ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

From Politics to Academics: Political Activism and the Emergence of STS in South Korea

• In Event: Contested Science (and Technology Studies): Histories of STS and Its Forerunners, Interlocutors, Competitors, Targets, and Patrons

English Abstract

Our paper follows several discussion groups of young South Korean democracy activists in the 1980s, whose anti-establishment critiques of science and technology evolved into institutionalized STS programs after the country's democratization in the 1990s. Our research is based on a literature survey and interviews with around 15 Korean academic scholars and activists in 2010. Our interviewees’ science-critical activism was closely related to socio-economic and political conditions in South Korea, particularly the dictatorial regimes of Park Chung-Hee and Chun Doo-hwan, established by coups d'état in 1961 and 1979/80 respectively, which did not tolerate dissent. Park, in particular, envisioned South Korea’s rapid industrialization and, with the United States’ support, re-oriented the country towards economic growth at the cost of harsh working conditions and repression of protest. Science and technology were central to Park’s vision of industrialization, and his regime poured resources into universities and institutes such as KAIST and KIST while steering companies such as Samsung toward high-tech R&D. The authoritarian regime, and a widespread belief in the neutrality of science and technology, discouraged most people from critiquing science despite (or because of) its centrality to that regime. Some individuals nevertheless joined environmental groups or student circles dedicated to critical reflection on the problems raised by S&T in an autocratic and rapidly-changing society. Most, though not all, were science and engineering students in Park's new and/or expanding universities. From these diverse trajectories, we consider three main periods in the emergence of South Korean STS, whose dynamics were reflected in intellectual activities that coincided with wider pro-democracy protest movements. In the third period, following South Korea’s democratization in the early 1990s, science-critical activism moved progressively toward the institutionalization of academic STS programs. Nonetheless, some STS scholars still maintain their links with their activist roots, and many are now concerned with participatory democracy issues.

Author

• Marianne Noel, LISIS (CNRS, INRAE, Université Gustave Eiffel)