2003, Vol.1, No.2

Civil Society and NGO 2024 KCI Impact Factor : 0.84

pISSN : 1599-8568
https://journal.kci.go.kr/civil&NGO

This paper presents a comparative study of Korea and Japan’s civic participation institutions and movements on both the national and local levels. With the goal of deepening democracy, civic participation has become one of the most important agendas facing Korean society today. In light of this situation, this paper will consider important insights resulting from a comparative analysis of Korea and Japan, which is also facing an analogous task. Despite of similarities in the broad social structures of the two nations, the different trajectories of the social movements of Korea and Japan are creating situational disparities. In regards to the institutions that make civic participation possible, the difference between the two countries on the national level is not significant other than the fact that the national Korean civic participation movement has been developing much more vigorously than that of Japan. On the local level, however, civic participation and institutional development is much more visible in Japan. But, it is important to note that Korea has also recently been developing at an ever-increasing rate at the local level. One of the cause for these differences has been the fact that while Koreas civil movement has been sustained by a national movement which can be called an organizational- political movement or staff-centric movement, the Japanese civil movement has primarily been volunteer-centric because the social movements are concentrated around local and lifestyle issues. Therefore, this paper concludes that for the vitalization of civic participation, the Korean civil movement should learn from Japan’s precedent in establishing roots in local and lifestyle-related issues while continuing efforts to develop the special characteristics of Korea’s civil movement.

The italian civil societies have some different characters from those of the korean civil societies in many points although the historical and social backgrounds of these two nations had been proceeded almost the simile courses. The theoretical base of modern civil society in Italy was derived from the Gramsci’s concept of civil society. In the past there were many similar aspects on the political, social, cultural and historical bases between two nations, Italy and Korea. The Southern question as a such of regional problem, the Fascism as an experience of totalitarian political system, the experiment of war, the period of US military governance after the second world war, the catholicism as the moral and conscious background of social principals and so on. In Italy, however, there was the ’68 movements that was one of the real and substantial social-reform movement from which was occurred to transform the general basic italian society. In this means the real italian civil society was started from ’70 years as a modern civil society. In special 4 sectors which were represented with 4 italian initial alphabet P(Padre; father, Prete; priest, Partito; party, Padrone; master) had been reformed themselves in many aspects. It was valued that a serial social movement would become an real social-reform movement as a developed moment, in Italy. Anyway, in this case, I hope to analyze the characters of italian civil society and compare those with the korean’s that. I also will try to catch, as much possibile as, the limits of italian civil society, and then I wish to apply on the korean civil society from the viewpoint of social implication as a good example.

In modern, the civil society is the sphere which yields the emancipational autonomous power against the penetration of political power and capital relationship(Kapitalverha¨ltnis) into the civil society. Civil society will be discussed in the tension of simultaneous existence between the capitalism, an unequal system of modern society, and democracy, based on the political equality. The subject in the private sphere experiences economic inequality. At the same time in the public sphere he/she enjoys the formal equality right of political sphere. Certainly this relation bring about a tension of civil society. Civil society itself is a dynamic sphere which has performed a critical function through Öffentlichkeit. This article accepts Marxian and Gramscian concept of civil society in which class-conflict occupies an important position for the explanation of Social Movement. Especially, I focus on the right & law of reflection in relation to a social movement. On the assumption, this article aims at a spread radical theory in the our civil society.