Thesis (Ph. D.)--Yale University, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 229-246).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-153).

The following thesis examines South Korean history, traditional values and the effects of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis in order to understand the political, economic, and social causes of the increase in adolescent suicides since the turn of the millennium.

In this thesis, I argue that traditional notions of Confucianism and its growing modernity within Korean society have contributed to the continuing issue of child abandonment, inhibiting Korean mothers from gaining bodily, social, and economic independence. There are a variety of governmental and societal pressures, including the emphasis on motherhood and the nuclear family, and expectations for the women, that push these unwed mothers to make undesirable decisions on whether or not to keep their child.

Pu-Ma Hangjaeng (the Pusan and Masan Uprising, hereafter Pu-Ma) of 1979 was the largest and longest incident of civil unrest and resistance during the Park Chung-hee regime in South Korea. However, overshadowed by more sensational and disruptive events in the turmoil of contemporary South Korean history, Pu-Ma was largely forgotten. In the post-democratization era, scholarly attention on Pu-Ma in Korean has steadily increased, and Pu-Ma’s valorization as a citizens’ uprising against government oppression has increased as well. It has now been given an important place in the genealogy of the democratic movement in South Korea. I term such recognition among scholars, as well as South Korean governments, the nationalization of Pu-Ma. One of the central concerns of this study is to explore the socio-political reasons behind this process. I attempt to demonstrate that the nationalization of Pu-Ma is closely related to the consensus among progressive scholars about the need to transcend regionalism and resist nostalgia for the Park Chung-hee era. My other focus is on the localization of Pu-Ma, which refers to citizens’ acceptance of Pu-Ma as a proud part of the identities of Pusan and Masan. I explore why localization of Pu-Ma has been problematic despite progressive scholars’ efforts to promote it. I argue that the most significant reason is the difficulty in building coherent collective memory among the participants in Pu-Ma as well as the citizens who witnessed the uprising. I investigate Pu-Ma through newspapers, oral history, and scholarly works to learn why memories of it have remained disconnected and inconsistent for so long. / text

A large body of research has addressed women’s fertility with some among them focusing on East Asia. Relatively few studies concentrate on men’s fertility worldwide and almost none on South Korea. This study addresses the knowledge gap by exploring how men’s socio-economic status is associated with their transition to first child in South Korea. Data used for the analysis come from Korean Labor Income Panel Study. By applying logistic regression, I examine men’s entry into fatherhood by age 29 and 34. The study shows that men with post-secondary education are less likely to become a father by age 29 but more likely to become a father at higher ages than men with secondary education. Having only primary education generally lowers the odds of entry into fatherhood. Men’s employment engagement increases their odds of becoming a father by age 29 and by age 34 respectively, but there is more variation by workplace among younger men. The results suggest that higher socio-economic status, measured in educational level and employment status enhances fatherhood entry in South Korea.

This dissertation research focuses on the development of South Korea’s democracy movement from 1979 to 1987, a time that was marked by two waves of sustained protest: one of which was brutally repressed while the other led to a transition to democracy. This dissertation examines the cultural processes at work during the period between these two waves. This study builds a dataset drawing on archival data in the form of memoirs, diaries, leaflets and brochures, minutes, statements, and testimonies of activists and activist organizations as well as newspaper reports and government documents. Using the dataset, this study advances scholarship on contentious politics and democratization by revising and expanding three theoretical concepts: threat, memory work, and framing.

This study will examine the internationalisation process of Swedish fashion brands entering the South Korean market to be able to get an understanding of how the decision of entry strategy is influenced and how it affects the resilience in the market, as well as identify the drivers and barriers influencing the choice of entry mode. The study was conducted through a qualitative multiple case study with an inductive methodology approach. The literature review was established based on the known theories of internationalisation, entry modes and resilience. Here, the concepts discussed throughout the thesis are presented. Interviews were conducted with five different Swedish fashion brands who were all, to different extents, established on the South Korean market to collect empirical findings. These findings were then discussed in correlation to the presented theories to identify patterns within the internationalisation process to the South Korean market. The conclusion of the thesis is that relationships and networks are important drivers to enter and obtain resilience on the South Korean market. This allows the companies to engage in renewal of activities and flexibility in the constantly changing business environment. Language, lack of knowledge and lack of resources are identified as barriers limiting the level of commitment in the South Korean market.

While numerous studies have been conducted on the subject of political participation, research on how corruption and political trust affect the way citizens participate in politics has yet to produce consistent and clear results. The divide in perspectives surrounds whether these phenomena spur citizens to take action or, on the contrary, render them apathetic and indifferent to political events. Through using the method of regression to analyze individual level data, this study attempts to examine how political trust and perceived corruption impact non- institutionalized political participation in South Korea. While results indicate no statistically significant effects for political trust, perceived corruption is suggested to have a positive effect on non-institutionalized forms of participation.

The aim of this paper is to examine the correlation between regime socialisation and censorship support in South Korea. The National Security Act is a policy that has been active in the country mentioned, since the 1950’s and restricts the freedom of speech. In a country like South Korea, which is a democracy, it is hard to understand the dual values that are being portrayed in the society. With the help of a theory about political socialisation by individual experience and by using a linear regression, this paper hypothesises that there will be people who are more supportive or completely against the backing for censorship if they have lived through an authoritarian regime. In the bivariate linear regression, the results indicate that there is a relation between the independent, regime socialisation and the dependent variable, support for censorship. However opposed to the theory of this paper, that inhabitants of countries with former authoritarian rule should be more supportive of censorship, the results from the multivariate linear regression show that with the control variables, gender, education, income and Asian values, the correlation between regime socialisation and the support for censorship is not statistically significant. Instead it shows that gender, education and income confound the relationship between regime socialisation and support for censorship.