Political Economist

I was born in Gwangju city located in Gyunggi province in 1971 as my parent’s fourth son. My mother lived in the countryside with her sons and two daughters engaging herself in agriculture while her husband worked as supervising lawyer for the U.S army stationed in Seoul.

I was brought up in the countryside with my parents’ loving care until when I transferred middle school. From then on, I lived with my father and one of my elder sisters until other family members moved to Seoul when I was a junior high school student.

I was brought up as an introverted child who liked to read books. After I change middle school, there were no special challenges or adversities until I was admitted to prestigious private high school and university. When I entered Sogang university, I got scholarships for my excellent records in CSAT(College Scholastic Aptitude Test). I could take advantages of winning scholarships due to my distinguished academic records for the first two academic semesters.

In the university, between academy and social activities

When I entered university in 1990, the atmosphere of campuses was dominated by democratic student movements fighting against the military regime. At first, I did not get involved in such radical student movements because I thought there must be much more fundamental value or truth of human life in academic fields. I devoted my freshman’s year to finding this self-defined ‘ultimate essence of life’ in the philosophical point of view. In retrospect, my soul was filled with various phrases and concepts quoted from French existentialists and one of the greatest German philosophers, G.W.F. Hegel’s process of phenomenology of mind.

However, peruse of modern European philosophical masterpieces brought me no closer to ultimate goal of discovering the meaning of life. By the time I became a sophomore, there were tragic incidents; one university student who participated in demonstration requesting for freedom of speech and political democracy was killed by riot police. Furthermore, many university students made attempts to burn themselves to death calling for social justice. I could not keep ignoring all miserable situations because I found my existence was placed under the authoritarian military regime. I thought the true meaning of life and the essence of human-beings might be pursued in the positive participation in social movements seeking to realize ‘social and historical objectives,’ as one of the greatest French philosophers, J.P. Sartre once did after the World War Ⅱ. From then on, I started to get involved in democratic student movements. I worked for Sogang Herald — English campus newspaper — as a reporter as well as a constructive director of student academic association doing research on history and contemporary reality of the third world and political economy of Korea.

When I was a junior student, I organized national student movement organization called “National Student Solidarity” longing for achieving social democracy. The main goals of this student body was to fight against the military regime and unjust laws, to criticize corrupted collaboration between political regime and Chaebol, Korean conglomerates, and finally to propagandize progressive social thoughts such as critical theories about Third world inequality, various kinds of western Marxism, and international labor movement history in the name of “alternative university movement.” I dedicated my last undergraduate years as the chairman of this student organization.

Through these student activities, I could learn various approaches of political theories ranging from western political thoughts to modern critical theory, and have high moral sensitivity of inequality and social discrimination in Korean society.

Determination to enter graduate school, and new experiences as a military officer

After graduating from university, I made up my mind to enter the graduate school of Sogang University to study political science. The main motive and personal goals of graduate courses was to reflect my undergraduate student activities.

My academic curiosity was not circumscribed by any particular fields. I organized open forums to read philosophical and political masterpieces ranging from classical western political thoughts such as Plato, Aristotle via modern social contract theorists (Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacque Rousseau, James Mill) to modern and contemporary German philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Juergen Habermas, etc.

And I was also fully engaged in Graduate Student Association as a research fellow for 1 and a half year hosting academic conferences on a regular basis; one of the most representative outcome of these activities was to hold a series of conferences entitled “Modern French Philosophies and its implication on Korean society,” and “Rethinking Social Formation Debates in 1980s”, either of which were academically sophisticated enough to be published as a series of journal articles and books.

After 1 and a half year of studying as a graduate student, I had to enlist Korean army. In the course of military service, however, I had to face another kind of adversity which influenced me thereafter; I was arrested by military police in charge of violation of “National Security Law” when I was serving the army as a platoon commander.

The main cause of military prosecutor’s accusation was related with my undergraduate student’s activities. They indicted me of making “national security” and “social order” in peril. Military court sentenced me to 1 year’s imprisonment. However, I could not accept the court’s decision because I did nothing potentially harmful to “national security.” Rather, my undergraduate activities were bridging democracy into the political and economic areas of Korean society. I think the law does not have any juridical and moral legitimacy without making reference to the strong urges of Human Right Commission of the UN.

I was able to be released from military prison after being sentenced to put on probation by the Court of appeal. However, my unique experiences under military jails were deeply ingrained in my mind. Past seems to last forever forming one’s personal history. I could meet a lot of soldier-prisoners who were suffering from lack of legal facilities and aids. The only fault of a group of youth who were sentenced to 3 years’ imprisonment was their firm belief that armament and taking military training were considered serious violation of God’s rules.

When I was in another military jail, notorious for its frequent violation of basic human rights for a long time in South Korea, I met many intelligent soldiers who were sentenced to life sentence. Most of them were suffering from their own chronic diseases. However, they could not receive any appropriate medical treatments. Some soldiers were sentenced to several years’ imprisonment only because they had violated anachronistic military conventions.

I don’t want to stay here to depict these painful experiences any longer. However, I could learn invaluable lessons from those experiences: I should live the rest of my life for the interest of miserable victims of mainstream society as a social scientist.