The April 1960 Korean Student Movement

• Published date: 01 March 1964
• Author: C.I. Eugene Kim,Ke-Soo Kim
• DOI: 10.1177/106591296401700108
• Date: 01 March 1964
• Subject Matter: Articles

THE APRIL 1960 KOREAN STUDENT MOVEMENT
C. I. EUGENE KIM, Western Michigan University
AND
KE-SOO KIM, Konkuk University, Seoul, Korea
OVERNMENTAL
INSTABILITY is a perennial topic of discussion among
G
the students of the social sciences. Starting from Thucydides and Aristotle
in the West and Confucius and Mencius in the East to a host of contempo-
rary historians and political and social scientists, their number is indeed great. An-
cient as he is, it is Aristotle, however, who outshines them all. His ingenuity, com-
prehensiveness, and perceptiveness have placed him in a class by himself.
Aristotle in his Politics (Book V) asks three questions as the basic framework
of inquiry into the causes of political revolutions: (1) What is the revolutionary
feeling? (2) What are the motives of the revolutionaries? (3) &dquo;Whence arise politi-
cal disturbances and quarrels?&dquo; 1 According to Aristotle, the universal and chief
cause of the revolutionary feeling is the desire for equality; or the desire for inequal-
ity and superiority, which is generated in men when they find disparity between what
they are and what they feel they are capable of being. Concerning the revolutionary
motives, Aristotle points out the desire for gain and honor or the fear of dishonor and
loss. The Aristotelian categories here are usually inclusive. As Aristotle points out
in the latter part of his discussion of the causes of a revolution, to be included among
them are such factors as insolence, fear, excessive dominance, contempt, social dis-
equalibrium resulting from some disproportionate increase in some part of the state,
election intrigues, carelessness, neglect about trifles, dissimilarity of elements. After
all is said, he finds the mainspring of a revolution in inequality in status, prestige, and
wealth, and in the sense of injustice that this inequality engenders in the minds of the
masses.
Is the organization of this sense of injustice to be galvanized into action volun-
tarily to effect a governmental turnover, or must it be led? Aristotle does not answer
this question and it is among modern theorists such as Vildredo Pareto (The Mind
and Society) and Roberto Michels (Political Parties) that the role of leadership in
any organized political activity is clearly delineated and subsequently given a great
deal of stress.
In the study of political revolutions, modern theorists have made other contribu-
tions too, but their greatest contribution (including that of Karl Marx and of Max
Weber) is in greater systematization of the Aristotelian precepts through case studies
and the use of scientific and empirical methodologies. For instance, P. A. Sorokin
(The Sociology of Revolution) looks into the political revolutions that took place in
Russia ( 1905, 1917, 1924 ) , in France ( 1789, 1848, 1870-71 ) , in Germany ( 1848 ) , in
NOTE: This paper was originally presented to the Midwest Conference of Political Scientists
held in May 1963. The authors are grateful to the members of the faculty and the stu-
dents of Konkuk University (Seoul, Korea) for their participation in this survey and to
Western Michigan University for its faculty research grant to complete the study. Thanks
are also due to Professor Leo Stine of Western Michigan University and Professor Leon D.
Epstein of the University of Wisconsin for their helpful comments.
1
Aristotle, Politics, tr. Benjamin Jowett, with an introduction by Max Lerner (New York :
Modern Library, 1943), p. 212.
83

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84
England (seventeenth century) , and in Egypt, Persia, and various other places in the
past. Crane Brinton (The Anatomy of Revolution), too, looks into the political
revolutions that took place in England, America, France, and Russia. Recently there
have been countless new studies of the political revolutions in the Asian, African and
Latin American countries.
2
In this tradition of theories concerning the political revolutionary causes, where
does the April 1960 Korean student movement stand? That is, the movement that
toppled the first and last government of the First Republic of Korea (1948-60) and
sent into exile the unchallenged leader of the Republic, Syngman Rhee, so long
idolized by Koreans as the &dquo;George Washington&dquo; of the country. We attempt to
answer this question in this survey project, and to that extent, this study is a reap-
praisal of the causes of a political revolution. Should this case study turn out to be
different from the other studies, it is because, as MacIver said, this Korean case was
perhaps differently affected by &dquo;such things as the techniques of power prevailing at
the time, the character of armed forces, the means of communication, the develop-
ment of the agencies of propaganda, the extent of organization and of industrializa-
tion, and so forth. 11 3
THE APRIL 19, 1960, MOVEMENT : BACKGROUND
_
!
f
A general election was held on March 15, 1960, throughout Korea. Syngman
Rhee, then eighty-five years old, was running unopposed since, just before the elec-
tion, the Democratic candidate, Choung Pyong-ok [Cho Pyong-ok], died suddenly of
heart failure in Washington, D.C., where he had been for medical treatment. Rhee’s
election was thus assured; but because of his age the vice-presidency became the real
center of contest in...