The Politics of Ethnic Nationalism in Divided Korea

The collapse of the Soviet empire and subsequent rise and spread of ethnic and national con ̄ict in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have sparked a wave of research on ethnicity and nationalism among scholars and policy makers alike (Brubaker 1996; Diamond and Plattner 1994; Greenfeld 1992; Horowitz 1985; Smith 1991). This recent surge of interest in ethnicity and nationalism particularly concerns the potential danger that ethnic nationalism poses to social stability and political developments such as democratisation. There is a strong tradition in the scholarship on nationalism, from Hans Kohn (1945) to Donald Horowitz (1985) which views political nationalism as civic, integrative and constructive while ethnic nationalism is dangerous, divisive and destructive. Ethnic cleavages are considered more fundamental and permanent than other forms of cleavage, and con ̄icts arising from them are therefore said to be the most dif®cult to deal with. For instance, Diamond and Plattner argue that the `con ̄icts [ethnicity] generates are intrinsically less amenable to compromise than those revolving around material issues . . . because at bottom they revolve around exclusive symbols and conceptions of legitimacy . . . characterized by competing demands that cannot easily be broken down into bargainable increments' (1994: xviii). Horowitz concurs: