Abstract
The Korean environmental movement has unique characteristics that are rarely found in other countries. The environmental movement, which began as a part of the democratization movement under authoritarian government, went through rapid development and institutionalization after an opening in the political opportunity structure with the beginning of democratization in 1987. By skillfully framing environmental issues to attract broad popular support, the movement mobilized sufficient resources to further expand the democratic opening and change the political structure. As sociologist Lee See-jae once remarked, the establishment of the Korean environmental movement can be summarized as a double-edged process of institutionalization and empowerment. This paper analyzes the process by the Korean environmental movement for socially constructed environmental “problems” making the best use of openings in the political opportunity structure.
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- 1.
See Lee (2000) for analysis of the institutionalization and empowerment of the environmental movement in Korea.
- 2.
In this paper, I define green politics as a politics that emphasizes life, ecology, and the environment, while at the same time promoting democratization.
- 3.
A political opportunity structure is comprised of structural factors, such as the degree of openness of political regimes and the characteristics of political power relations. The degree of openness of political regimes is related to the issue of how well the political institutional apparatuses of a nation respond to the (new) demands of the populace. The characteristics of political power relations are determined by the existence of allied groups of social movement organizations, the stability of political alliances, and the dominant group’s support for social movement organizations.
- 4.
In 1993, KAPMA, based in Seoul, united with seven local environmental groups to launch the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement (KFEM), Korea’s largest environmental organization. It became a member organization of “Friends of the Earth International” in 2002.
- 5.
Conservative lawmakers allied to impeach the relatively progressive President Roh for a minor election law infraction, but various social movement organizations, including citizen organizations and labor unions, and an overwhelmingly large number of people organized an anti-impeachment campaign. In the end, the pro-president party secured a majority of seats in the general election held on 15 April 2004, and President Roh was reinstated on May 14.
The Roh administration, inaugurated in 2003, has pushed forward progressive policies to eradicate corruption in politics and enact political reform, but has not been very active in the environment. Despite this, however, major environmental organizations led the anti-impeachment campaign to protect democracy, which is an essential value of green politics.
- 6.
Caught up in the ideology of economic growth, the residents of these areas demanded their own migration rather than the closure and transfer of the factories.
- 7.
The official title of this dam is Yeongwol Dam, but environmental organizations renamed it “Donggang Dam” in order to illustrate the ecological importance of the Donggang river. The fact that the dam – as “Donggang Dam” – received wider publicity than it did as “Yeongwol Dam” shows that the symbolic tactics used by environmental organizations were more effective than those utilized by the government.
- 8.
A “development coalition” is comprised of developmental state, capital, international organizations seeking the globalization of capitalism, and development-oriented media. It produces and reproduces a strong network based on the shared economic and political interests of development. Meanwhile, green solidarity is defined by a loose network mediated by green values and identity but can exert great influence, depending on the situation. Its solidarity structure is not fixed, but rather changes depending on the political opportunity structure and the issues at hand.
- 9.
In December 1998, the government scrapped its original plan to make Lake Sihwa a fresh-water lake and decided to continue circulating seawater. This decision illustrates that some government-led development projects had structural problems.
- 10.
In August 2001, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MOAF) made an official statement to abandon the rice production promotion policy due to rice surplus. This change in policy shook the foundation of the Saemangeum project, which was to reclaim land to produce more rice for national grain security.
- 11.
Religious groups, which started to actively participate in the anti-Donggang Dam movement, began to take a central role in the anti-Saemangeum movement.
- 12.
The Democratic Progressive Party, which took over in 2000, pushed for an anti-nuclear development policy, but had to withdraw from this stance after it confronted objection of diet.
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Ku, D. (2011). The Korean Environmental Movement: Green Politics Through Social Movement. In: Broadbent, J., Brockman, V. (eds) East Asian Social Movements. Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09626-1_10
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