It has been said that sociology and social theory have concerned
themselves less with war as part of their theoretical work, than with many
other socio-political and economic issues, in spite of the fact that modernity
as a research object has been considerably shaped by the influence of wars,
as has been undermined by those thinkers who have developed their own
intellectual alternatives within the experience of war (Wittrock, 2001).
Traditional modernization theory, for example, which hardly considers war
as within its remit, has indubitably and ironically been involved in the
process of societal change related to war (Joas, 1999). While war, as the
major form of collective violence, has been one of the predominant
political tools for inter-state and international affairs, even applicable to
economic transformation (Mann, 1988; Tilly, 1993), the implications of war
on the process of state formation, in terms o f determining certain political
characteristics rather than introducing a change of policies or
democratization, have been largely ignored in the social sciences. Whereas
it is rather easy to find historical examples o f war leading to the collapse
of a state and the building of a new state, war as an instituting tool for a
young and unstable state seems to be hardly evidenced. The Korean
experience empirically fits the latter case: a state authority in South Korea,
which failed to persuade contending counter-state political actors, finally
gained its hegemonic power by controlling the political sphere through war.
The Korean war, as the military event between 1950 and 1953, was a
political medium that genuinely contributed to this political process of state
formation and the relationship of the state to Korean society.
The fact that the Korean war occurred only two years after the separation,
at least indirectly indicates that the new states had not had enough time to
establish stable institutions. What are the contributions of the Korean war
to the South Korean state?6 KIM Young-Myung (1993) argues that the
Rhee regime overcame the financial crisis of the new state with the help
of American aid for military and economic resources motivated by the
occurrence of the Korean war, while at the same time making progress on
the road to long-term occupation of the state by eliminating counter-actors
from politics. However, I would like to focus on the role of the Korean
war for the state formation process itself, in which the South Korean state
finally acquired its legitimation, on the one hand, and in which counter
state actors finally lost political power in post-liberation politics, on the
other. Put otherwise, the Korean war was the event in the process by
which the state and counter-state actors finally arrived at an asymmetrical
relationship of influence for their own political visions. The common
problem in properly understanding the Korean war, ironically, comes from
6) GOH Byung-Chul et al. (1992) investigates how deeply the Korean war
influenced not only the socialist programmes in North Korea, but also the
particular political structure around KIM Il-Sung.
its one-dimensional conceptualization as an international war between
independent states.
- A schematic understanding o f the Korean war
The Korean war was begun on the dawn of 25 June 1950. The North
Korean army invaded South Korea along the breadth of 38° parallel with
powerful artillery and a number of tanks. It was a sudden attack, without
the declaration of war, for the 'Redification' of South Korea by the
communist state.7 The North Korean army, which had superior military
power over the South Korean, occupied Seoul after three days of warfare
and finally reached the Nagdong river which flows to the southern end of
the Korean peninsula in early July. The USA immediately called a meeting
of the UN security council on 26 June. The UN accused North Korea of
invading South Korea and organized a UN army for the first time in its
history, whereby sixteen member states sent their armies to the Korean
peninsula in support of South Korea. The US, as the major military force
in the UN army, changed the course of the war with the disembarking
operation at Incheon, near Seoul, on 15 September in the same year. Seoul
was liberated on 28 September from North Korean occupation. The allied
armies of South Korea and the UN crossed 38° North latitude on 1
7) The North Korean story of the Korean war, however, denies the initiation of
the war by North Korea and asserts that they crossed the border in a 'counter
attack' of the South Korean army, after having successfully repulsed their initial
attack. But, as far as the majority of archival and empirical research in the fields
of politics, international relations and military history are concerned, the
culpability for the Korean war rests squarely with the North Korean side. In this
thesis, I follow the assertion of North Korea's initiation of the war as outlined by
the main stream of research in the social sciences.
October, entering the northern zone. They were forced to retreat south,
however, by the intervention of the peoples' army of China in the front at
the Northern end of the Korean peninsula. Seoul was re-occupied by the
North Korean army on 4 January 1951. Since the early summer of 1951,
the war witnessed no further significant territorial movement and settled
near the current de-militarized zone, which is a slightly modified line from
the 38° parallel. The Soviet Union proposed armistice talks in the UN.
After a further two years' combat, finally, the US, as the representative of
the UN armies, and North Korea and China, together signed the treaty for
armistice on 27 July 1953. The Korean war produced enormous damage for
Koreans and other participants, as well as a high number of casualties:
990,000 South Korean soldiers, 40,000 US soldiers and 30,000 other UN
soldiers, 510,000 North Korean soldiers and 500,000 Chinese soldiers were
dead and several hundred thousand soldiers were injured (HAN Young-U,
1998 (vol. 3)). The treaty for armistice in 1953 is still in operation today,
even after 'the cold war1 has ended in Europe.
4.2.1. Conceptualization o f rupture in time: The subjective position