• Authors: Suk-Ki Kong, Soo-Bok Cheong, Hyun-Chin Lim
• Publication Date: December / 2023
• Publisher: Zininzin

This book is the result of a joint work by three scholars of different generations, who have recognized a need for reflective research on the reality faced by the Korean civil society movement. A single research team consisted of Hyun-Chin Lim, SNU Emeritus Professor, who actively participated in the actual democratization and political reform after the late 1980s, Soo-Bok Cheong, sociologist and author who worked with major civil organizations during the golden age of the civil society movement and studied the movement in the 1990s, and Suk-Ki Kong, the research professor at SNU, who has been examining global civil society and transnational social movement amidst globalization that rapidly spread in the 2000s; the three authors created synergy with their expertise throughout different generations.

The foremost outstanding characteristic of this book is that it is the report of an experiment that applied ‘collective analysis methodology’ to the civil society movement for the first time in Korea. Collective analysis methodology is one of public sociology in which the researcher invites interested parties of social movement and representatives of major forces around the movement to sit face to face with each other and actively intervene in the conversations and discussions to illuminate the intentionality of social movement.

This joint research was based on the accomplishment of research on the civil society movement in Korea and the world that the SNUAC Civil Society and NGOs Program had accumulated for almost 10 years. In collective analysis, seasoned activists of civil society organizations, major members of the government, corporations, and civil society, and activists of the MZ generation participated. Over four instances of the collective analysis, the participants sat around one table, talked to each other, and discussed the hypotheses and problems offered by the research team.

The authors hope that the interested parties in conflicted situations in our society may come across will sit with each other to listen to their stories and persuade their own opinions so that academic understanding of social conflicts will be higher and the parties in conflict will rationally solve the conflict in mutual respect to enhance the public good of the entire society.

Part I of this book explains the theory and application of collective analysis methodology in detail and provides the result of collective analysis on the Korean civil society movement.

Parts II and III seek future alternatives for the Korean civil society movement based on the research result of Part I. The direction offered is one of a creative virtuous cycle created by the state (government) – market (corporations) – and civil society (civil society organization) that perform appropriate roles and mutually compete, support, or criticize according to the situation. In detail, the book offers practical tasks for the Korean civil society movement to overcome stagnation and open a new future: keeping motility, establishing identity, having the MZ generation participate, developing a virtuous cycle of mobilizing resources, active response to digital society, and grassroots global citizenship education that connects local consciousness to global consciousness.