The Art of Governance and the Political Grammar of Legitimacy: Tales of the State for a Unified Korea

Abstract

This inquiry demonstrates that the political legitimacy of a certain society is historically determined, reflects specific institutional and contextual features, and employs a variety of meanings. These meanings can describe both a state of affairs and a process that ultimately involves justifications for legitimate agents and socio-political structures. This paper attepmpts to understand how the meanings of political legitimacy are conceptualized in society. As a case study, it questions: What are the conditions for the existence of political legitimacy and how have they been constructed? How is political legitimacy endorsed in South Korea today, and how does it differ from the past? This paper applies a deconstructive theory of political legitimacy that exploresa a distinctively modern style, or 'art of governance' that has an all-encompassing, as well as individualized effect upon its constituencies. By this approach, this paper argues that the concept of unification does not have a solid significance in the real world, but rather, it is an imaginary idea imposed by the dominant elite class, which is constantly imposed, reinterpreted and transformed in its political context.