Emergence of the Republic of Korea

About the Book

The book examines the peninsular and international dimensions that led to the emergence of Republic of Korea as an independent sovereign state on August 15, 1945. More specifically, this book has sought to reconstruct reappraisal and reformulate the political developments in the Peninsula during the crucial three-year period before the proclamation of the first Republic in the five-thousand-year history of Korea. It was a truly historic development because the new Republican State had a written, democratic constitution which, among other things, unequivocally stated that the sovereignty rested with the citizens. The need for a reappraisal of the antes state history was felt because of two factors. Firstly, although it is almost five decades since the Republic of Korea and its rival state came into being, the debate on the context and circumstances under which they emerged has never ceased among scholars on contemporary Korea. Secondly, in the last three decades, especially since the latter half of 1970s, the debate on the emergence of Republic of Korea and its rival state has assumed new dimensions, with the publication of a few seminal books and outstanding research articles based on the declassified and hitherto unpublished or inaccessible mass of materials on the crucial three-year period from the collapse of the colonial order to the proclamation of the State of the Republic of Korea.

About the Author

Hriday Narayan is currently a faculty at the Department of History, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, South Korea. He has been teaching different topics on Korean History and Culture at different Institutes for more than a decade in South Korea and was involved in many research project works supported by the Korean Government and other agencies. He is also co-author of the books, “Dominant Groups (Yangban) in Korean Traditional Society” and “Modern Transition in Korea.”