The Conservative and Liberal Legitimacy Game: Political Polarization and Division over Historical Perception in Korea

Korea is a country whose citizenry display an intense relationship between historical perception and political disposition. The absence of a developmental bridge between pre-modern and modern times, three decades of colonial rule and immediate ideological partition of the nation in the midst of the Cold War has left Korea in a situation of historical disconnection. This makes reconciliation between conservatives and liberals and narrowing interpretive gaps more challenging. A collision over the evaluation of the legitimacies of the state and its first leaders has arisen not simply from political competition, but from conflicts between the factions at the most fundamental epistemological level. This research shows that two astoundingly different interpretations then perpetuate the field of politics in reverse, either supporting the cause of one side or attacking the legitimacy of the other.