Transnational Networks and South Korea's Pro-Democracy Movement: Japan-Based Advocacy and the Letters from South Korea Project under Yusin

Abstract

This thesis examines the transnational activist networks that sustained South Korea's pro-democracy movement, with a particular focus on the 1970s Yusin period and the Letters from South Korea series published in the Japanese intellectual magazine, Sekai. While the study traces antecedent networks from before the 1960s and follows their later reconfiguration into the 1980s, its central focus is the period of intensified repression under Park Chung Hee's Yusin regime, when domestic avenues for dissent were sharply repressed, and overseas channels became increasingly important. Focusing on Chi Myong-gwan and the intellectual, Christian, and civil society networks that operated in and through Japan, this thesis argues that transnational advocacy networks were not merely conduits for conveying information about repression to overseas audiences. Rather, they helped sustain South Korea's pro-democracy movement by preserving, translating, framing, and circulating oppositional voices beyond the reach of the authoritarian state, while also providing moral, material, and organisational support to activists under repression. These networks were underpinned by long-standing relationships of trust and solidarity that predated the most visible moments of mobilisation. Drawing on archival research in Korea and Japan, personal papers, published and unpublished writings, and oral history interviews, the thesis reconstructs the origins, structure, and influence of these networks. It shows how earlier intellectual and religious linkages, including the legacy of the intellectual magazine Sasangge and Korean - Japanese Christian cooperation, provided antecedent networks that were consciously repurposed after domestic avenues for dissent were suppressed under Park Chung Hee's Yusin regime. The clandestine production and circulation of the Letters from South Korea - supported by figures such as Chi, Yasue Ryosuke, O Chae-sik, and Kim Kwan-sok - illustrates the relational labour through which information was sourced, translated, framed, and circulated through Japanese, Christian, intellectual, and human rights channels. Diaries, correspondence, organisational records, and interview testimony further show that these networks also provided moral encouragement, financial assistance, legal support, safe passage, and access to overseas institutions. The thesis further demonstrates that these networks were not uniformly oppositional spaces. Christian institutions, intellectual circles, media platforms, and overseas advocacy networks were contested arenas in which both opposition actors and the South Korean state competed to shape narratives of legitimacy and repression. By critically engaging with the Boomerang Model of transnational advocacy, the thesis argues for a meso-level, relational approach that highlights trust, embeddedness, mediation, and continuity as vital elements of transnational activism. In doing so, the thesis makes three key contributions. First, it reinterprets South Korea's democratisation as a process shaped not only by domestic resistance, but also by sustained cross-border relationships. Second, it contributes to social movement theory by emphasising the role of antecedent networks and relational labour, rather than episodic mobilisation alone. Third, it highlights the contested role of religion and intellectual life as resources used both for authoritarian legitimation and for resistance. Overall, the thesis demonstrates that South Korea's pro-democracy movement was sustained through both domestic resistance and cross-border collaboration. It shows how antecedent networks were reactivated under Yusin, adapted into transnational advocacy under repression, and persisted into the post-authoritarian period. Show more