Cultural Movement in

Korea, 1970'~ 1990'

한국 민중문화운동의 역사적 전개
Meaning of 'Cultural Movement' in
Korea

Open the door of social movement

under the authoritarian government.
cultural movement as Culture itself
(including Ideology, instrument and
everyday life) and as culture creation
cultural movement as a project to
remake people from passive to
active, from mass to class
 Historical Circumstances of
Modern Korea
Liberation, re-colonization, de-
colonization
The competition for their hegemony in
Asia had made a rod to intensify inner
contradiction as like class conflict over
nation state building in the Korean
peninsula.
We Korean never had foreseen to occur
the situation that national liberation and
division would occur at the same time. we
were could not be "well adapted" the
situation of cold war system in Korea and
the divided territory.
 cold war, Korean War
Cultural Cold War and Americanization ;
realm of culture as strong site of political
struggle in Korean Peninsula(Asia)
Americanization penetrates process of the
Modernization and Nation State building 
in South Korea
 compared with Sovietanization in North
Korea
 Remaking people in the
process of nation state
buildung
 nation state building by military
regime
– Mobilization Plan and System
– Military culture; New Village Movement,
the Charter of National Education,
Military Drill, Barrack System
– Confucian Values, the thought of loyalty
and filial piety
– Korean Democracy
– modernization of the fatherland
 historical process of cultural
movement
1945-1953; the variation for de-
colonization
1953-1959; an age of discontinuity 
1960-1969 intellectuals, invention of
'culture' by cultured intellectuals,
'the cultured', 'the educated' as
institution
 1970-1979; to make any kind of subjective
culture as resistance against
uderdevelopment Dictatorship
– discovery of tradition, finding of identity,
-
restoration of national history
– articulation of cultural movement and
popular movement under umbrella of
the Christian
– positive Americanization; folk music,
young culture, anxieties for democracy
and freedom
– The representative case was "the light
of factories"- Kim mingi's transformation
from learning americanization to design
his own art as a modern cultural project
– Universities and student organizations
as the space or system for resistance
and creation
1980-1989 popularization of movement
after Gwangju  and cultural movement
– cultural Narodniki, Vnarod
– Publication Movement
– Imports of Radical Theory and Reading of
Marxist Canons
– go to field, transformation of class identity,
from student to laborer
– 1987, we accomplished the restrictive
democracy, at the same time we met
spontaneous uprising of class subjects as like
labor, peasant and the poor.
– There was a rising movement in various
arears rising alliance in local and
national level organization
– The cultural movement began to extend
and deepen its role to support those
movements.
– Foundation of Revolutionary Thoughts
– Social Structure Controversy
– final stage of cultural cold war
1990’;  efforts of cultural movement
to find self-road
– Although someone said that the era is
the age of wisdom,  I would like to name
the era the final stage of cultural cold
war.
– From Movement to Studies
– ideological battle line, competitions
between many kinds of modern project
over progressive paths, differences of
tactics according to each strategy line,
creation of another cultural
system(Cham-education 참교육 , 참세상
media, bilateral internet communication
system, etc), final vestiges of red
complex in the everyday life, etc 
propagation and improvement
 culture for 'movement' and
movement as 'Culture'
 Differentiation of Movement; Culture
as Arts
 Post Trend ; After the Fall of Real
Socialism, rising of post modernism,
post Marxism, post colonialism
 Cultural Studies and Academism
 Cultural Policy and cultural publicity
 With burning thirst
타는 목마름으로
At the crack of the dawn in the
back street
I am writing your name,
Democracy!
My head had already
forgotten you for a long
time
My foot walks had already
forgotten you for a long
time, too
With only one memory of
thirst in the burning heart

I am secretly writing your

name
With burning thirst, With
burning thirst
Democracy, Long live!
Long live, Long live
Democracy, Long live!!
1974.11.8
– Association of
writers for praxis of
freedom
 a chronological table of
cultural movement
 1953.4 <the world of thought 사상계 >
 1954 tree-planting campaign
 1964.8 <Green Barley 청맥 >
 1966.11 <Creation and critics 창작과 비평 >
 1970 Chuntaeil Self burning
 1971 Masked Dance Movement
 1974 DongA Newspaper struggle association
 1974 Association of writers for praxis of freedom
 1975 Creative National Drama Movement
 1978 Lights of Factories(Song and Dance
Movement)
 1980 Practical Literature founded
 1978-85 Social Science Publication
Movement
1980 GwangJu Peoples’ Uprising
1983 <The Dawn of Labor> a collection of
poem
1985 Association for people’s cultural
movement
 1985 cultural movement in field
 1985 Korean Art Exibition, Power of the
Twenties
 1987 6.10 movement for democratization
 1987 Laborer’s Great Uprising
 1988 KPAF
 1989 <Literature for Labor liberation>
 1990 Film <The Previous Night of General
Strike>
 1990 National Democratic Trade Union
 1992 <Cultural Science>
 1998 Labor’ s Information and
communication Group
1970’; traditional
masked dance
movement and
national theater
movement
 Creation of satrical
drama by national
form, 1975

1987 Laborers’
Great Uprising