This book is an important contribution to the fortunes of global democratization. Focusing on developments in South Korea during the past seven decades, Kang shows how Korean politics has followed and not followed the dominant Western ideologies of liberalism, conservatism, nationalism, and radicalism.The divergence has to do with the difference between early-comers and late-comers to democracy, that is, with a certain "nonsimultaneity" between Western and non-Western history. Given geopolitical asymmetries, the divergence also puts a certain premium on
nationalism and national security, thus showing the crucial embeddedness of democratization in cultural-political contexts.

Fred Dallmayr

A deeply thoughtful, systematic, and timely critical exploration of current South Korean political ideologies, with a particular focus on their relation to the ideas and policies of the former president Park Chung Hee, whose controversial image and legacy continues to define the political fault lines of the country even today.

Carter Eckert, Professor, Harvard University and author of 'Park Chung Hee and Modern Korea'

"Contemporary Korean Political Thought and Park Chung-hee" by Jung In Kang is an insightful developmental analysis of Korean political thinking in a divided nation in the context of global Cold War (focusing however exclusively on the South, the Republic of Korea). Beginning with Machiavelli's famous diagnosis of bad men trying to achieve noble political ends (and vice versa), Kang shows how Korea (and Park Chung-hee in particular) overcame a "sanctified nationalism" and "simultaneity of nonsimultaneity" to complete "the tasks of modernization and democracy coevally." Yet the modality of its becoming leaves the nation divided.

Lowell Dittmer, University of California, Berkeley