Religion and Contentious Politics: Korean Catholicism and the Early 1980s Democracy Movement

• Published in: Journal of Korean religions 2024, 15(2), , pp.5-29
• Main Author: Jo, Jung Soo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 종교학
• ISSN: 2093-7288; 2167-2040; 2093-7288

This article explores the role and place of the Korean Catholic Church in the 1980 Gwangju Democratization Movement in South Korea from the perspective of social movement studies. The Korean Catholic Church, which in earnest engaged with the pro-democracy movement from the period of the Park Chung-hee regime in the 1970s, played a notable role in this watershed event of South Korea’s democracy movement in May 1980. Existing scholarship has normally assessed the South Korean democracy movement after the 1980 Gwangju Uprising until the 1983 Appeasement Policy (yuhwa choch’i) as having been in relative stagnation following the ferocious suppression of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. As this study examines, however, the engagement of dissident Catholic figures and organizations in the Gwangju Democratization Movement demonstrates how an established religious organization could join the pro-democracy social movement in South Korea. Analyzing how the Korean Catholic leadership, sub-organizations, and laity participated in the dynamics of contention around the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, while attending to the literature of social movement studies, this article offers a case study of religious social movements in contemporary South Korea KCI Citation Count: 0