South Korean Party Movement Research Progress

Modern democratic politics is the politics of representative democracy, the development ofmodern democratic politics, and political organizations promote the development of modern partypolitics. The current political parties are the product of the development of modern democraticpolitics and political organizations, the role of political parties in representative democracy is thatpolitics itself. Therefore, regardless of different philosophy or political system, there exist politicalparties in all countries.Party politics has lasted for over60years in Republic of Korea, and the emergence and demise ofmany political parties are constantly sustained in the political chaos. Although most of theseparties are conservative parties, there have still been some progressive political parties in the partypolitics history of ROK. However, after the war and division, there presented sharp confrontationcharacteristics in the ideology between North and South Korea, which made it difficult to allowthe generation of the progress political parties.Since the establishment of the Shengman Lee regime, ROK political system has mostly beencontrolled by the conservative right-wing parties. These parties with different political conceptshave been competing each other to promote their own political development. Thinking democraticcompetition as a necessary condition for the development of political and social, ROK politics canbe labeled deformity and backward during the past60years.This thesis mainly inquiry the party politics, progressive political parties in ROK and the relevantcircumstances of progressive parties’ substantive political participation which started from theDemocratic Labor Party’s entering the Parliament since the liberation of Korea in1945.For the20thcentury Korea, the split pattern resulting from the Cold War and the Korean War hasbecome a normal and anti-Communist ideology and the formation of the centralized type ofpolitical structure led to the generation of the authoritarian system, which made it difficult for theprogressive political parties to be formed after the liberation. In addition, the narrow ideologyresulting from the split pattern, and the stiffness, oversimplification, polarization of the nationalconsciousness, have naturally become the constraints of the formation of progressive politicalparties. Furthermore, as the advanced political force, the progressive political parties also need toovercome the following obstacles, the law on political parties, electoral law and the NationalSecurity Act which were developed on the basis of the vested interest of the existed politicalparties.Although the ROK politics and society has always been unable to find a way out in the past60years, the congressional elections in April2004brought hope to the South Korean politics andsociety. That is, after this election, the progressive political party, the Democratic Labor Partyentered the House as the identity of the "third party". Its results are not instantly generated, but thefruit of the progressive political parties which withstood all kinds of oppression and difficulties inthe past60years’ ROK political party history.The author is the party member of the Democratic Labor Party. Therefore, this paper, based on theauthor’s experience in party activities and the problems faced, aims to inspect the characteristics,roles and its limitations of the major progressive political parties after the liberation of Korea.Particularly, it seeks the future direction of development of the Democratic Labor Party, based onthe significance and limitations of the Korean Democratic Labor Party in ROK politics. This paper summarizes the Korean political party history since1945after the liberation, andexamines the activities of progressive political party period by period, finally looks forward to theposition of the Democratic Labor Party and the problems which later have to face.