ABSTRACT
Founding new religions and calling for the resurrection of Confucian values are not the only ways Koreans have sought to turn globalization to their nation’s advantage or at least minimize the harm globalization might do to the existing order. As anyone who has spent much time in Korea knows, Koreans are not a passive people. They do not simply sit back and accept whatever threatens their beliefs, their values or their community; instead, they resist and even try to turn negative forces to their advantage. For example, they fought to maintain their cultural and ethnic distinctiveness during the 35 years they were under Japanese colonial rule in the first half of the twentieth century, and ended up with a much stronger sense of Korean cultural and national identity than they had before the Japanese occupied their land. They then spent the second half of the twentieth century overcoming the destruction of the Korean War, and managed to make the southern part of the peninsula richer and stronger than Korea had ever been in its entire history. It is not surprising, therefore, that Koreans have been able to reap some benefits from globalization, and have also sought ways to mitigate its unpleasant side-effects.
