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The Interplay between Globalness and Localness: Korea's Globalization Revisited

Korea University, South Korea, gspark{at}korea.ac.kr

Yong Suk Jang

Korea University, South Korea

Hang Young Lee

Korea University, South Korea

The global and local are not a dichotomous classification and the interplay between them becomes more and more complex. This article seeks to provide an account that makes sense of the simultaneous coexistence of these two seemingly contradictory trends. In this article, we attempt to compile a theoretical combination of `globalness' and `localness' while presenting the case of Korea's globalization. We explore, as an example of the dynamics between strong globalness and weak localness, how the Korean government has submissively managed the national restructuring under the 1997 financial crisis. We argue that the Korean government was a relative weak local actor to passively accept the strong global requirements when the crisis hit Korea. In contrast, the strong local resistance and acceptance were simultaneously found in the reformation process of Korean national identity when the strong global pressure of changing traditional social values was introduced by the economic crisis. We, therefore, observe the dualistic directions of national identity reformation as a specific outcome of the interplay between the strong globalness and strong localness.

Key Words: financial crisis • globalization • national identity • South Korea

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