Leadership for Emancipatory Peace: Lessons from the South Korean Student Movement

There are multiple difficulties of definition and interpretation associated with peace leadership, and as non-violent means to “peace” is generally regarded as integral to peacebuilding, many are excluded from being considered peace leaders despite their goal of ending structural violence and deadly conflict. This chapter addresses these biases by re-examining the South Korean student activism of the 1980s as a movement for emancipatory peace. We argue that these activists were peace leaders because they sought to redress the structural violence experienced by the “downtrodden masses” ( minjung ) and extended confrontation with North Korea. To do so, they had to challenge the repressive South Korean regime and its powerful patron, the United States. In developing the counter-hegemonic “minjung historiography” the intellectuals and students of this movement sought to mobilize  the “downtrodden masses” in South Korea to change the structural constraints on social justice and the peaceful reunification of North and South Korea. Their ultimate marginalization and the lack of substantive, emancipatory peace today points to the limits of the “liberal peace” as maintained by global institutions and international power relations, but most importantly, the urgent need for an elicitive approach to peace and peace leadership.