The Study of Political Science in Korea: Challenges, Responses and Tasks

This paper traces the main processes and key aspects of the development of political science in Korea. This paper adopts the strategy of comparison by contrasting the situations of the pre-democratization period with those of post-democratization period, in order to highlight the main factors and aspects of changes and developments in the discipline of political science and scholars within the contexts of domestic as well as international political dynamics of Korea. This paper maintains that that successful economic development since the 1960s and transition to democratic political system provided huge impetus for changes of interests and topics of Korean political scientists, too. Along the same line of progresses, this paper introduce briefly the organizations and activities of major Korean academic associations as a significant indicator that shows the main changes in the Korean political science community. This paper finally suggests the future task of political science in Korea, i.e., need for the ‘Koreanization’ of political science theories.