garner support. ²⁴

While the Far Right is often associated with anti-intellectualism because of its violent actions, seemingly unrefined ideas, attacks on expertise and scientific knowledge, and constituency of less educated citizens, it also deploys knowledge for its own ends. ²⁵ Indeed, an intellectual Far Right has long existed. Many prominent thinkers—Edmund Burke, Martin Heidegger, Ernst Jünger, and Carl Schmitt, to name a few—have provided ideological resources and interpretative frameworks for the Right. ²⁶ Some scholars examine how right-wing intellectuals have sparked public debate, shaped the public sphere, and disseminated counternarratives against their ideological counterparts. ²⁷ For example, libertarian economists provided academic critiques of Keynesian economics, promoted laissez-faire economic theories, and shaped the American conservative movement. ²⁸ Asserting that the upheavals of 1968 were responsible for moral stagnation and social ills in Western societies, conservative historians and philosophers in France and Germany have built a tradition of antileftist scholarship and provided major theoretical resources for the New Right. ²⁹ More recently, leaders of the contemporary Far Right, such as Greg Johnson and Richard Spencer, have founded think tanks, established magazines and websites, and built ideological foundations and infrastructures for the Far Right. Using the internet and social media, they have promoted rightist principles and criticized liberal ideas about race, Islam, and elites. They also target college campuses as key sites to “challenge the limits of free speech, spread propaganda, recruit youth, and polarize campus communities in ways that contribute to overall far-right goals.” ³⁰

Although some studies analyze the thoughts and logics of conservative thinkers and theorists from a political theory perspective, ³¹ studies on the role of right-wing intellectuals in invoking the past and building an identity are relatively lacking except for some case studies focused on Germany. ³² Through an “alternative” interpretive framework about the Nazi past, some reactionary German intellectuals tried to normalize German nationalism and to provide ideological resources for Far Right movements. Likewise, right-wing intellectuals in South Korea play a crucial role in framing historical events in such a way as to enhance the Right’s political legitimacy. Traditionally considered influential opinion leaders, South Korean intellectuals—both on the right and on the left—write op-eds in mainstream newspapers and magazines, establish and advise grassroots organizations, and consult for politicians and policy makers. By examining how right-wing intellectuals appropriated the past and shaped triumphalist national imagery, this study aims to better understand the dynamics of ideational contestation and historical disputes in right-wing activism.

Throughout this essay, I use the terms conservative and right wing interchangeably and do not necessarily differentiate the Far Right from mainstream conservative politics at large. In the US context, Blee and Creasap distinguish “conservative” from “right wing”: conservatives support patriotism, free enterprise capitalism, and a traditional moral order, whereas the right wing focuses on race and ethnicity. ³³ The former takes more moderate stances and does not engage in violent action, while the latter promotes violence as a tactic or a goal. More specifically, Miller-Idriss defines the Far Right as “a fluid spectrum of groups and individuals who represent more extreme and less extreme version of the antidemocratic and illiberal ideals, practices, and beliefs—exclusionary, hierarchical, and dehumanizing ideals that prioritize and seek to preserve the superiority and dominance of some groups over others.” ³⁴ But both conservatism and right-wing politics focus on preservation and the restoration of the rights and privileges of relatively advantaged societal groups, ³⁵ and they share an animus against the agency of subordinate classes. ³⁶ While acknowledging the divisions and differences within the broad conservative sector, Robin focuses on the “counterrevolutionary” and “reactionary” character that conservatives commonly display. ³⁷

Similarly, the South Korean Right is not monolithic as in other countries, and different factions and cleavages within the Right exist. For example, the traditional Old Right (or Far Right) focuses on anticommunism and takes a hawkish position toward North Korea, ³⁸ whereas the more moderate center-right claims that it pursues less ideological, more practical issues, particularly related to the economy. However, while it is possible to conceptually distinguish the Far Right from moderate conservativism, doing so is practically difficult and not analytically useful in the South Korean context, for a couple of reasons. First, the unique geopolitical context where the Cold War remains influential and the fact that the two Koreas are still technically at war have shaped the ideological terrain in South Korea in an extremely restrictive way, as for many years only anticommunist, rightist ideology could be represented in mainstream politics, and progressive, left political activists could easily be accused of pro–North Korean or communist sympathies—a situation that political scientist Jangjip Choi terms “conservative hegemony.” ³⁹ Given this structural condition, the so-called left-reformist party (the current ruling party) is not especially left in the classical Western sense. It is centrist at best, although its political opponents always condemn it as radical or socialist. ⁴⁰ What would be the Far Right in other countries could be seen as mainstream conservativism in South Korea, as extremist right-wing ideas have been normalized in mainstream politics. As the Far Right occupies the ideological space of mainstream conservativism, even the center-right is vulnerable to ideological accusations from the more extreme right and has had difficulty in broadening its base within the Right. The moderate or center-right has at times attempted to reform the conservative party in order to keep up with changing society, but such experiments have never been successful. ⁴¹

Second, despite the existence of factions and tensions within the Right, the Far Right and the more moderate center-right have remained allied in practice. Not only do they both coexist in the same party and identify themselves as “conservative right” (posu up’a), but they also share similar historical views as well as the goal of defeating the so-called left radicals. For example, mainstream conservative lawmakers have participated in recent massive antigovernment protests over the past few years, ⁴² and there is a deep connection between the conservative party and Far Right civic organizations and figures.

All these terms are used in a context-specific way and can be understood properly only in this particular political context. The definitions familiar in Western contexts cannot be directly transferred, as the ways in which Left and Right are understood are historical and social constructs that vary across time and space. ⁴³ Unlike in Western countries, the distinction between the Far Right and mainstream conservativism is blurred in South Korea.

Two Contested Histories: Official versus Minjung (Common People) History

The experiences of national division and the Korean War profoundly affected the political sphere in South Korea. ⁴⁴ The confrontation with North Korea endowed the South Korean state with enormous power, and anticommunism became the official state ideology. North Korea was identified as “absolute evil,” and the defeat of communism was considered the top national priority. ⁴⁵ The South Korean state could easily discipline the behaviors of the populace and suppress oppositional activities in the name of “national security.” ⁴⁶ Legislation such as the National Security Law became a powerful means of labeling anybody critical of the South Korean government as “communists” and “North Korean spies” who would destroy South Korean society. Thus, the freedom of speech and association was extremely restricted.

The authoritarian state monopolized the production of historical memory. Certain events were completely obliterated, and people were forced to remember very specific versions of history. State violence against innocent civilians was often legitimized as a necessary suppression of “commies” that would ensure national security and public safety. The survivors and families of victims suffered from trauma, yet they had to remain silent out of a fear of being accused themselves, with no hope of compensation or apology.

Many historical incidents remained little known to the public or were falsely represented as antistate and procommunist. The cases of the April 3 Jeju Uprising in 1948 and the Kwangju prodemocracy movement in 1980 are worth mentioning here because they demonstrate how the authoritarian state identified ordinary people’s resistance as illegitimate and completely repressed popular memory. Only vaguely known until the late 1980s, the April 3 Jeju Uprising started on Jeju Island in 1948, when leftists, protesting the US military government’s decision to hold an election on May 10 to start a separate government in South Korea, attacked police and right-wing paramilitary groups. ⁴⁷ The US military and the South Korean police countered this armed rebellion with extremely brutal tactics, including torture, mass detention, the burning down of entire villages, and the indiscriminate killings of civilians. ⁴⁸ The violent conflict lasted until 1954 and resulted in an estimated thirty thousand deaths—about 10 percent of the entire population of Jeju. ⁴⁹ Throughout the authoritarian era, massacres were systematically censored and covered up, and the event was officially known as a “communist guerrilla insurgency.” For several decades, the people of Jeju feared even mentioning the event, let alone commemorating their lost loved ones. It was almost half a century before the deaths of innocent civilians were recognized and a democratic government officially offered an apology to the victims and their families.

Similarly, the Kwangju prodemocracy movement was organized by citizens of the long-marginalized southwestern city of Kwangju against the martial law government in 1980. During this period, the city was blockaded and its citizens were completely isolated for ten days, allowed no communication with the outside world. ⁵⁰ Paratroopers violently suppressed street demonstrations, and hundreds of civilians were beaten, fired upon, and killed by special government troops. The new Chun Doo-Hwan regime defined this incident as a riot instigated by communist sympathizers connected to North Korea. Because of severe censorship by the Chun regime, the news media barely covered what happened in Kwangju, and when they did, they only emphasized the violent and disordered aspects of the demonstrations and casualties among the troops. ⁵¹ Most Korean citizens knew only that the chaos in Kwangju was stopped by military operations. The Chun government accused the long-time dissident Kim Dae Jung of plotting the rebellion, and Kim was sentenced to death. Until the late 1980s when democratization took place, this incident was commonly understood as a violent riot agitated by radical leftists. It was not until 1995 that the National Assembly passed a special law that enabled prosecution of those responsible for the Kwangju massacre.

The official history under authoritarianism was nothing but a state-sanctioned narrative that emphasized the South Korean state’s struggle and the victory of capitalist development and “liberal democracy” against communism and South Korean radical leftists. School textbooks and other official discourses were monopolized by the authoritarian state, yet critical intellectuals and student activists struggled to construct a dissenting popular narrative in opposition to the official historical accounts. Developed in the 1980s, this counterhistoriography by the minjung movement tried to reveal what had been veiled by the state-imposed official history—ordinary citizens’ unyielding efforts of resistance against brutal state violence and repression. ⁵² Influenced by Marxism and liberal theology, labor activists and college students organized minjung movements in the 1980s to overthrow the authoritarian regime. Literally referring to the common people or the masses, such as rank-and-file workers, peasants, and the urban poor, minjung has a normative connotation that people who are usually marginalized and occupy the bottom rung of the social hierarchy carry a potential for instigating social change (or revolution). In this alternative view, the minjung’s suffering was not necessarily due to communism or North Korea, as the official story had it. Rather, parts of the minjung movement saw the Great Powers, particularly the United States and the South Korean ruling classes who allied with them, as the greatest concern. Japanese colonialism and the intervention of the Great Powers in the Korean peninsula prevented Koreans from building an independent, unified nation. Meanwhile, self-interested and opportunistic South Korean elites colluded with the imperial powers to maintain the status quo by ignoring popular demands. Minjung were the main protagonists who challenged imperialism and the authoritarian state and who led the fight for democracy throughout modern Korean history. For example, social science books like Logics of the Transitional Era (Chŏnhwan sidae ŭi nolli) and Understanding Pre- and Post-Independence History (Haebang chŏnhusa ŭi yinsik) delivered minjung historiography and were influential texts for college students in the 1970s and 1980s. ⁵³

Despite severe government censorship under the authoritarian rule of the 1970s and 1980s, college students in the underground circulated, read, and discussed various texts that critically analyzed the contradictions of capitalism and American imperialism and their impacts on the Korean peninsula in the twentieth century. These texts opened the eyes of young people, who had hitherto been inculcated with anticommunism, and led them to seek anti-imperialist, revolutionary alternatives to unrelenting capitalist development and South Korea’s “neocolonial” status. While the movement sector and college campuses were fertile ground where minjung historiography and progressive thought flourished, it was rare for the general public to be exposed to these so-called radical and dangerous views, given South Korea’s extremely restrictive political environment.

The Politics of the Past during the Postauthoritarian Period

Democratization and the transition to a civilian government expanded civil society in the early 1990s, and the reformist Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun governments opened new opportunities for former student activists and prodemocracy movement activists to enter mainstream politics in the early 2000s. ⁵⁴ These new political forces began to challenge the official history—hitherto monopolized by the Right—and the new democratic governments tried to address the issues of state violence and the innocent deaths of civilians in the past.

The first “civilian” government, led by Kim Young Sam (1993–98), attempted to deal with past wrongdoing by the military regimes and to restore the victims’ honor. Under the banner of “getting history right” (yŏksa paro seugi), the Kim government rearticulated modern Korean history. Not only did President Kim Young Sam, a former antidictatorship politician, affirm that Park Chung Hee had come to power through a military coup—thereby calling the Park regime’s legitimacy into question—but he also emphasized the legacies of the antidictatorship struggles and prodemocracy movements. In 1995, the National Assembly passed a special law providing for an investigation of the Kwangju massacre, and Chun and Roh—two military leaders—were jailed for the role they played in the tragedy. It was the first time that the government had officially acknowledged violence against innocent civilians and tried to address wrongdoing. Additionally, the Kim government demolished the colonial buildings in the heart of the capital. In doing so, President Kim tried to end the colonial and authoritarian legacies. Yet Kim, who had allied himself with authoritarian military forces to win the presidency in 1990, was not able to completely settle the issue. After only two years, the military protagonists were pardoned and released from jail.

The subsequent progressive, reformist governments of Kim Dae Jung (1998–2003) and Roh Moo Hyun (2003–8) addressed the crimes of the authoritarian era more extensively and founded government agencies to systemically deal with human rights violations dating from that time. Kim Dae Jung, a long-time dissident and opposition party leader, was finally elected president in 1997, after three attempts. Kim was Park Chung Hee’s political adversary and had been kidnapped by an agent of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency in Japan and almost killed. Under the Chun regime, Kim was also accused of being a communist and instigator of the Kwangju uprising, found guilty of treason, and sentenced to death. Throughout the authoritarian period, he was jailed several times, put under house arrest, and exiled to the United States. Thus, his election was symbolic: until then, no opposition party leader and no one from the long-excluded and long-marginalized Chŏlla province had ever been elected president, and right-wing hegemony had never been challenged before.

Often nicknamed the Mandela of South Korea, Kim Dae Jung instituted the National Human Rights Commission and the Presidential Truth Commission on Suspicious Deaths, and he tried to deal with the dark history of state violence and human rights violations committed by the authoritarian regimes. After a thorough investigation of these cases, the Kim government offered compensation to the families of the victims and restored the honor of those unjustly accused and killed. Revealing truths that had been buried for a long time, the Kim government aimed at redressing historical injustices and promoting national reconciliation and forgiveness.

Roh Moo Hyun, Kim Dae Jung’s successor, continued what the Kim government had initiated. Beyond particular cases such as the Jeju Uprising and a number of suspicious deaths, President Roh emphasized the need for extensive investigations and insisted that this tragic history should not be repeated. The biggest contribution made during the Roh presidency in this regard was the passage of a special law on truth and reconciliation and the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The issues investigated included (but were not limited to) Japanese collaborators, forced conscription during the Japanese colonial period, mass killings during the Korean War, and fabricated espionage cases during the Park and Chun regimes. ⁵⁵ President Roh often emphasized the need for state power to be held accountable and claimed that, unless the state acknowledged and corrected wrongs, it would be impossible to make a better future. In his 2006 address at the memorial ceremony for the Jeju Uprising, he remarked,

Whether it is a proud or shameful history, historical matters should be revealed as they really happened. In particular, the wrongs perpetrated by state power should be settled at any cost. . . . State power should be exercised in a legitimate way in any case, and abuse should be dealt with in a particularly serious manner. Further, before we talk about forgiveness and reconciliation, we should heal the wounds of those who unjustly suffered and restore their honor. This is the government’s minimal duty and responsibility. Then citizens’ trust in state power can be secured and on that ground we can all live together, and social integration will happen. ⁵⁶

The democratic governments’ initiatives to “settle the past,” however, would not have been possible without progressive civic organizations and intellectuals, who played a significant role in pushing the government to take action. ⁵⁷ In the newly democratized environment, former prodemocracy movement activists ran for office and won seats in the National Assembly. Candidates who had protested authoritarian regimes campaigned on the necessity of uncovering unspoken truths and disclosing past injustices, as many had themselves been victims of atrocities. At the same time, former student activists and intellectuals also formed civic organizations and local advocacy groups, some of which demanded investigations and sought transitional justice. Not only did they hold press conferences and issue statements, they also organized a variety of public events, including public forums, academic conferences, field trips, exhibitions, and cultural performances to instill a sense of human rights, social justice, peace, and democracy in the general public. The efforts of the reformist governments and civil society actors began to break through the state-monopolized historical narratives, and unspoken truths finally surfaced to become a part of public knowledge.

The Rise of the New Right and the War on History

The process of this government-initiated “settling of the past” was far from smooth. The movement to right past wrongs met with a fierce backlash from conservative forces, especially the conservative Grand National Party (the Hannara Party) and mainstream conservative media. Conservative successors of the authoritarian Park and Chun regimes saw their political legitimacy and symbolic currency as dependent on economic development and a capitalist victory over North Korea; consequently, the actions of the reformist Kim and Roh governments were seen as attacking their political identity and raison d’être. Further, the rise of former student and labor activists, whom conservatives considered pro–North Korea “commies,” as a new mainstream political force in the early 2000s enhanced a sense of fear and crisis among conservatives. The ten years of the Kim and Roh presidencies constituted a “lost decade,” according to conservatives, who had until the democratic transition held a monopoly on state power and were easily able to repress oppositional voices. Faced with this new challenge, conservatives found they had to recast their politics and develop different strategies to win their ideological battles with liberal-leftists.

Thus, the emergence of the New Right around 2004 and its attempt to rewrite Korean history should be understood as a conservative project to wage ideological warfare and to mobilize conservative citizens on a large scale. It might actually be considered the first serious intellectual movement of the Right: while there had been top–down ideological campaigns organized by the state or the conservative party in the past, the New Right movement was initiated and organized spontaneously by nonstate actors. Led by former student activists converted to conservative politics, along with college professors, writers, journalists, and Christian pastors, the New Right aimed at establishing a new, refreshing, and internationally respectable brand of conservatism. ⁵⁸ By founding conservative-minded publishing houses, creating new journals, forming civic organizations and networks, and taking advantage of existing conservative media, New Right intellectuals tried to promote conservative values and renew conservative politics at large. Some founding members of New Right organizations had been involved in student activism in the 1980s, and their prior experiences on the opposite side taught them the important lesson that grassroots organizing and building cultural hegemony were critical in shaping public opinion and mobilizing civil society.

Ideologically, the New Right presented itself as an alternative political force that could be differentiated from both the anticommunist Old Right and the dogmatic nationalistic Old Left. On the one hand, the New Right distanced itself from the extreme Old Right, which was obsessed with anticommunism, North Korea, and national security without any clear political or economic vision. On the other hand, the New Right also criticized the Left for its pursuit of “old and unrealistic” socialist principles emphasizing redistribution and egalitarianism. They were skeptical about the reformist governments’ policy of engagement with North Korea and promotion of peace in the Korean peninsula, which were seen as “naive” and “nationalistic” approaches that ignored the North Korean regime’s human rights violations and development of nuclear weapons. ⁵⁹

Proposing advancement (sŏnjinhwa) and (neo)liberalism as its motto, the New Right supported small government and probusiness, progrowth economic policies such as privatization and market deregulation, which they viewed as necessary in a competitive global economy. Politically, the New Right emphasized liberalism and patriotic cosmopolitanism. ⁶⁰ It put up the banner of “liberal democracy” as an antidote to leftist populism and a people’s democracy (minjung minjujuŭi). Rather than targeting North Korean socialism, which they saw as having already failed, the New Right turned its attention to the “radical” left-liberal forces as the enemy of “liberal democracy.” Accusing the Kim and Roh governments of implementing populist redistributive policies, the New Right denounced the Left for following in the footsteps of failed Latin American states like Argentina or Venezuela. ⁶¹ Further, equating participatory democracy with a totalitarian political system, the New Right perceived the governments’ emphasis on participatory democracy as conflictual with “liberal democracy.” While the New Right claimed that its political programs of liberalism and “liberal democracy” would overcome the problems of the anticommunist Old Right and the populist left, the specific contents of its political visions did not fully materialize. Further, the New Right’s elevation of authoritarian figures contradicted its own notion of liberalism and “liberal democracy.”

As architects of a new conservatism, New Right intellectuals played a crucial role in condemning the left-leaning reformist governments and providing a conservative discursive framework. The New Right perceived modern Korean history as a crucial battlefield, as the ways in which history is written and interpreted shape how people think about politics. The state project of “settling the past” was thus seen as dangerous, as it damaged the legitimacy of the Republic of Korea and threatened the principles of “liberal democracy.” Referring to leftist interpretations as a “masochist historical view,” ⁶² Ji-Ho Shin, a former radical student activist and leading New Right figure, criticized liberal-reformist forces for highlighting only the dark and shameful past and omitting positive aspects of Korean history. ⁶³ By claiming that leftist historical analysis shares features with North Korean propaganda, ⁶⁴ the New Right not only labeled liberal-leftists as anti–Republic of Korea but it also positioned itself as the legitimate guardian of the Republic of Korea. In a book published by New Right intellectuals, one author criticized the “dangerous” historical views of the Left:

The revisionist ⁶⁵ historical view and support for people’s democracy prevalent in movement circles and among left intellectuals penetrated everywhere by the 1990s and even influenced descriptions of modern Korean history in high school history textbooks. Their historical views basically deny the foundation and legitimacy of the Republic of Korea. They identify the Republic of Korea as a country founded by divisive, pro-Japanese opportunists allied with the external power of the United States. The government-sponsored project of settling the past has made the Republic of Korea a battleground of history. The overwhelming nationalism and emphasis on equality has not only distorted [the meaning of] liberalism since democratization, but it has also threatened constitutionalism and the rule of law as the fundamental pillars of liberal democracy. ⁶⁶

As seen above, most New Right intellectuals identified the ongoing situation in the early 2000s as a grave crisis, with anticonservative ideas pervading South Korean society and people’s minds being manipulated by leftists. To reverse the situation, the New Right believed that waging ideological warfare in this “distorted” discursive landscape was critical. ⁶⁷

From this perspective, one of the most important projects was to revise history textbooks and revive debates over modern Korean history. Criticizing existing historiography as nonscientific, nonpositivist, and emotionally driven by leftist nationalism and a passion for social revolution, New Right historians argued that modern Korean history needed to be based on empirical data and objective facts. By applying positivist and scientific historical analysis, they claimed, Koreans could overcome the self-negating historical views of the Left. Leading New Right scholars published an edited volume titled A New Understanding of Pre- and Post-Independence History (Haebang Chŏnhusa ŭi Chaeinsik) in 2006. This book clearly targeted Understanding Pre- and Post-Independence History (Haebang Chŏnhusa ŭi Insik), a six-volume critical reading of modern Korean history written by progressive scholars and published between 1979 and 1989 that had influenced and inspired college students and prodemocracy movement activists. In the preface, the editors of A New Understanding problematize “dominant” leftist historiography:

It was early in the fall in 2004 when we came to think about publishing this book. After reading a news report that President Roh said that he became hot-blooded after reading Understanding Pre- and Post-Independence History, I realized that I would fail in my historian’s duty if I did not do anything. Though historians have relentlessly raised questions and revisited erroneous arguments in Understanding for the last twenty years, it was limited to academics, while popular readers still accepted Understanding. . . . We are concerned with two fundamental problems in Understanding—ethno-nationalism (minjok chisangjuŭi) and minjung revolutionary determinism (minjung hyŏngmyŏng piryŏnnon)—that have adversely influenced historical interpretation. Ethno-nationalism and left-leaning interpretations of history have overwhelmed our intellectual class. ⁶⁸

The editors were extremely concerned about the leftist historical perception that “opportunism won and social justice lost in modern Korea.” ⁶⁹ New Right intellectuals tried to stem the tide of so-called revolutionary historiography. For example, New Right scholars demonstrated that the Korean economy benefited from Japanese colonialism and argued that Korean history is a story of success and victory in terms of economic growth and modernization. Yet their arguments surprisingly shared much in common with Holocaust denialists in their extreme skepticism of historical evidence that did not support their positions, especially their insistence that victims’ testimonies were too incomplete to be considered factual. ⁷⁰ In the name of historical positivism and objectivism, the New Right selectively cited particular data and deliberately diminished or denied the victims’ sufferings. ⁷¹

Rebuilding a Self-Confident Nation of the New Right: Syngman Rhee’s Founding of the Republic of Korea and Park Chung Hee’s National Modernization

New Right intellectuals aimed to promote national pride and a positive image of the past by glorifying two historical figures who had been denounced by the liberal-leftists—Syngman Rhee and Park Chung Hee. The two former presidents are polarizing figures who receive very different assessments from the Left and the Right. The Left believes that Rhee and Park broke the democratic system, operating brutal dictatorships that were finally overthrown by popular protest. However, for the Right, these two figures symbolize the greatest legacies of “liberal democracy”: the founding of the Republic of Korea and the “economic miracle” of the 1970s. Rhee and Park are seen as having paved the way for the advancement and “civilizing” of the Republic of Korea. Presenting them as heroes who successfully overcame national tragedy and made the Republic of Korea great, the Right has tried to project a sense of optimism about the national future and to legitimize its current political position.

Syngman Rhee was the first president of the Republic of Korea (1948–60). His government oversaw the most tragic period of modern Korean history—the era of national division, the Korean War, and the consequent economic hardship and emotional trauma. In the midst of rampant poverty, social chaos, and ideological polarization, Rhee tried to consolidate his power through a focus on anticommunism and a reliance on help from the US military government. Rhee’s leadership was often described as corrupt and incompetent; ⁷² his regime did not address urgent social issues and instead focused on the elimination of political enemies. Rhee was overthrown by the April 19 student uprising in 1960, which originated in protests against Rhee’s scheme to prolong his rule through rigged elections. Until relatively recently, Rhee has not been particularly esteemed, even within the broader conservative sector.

It was the New Right that emphasized Rhee as the founding father (kukpu) of the free Republic of Korea and praised his achievement of establishing “liberal democracy” in the South in opposition to communist North Korea. The cosmopolitan Rhee—educated in the United States and with a PhD from Princeton—was lauded as a pioneer who knew what was best for the nation and built civilization in the Korean peninsula. Given the overwhelming influence of communism after independence in 1945, the New Right argued that the imperatives of preventing communist revolution had to be prioritized and that the building of “liberal democracy” had to precede national unification. ⁷³ Thus, his refusal to collaborate with the Left or even centrists was an astute decision, made in the interest of South Korea’s national destiny. They believed that today’s South Korea was only possible because Rhee, unlike other Third World leaders, was an unwavering believer in “liberal democracy” and because his uncompromising anticommunism incorporated South Korea under the umbrella of the “free” world.

By publishing books, holding academic forums, and collaborating with conservative media, the New Right disseminated positive ideas about Rhee. In order to oppose existing history textbooks, which critically assessed the establishment of the South Korean state as a pro-American restoration of the colonial order, New Right professors formed the “Textbook Forum” in 2005 in order to shed positive light on Rhee’s founding of the Republic of Korea in 1948. In 2008 the Textbook Forum published a book titled Alternative Textbook: Modern and Contemporary Korean History. In it, the New Right aimed to contest what it deemed “pessimistic and self-tormenting” historical views and to provide a “correct” perspective on the history of South Korea. ⁷⁴

The year 2008 marked the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Korea. To celebrate, New Right scholars organized large academic conferences and forums that shed light on the meanings and implications of the year 1948. Most presenters viewed the founding of the Republic of Korea as a “miraculous” historic event that saved half the Korean population from the evil of communism. ⁷⁵ They also emphasized the historical continuity between the founding of the Republic of Korea and the subsequent achievements of industrialization and national modernization, which would not have been possible without Rhee’s strong political will. For example, one presenter remarked,

Through the establishment and promulgation of the Constitution in July 1948, the Republic of Korea, a modern nation state, was born. Though it was limited to the south of the Korean peninsula, the Republic of Korea was based on liberal democracy as an official ideology, and clearly distinguished from the Chosun Dynasty. Due to a legal system and institutions based on liberal democracy and market economy, economic development in the 1960s was possible. ⁷⁶

As New Right scholars sought to put the focus on Rhee’s achievements in anticommunist nation-building, they tried to deemphasize or defend Rhee’s prolonged authoritarian rule and countervail leftist criticisms of Rhee.

Among New Right intellectuals, Younghoon Yi’s role in promoting Syngman Rhee’s achievements is worth mentioning here. A former professor of economics at Seoul National University and one of the central figures in the New Right, he has published several books on modern Korean history for popular readers, including A New Understanding of Pre- and Post-Independence History and Anti-Japan Tribalism—the books I discussed earlier. These books were intended to correct leftist historical views and rewrite modern Korean history in what he considers a more “unbiased” manner. For instance, contrasting the Republic of Korea as a “liberal democratic” system to its counterpart, the “totalitarian” Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, he emphasizes the essential role of Rhee in building the “superior” South Korean state.

In addition to writing books, Yi also founded the Syngman Rhee Academy (Rhee Syngman haktang) in 2018 to educate ordinary citizens about Rhee’s political life and achievements. Spending his retirement funds to establish the academy, he has dedicated himself to delivering “objective” and “correct” knowledge about Rhee. The academy offers ten lectures per semester for those interested in learning about Rhee and modern Korean history. Yi is the main lecturer, but other right-wing academics and journalists also give lectures. On the day I visited the Syngman Rhee Academy in 2018, about forty students—both young and old—filled the classroom. Yi gave a lecture on the social and political landscape in the early period of the Republic of Korea and emphasized Rhee’s authoritarian rule as an inevitable outcome. According to Yi, despite the establishment of the Republic of Korea as a modern and democratic nation-state, traditional hierarchies and familial order still dominated South Korean society, and autonomous individuals did not exist in the late 1940s. Under these circumstances, Rhee adopted an authoritarian political system reliant on his personal charisma. This was not because of his personal greed for power, Yi insisted, but rather due to the supply and demand of goods exchanged in the political realm—a very economically reductive interpretation. Yet he did not explain why many of those illiterate citizens who were not “ready for real democracy,” as he put it, rose up against Rhee’s authoritarian regime and eventually brought it down. Yi’s lectures are streamed on a Syngman Rhee TV channel on YouTube, hosted by Yi, and reach well beyond the students at the academy. (Currently, the channel has almost one hundred thousand subscribers.) Yi’s recent book, Anti-Japan Tribalism, was based on these lectures.

Along with Rhee, conservatives also revere Park Chung Hee as one of the founders of a strong, modernized nation. Park was an iron-fisted dictator who ruled South Korea for almost two decades. In the 1970s he established the Yushin system, which eliminated formal democratic institutions and guaranteed his lifetime tenure in office. During this period, he promulgated nine emergency decrees and carried out a reign of terror. People were completely deprived of the freedom of speech and association, and opposition leaders and activists were ruthlessly suppressed. But at the same time, it was also a period when the South Korean economy saw explosive growth and a majority of the population improved their standard of living. For many people, Park was the man who rebuilt South Korea and enhanced the “can-do” spirit; for others, he was a brutal authoritarian who was eventually assassinated by his own right-hand man in 1979.

Beginning in the late 1990s, conservatives deliberately promoted Park as a national hero and instigated nostalgia for his regime. Mainstream conservative newspapers such as the Chosun Ilbo and the Dong-A Ilbo tapped the economic hardship and emotional distress brought by the economic crisis in 1997 as an opportunity to idealize the past and to laud Park’s successful development projects. These conservative newspapers published survey results that showed Park as one of the most respected figures in Korean history and as the favorite president. ⁷⁷ A veteran right-wing journalist, Gapje Cho, serialized a biography of Park titled Spit on My Grave (Nae Mudŏm e Ch’im ŭl Paetŏra) in the Chosun Ilbo and later wrote an eight-volume book based on the biography, published by the Chosun Ilbo’s press. In 1997, the conservative writer Inhwa Yi published a novel titled The Road of a Human Being (In’gan ŭi Kil) based on Park’s life story as a “solitary revolutionary,” which became a best seller. Some conservative presidential candidates tried to emulate Park’s look to appeal to voters, and the conservative Grand National Party also emphasized its lineage as Park’s legitimate successor. It was at this point that Park’s oldest daughter, Park Geun-hye, who had been in seclusion for twenty years, debuted as a politician and became a conservative icon. While dismissing what they saw as “incompetence” and “amateurism” in the economic performances of the reformist governments, conservatives tried to elevate the economic achievements of the Park regime and thus to revive conservative hegemony in the newly democratized political setting.

As Park was without question an authoritarian leader, conservative commentators usually defended his undemocratic rule as an “inevitable” choice to prioritize industrialization over political freedom and democracy, given the threat of North Korea. Beyond simply defending Park’s undemocratic rule, fervent right-wing intellectuals made a bold claim that Park had actually contributed to the birth of democracy in South Korea because he promoted economic development. Borrowing the logic of modernization theory, they claimed that without economic development, political democracy would not have been possible. A notable New Right activist, Ji-Ho Shin, claimed that authoritarian economic development was necessary for political democratization:

Authoritarian economic development produces its own grave-diggers. ⁷⁸ From this perspective, in the early phase of industrialization, which absolutely needed political stability and public trust for economic policies, an authoritarian system can be seen as a temporarily necessary evil. In a similar context, Park’s era should be seen as a period that cultivated socioeconomic conditions for democratization, not as a dark age of democracy. ⁷⁹

This kind of logic, however, produces the contradictory position that the authoritarian Park actually deserved credit for the democratization he vociferously opposed. Regarding human rights violations and labor exploitation during the Park regime, some New Right intellectuals denied that workers suffered at all. For example, an avid New Right sociologist, Seok-Choon Lew, defends Park’s labor policy, arguing that it helped skilled workers gain middle-class status:

Did South Korean capitalism exacerbate monopoly, deepen dependence, and eventually exploit minjung [as the Left argues]? Not at all. Rather than exploiting minjung, it produced the middle class. Rather than driving out workers and farmers to the urban poor, it instead made them the middle class that enjoyed “my car” and “my home.” Millions of industrial warriors created in the 1970s and 80s now became a labor aristocracy that earns six figures [100,000,000 won], which is discussed as something needing to be reformed. ⁸⁰

Pointing out the fact that wages increased drastically during the Park regime, Lew and others tried to refute the widely accepted argument that workers suffered from low pay and were excluded from the benefits of industrialization and instead argued that Park’s labor policy was benevolent. ⁸¹ Highlighting only rising wages, New Right intellectuals argue that labor exploitation was exaggerated or nonexistent, while evading discussion of the severe repression of labor activism and unionism.

New Right intellectuals promoted the achievements of Syngman Rhee and Park Chung Hee and disseminated their historical perspectives through diverse venues, including books, op-ed pieces in conservative newspapers, and new social media. Having learned from their counterparts, the New Right tried to build cultural hegemony through engagement with the public at large. In addition to founding new civic organizations linking together New Right figures and activists and creating new magazines (Zeitgeist, Sidae Chŏngsin) to represent their political views, the New Right also used existing conservative media to deliver their ideas to a wider audience. The two mainstream conservative newspapers, the Chosun Ilbo and the Dong-A Ilbo, sponsored events and conferences organized by New Right academics and heralded the importance of the New Right movement as an alternative political force. They also provided outlets for movement leaders to write op-eds and columns. ⁸² The former editor-in-chief of the Chosun Ilbo also founded a publishing house called Kip’arang and committed his postretirement life to publishing conservative-minded books, particularly books extolling the great achievements of Rhee and Park. Many New Right books were released by this publisher. Relentlessly promoting their historical perspective both in traditional and new media, the New Right accumulated their own historical “facts,” now widely cited by conservatives.

As a top–down political project led by elite intellectuals, the New Right movements were quite effective in building new political infrastructure independent from the conservative party and strengthening networks among rightist activists and organizations. Conservative civic organizations have proliferated, many new conservative books have been published, and conservative ideas have been widely disseminated in cyberspace. Inspired by these developments, ordinary conservative citizens have committed themselves to the movement and vigorously promoted conservative viewpoints on the internet—in effect becoming what Gramsci terms organic intellectuals. ⁸³ The publication of Anti-Japan Tribalism and its wild success were the outcome of the New Right’s incessant efforts to revitalize its production of knowledge and normalize its ideas.

However, the New Right was not successful in providing a new political vision and a complete departure from the Old Right. The movement’s purpose was to orient conservatives to a new and forward-looking direction, but the New Right was not significantly different from the anticommunist Old Right in its programs and contents. The New Right’s project of rewriting Korean history through the promotion of Rhee and Park differed little from the Old Right’s emphasis on anticommunism and national development. ⁸⁴ Their fixation on the authoritarian past did not clearly demonstrate a new political vision for a democratic country. Moreover, the New Right criticized the Left for its supposed ethno-nationalism, which they argued was not only anachronistic in the age of globalization but also irrational, engaging too readily with totalitarian North Korea. Yet, instead of overcoming exclusionary nationalism, the New Right fully embraced an idea of statism that deifies the South Korean state and its historical legitimacy, ⁸⁵ thus simply replacing the nation with the state. ⁸⁶ The New Right’s focus on the state and on glorification of the Republic of Korea’s positive history goes against the very notion of liberalism that it tried to pursue.

Conclusion

Through the case of the New Right movement in South Korea beginning in the early 2000s, I have analyzed how conservative intellectuals constructed right-wing historical narratives and discourses in the postauthoritarian period. As a response to the reformist Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun governments—a period dominated by the rise of former student activists as new political elites and the political project of “settling the past”—the New Right tried to reconstruct conservative political legitimacy. Against what they viewed as self-negating and pessimistic left-leaning historical interpretations, these intellectuals reignited historical debates in the media and academic circles and promoted positive aspects of the anticommunist nation-building project and rapid economic development accomplished by two former presidents, Syngman Rhee and Park Chung Hee. By various means, New Right intellectuals disseminated conservative knowledge and a sense of national pride among the general public. Juxtaposing its optimistic picture of the past with darker leftist views, the New Right aimed to project a hopeful future while revealing leftist incompetence. Though a problematic understanding of “liberal democracy” and a fixation on authoritarian leaders caused the New Right to fail in its attempt to provide a completely new vision, its decades-long project successfully built a stronger right-wing ideological infrastructure.

This article has emphasized the crucial roles of conservative intellectuals in providing ideological resources and producing “alternative” discourses to defeat their political counterparts. Many existing studies of the Far Right focus on institutional party politics or extra-institutional street rallies, leaving out the intellectual circle and its engagement in civil society. Drawing from Gramsci’s idea of cultural hegemony for their own political ends, Far Right intellectuals believed that it was critical to change how people think and made efforts to promote their ideas and framework through various means. The Far Right’s deep engagement with metapolitics—a prepolitical cultural and intellectual project to shape mainstream ideas—aims to incubate political and social change through dissemination of Far Right ideas. ⁸⁷ By addressing the ideational struggles over the unsettled past that Far Right intellectuals have tried to use to legitimize their political positions, our understanding of rightist mobilization and variations in Far Right politics across different countries will be enriched.

The case of the New Right in South Korea demonstrates its distinctive position about nationalism. Unlike its Western and Japanese counterparts, who appropriate aggressive ethno-nationalism as a main weapon in their ideological arsenals, the New Right in South Korea has adopted an antinationalist narrative. The Left, conversely, has engaged with nationalism as a form of anticolonial and anti-imperial resistance through critical historiography since the late 1970s as a way of delegitimizing the authoritarian regimes and ruling elites that allied themselves with Japan and the United States. The New Right tried to weaken the Left’s legitimacy by rejecting nationalism as an emotionally driven, divisive, and barbaric ideology. As a consequence, defending the legitimacy and superiority of the South Korean state—the Republic of Korea—as the antithesis of leftist nationalism and North Korea became an ideological strategy for the New Right. The New Right’s unique stance on nationalism in South Korea reveals how specific domestic political struggles can affect discursive strategies on the right.

This article has focused on intellectual interactions at the national level, yet some recent cases in Europe and the United States suggest that there are increasing transnational connections among Far Right intellectuals and that transnational capital funds Far Right movements and organizations in many countries. In the age of the internet and social media, this trend is becoming more salient. Analyzing how Far Right intellectuals obtain funds from foreign sources and how Far Right narratives and knowledge travel transnationally may be an important issue for future research.