ABSTRACT
Back in the early 1990s, it was very common to see the state described as a public enemy in Korea. Under the infl uence of the theories of state monopoly capitalism and Leninism with a strong Stalinist twist, ‘revolutionary’ sectors and groups in universities and workplaces concentrated on developing the best possible strategy to break down the state apparatus that exercised its force against the struggle of the working class in order to sustain ‘monopoly capitalism’. At that time, the state was regarded as an enemy not only by this hard-line Marxist-Leninist movement, but also by the wider democratisation movement, which saw the state as a big bureaucratic body that overshadowed civil society by exercising its overwhelming force against democracy and civil rights. In this sense, all reformist political movements shared a common idea about the state: ‘a public enemy’. From the other side, the state was also often described as ‘evil’, not because of its strong anti-labour and anti-democracy policies, but because of its heavy-handed interventionist policies in private businesses. Capitalists often argued that the state hindered more effective economic development by controlling the fi nancial markets and, therefore, undermining the rule of the market that would bring national prosperity.
