The History of South Korea, 1945–1987

This chapter explains the flow of modern Korean political history by looking at events beginning with the 1948 election and ending with the 1987 democratization process. The historical events before 1987 can be largely divided into four periods: the period of the First Republic; the period of the Second Republic and the Park Chung-hee administration; the period of the Yusin regime; and the period of the Gwangju Uprising, new military leaders, and the Democratization Uprising in 1987. The purpose of this chapter is to show the macro-flow of modern Korean politics through historical events, focusing on the causal relationships explaining each regime change by describing the characteristics and tendencies of each regime. The events and changes explain how the structure of conflict in modern Korean politics changed from democratization versus authoritarian forces to progressive versus conservative forces and show where the pro-democratization tendency of Korean politics began.