The origin of South Korean public diplomacy: Kim Dae-Jung Government and its relations with Japan

On August 15, 1945, the Japanese rule in the Korean Peninsula came to an end, and then Korea was liberated. Five years later, however, the Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950. South and North Koreans were tremendously impacted by the Korean War and Japanese colonialism. Especially, "assimilation policies" implemented by the Japanese government in the 1930s and 1940s damaged the consciousness of national and cultural identities among the people. Therefore, since the liberation, Korean governments prioritized the reconsolidating of national identities and pride among the people with anti-Japanese sentiment. In the post-colonial environment, Korean governments mostly benefited from the concept of "culture" to reconstruct the national and cultural consciousness of Koreans. However, culture would become an industry in Korea because democracy was ensured in South Korea, the struggles against the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis began and the country's administrators realized the importance of globalization. Thus, the Kim Dae-Jung period government further developed the Korean cultural industry, and this situation created the foundations of Korean public diplomacy. Within this context, to explain the emergence of Korean public diplomacy, the research will focus on the change of cultural policies in the Korean peninsula from the past to the present. Finally, the paper will also discuss the first attempts of the Kim Dae-Jung government to implement public diplomacy in Korea-Japan bilateral relations. The aim is to maintain the historical bond between the two countries and make it clearer that the foundation of Korean public diplomacy was first laid by Kim Dae-Jung.