The Limits of Ngo-Government Relations in South Korea

Abstract

NGOs have been a major actor in South Korea's democratic governance and have sometimes played key roles in cooperation with the government. However, their once prominent status is in decline, attributed here to their structural weakness, over-politicization, and the risk of being potentially co-opted by the government

Corporate Funding and Sustainability of Non- Governmental Organizations in Africa

“…Government funds available were not accessed by civil society organizations due to inadequate awareness about the availability and the procedures required to access the funds. The findings are in line with the works of (Benthall, 1995;Nelson, 1997;Clark et al, 1998;Carapico, 2000;Ahmad, 2003;Paul, 2003;He and Murphy, 2007;Berkovitch and Gordon, 2008;Kim, 2009;Kim et al, 2011) Finally, NGOs development is about people, people who require institutions and information to enable their participation. There are no quick fixes, it requires time and commitment.…”

Food sovereignty movement activism in South Korea: national policy impacts?

“…In order to analyze Korean LVC affiliate political and policy action in the current domestic political environment, we situate these organizations within the developing civil society that has emerged in the post-1987 democratization period (Kim 2009(Kim , 2000c. The Korean LVC affiliates are direct offshoots of the democracy movement coalition (Abelmann 1996;Lee 2007) that coordinated mass citizen anti-government protests in the mid-1980s that culminated in the June 1987 democracy declaration, effectively ending three decades of military dictatorship.…”

“…In the wake of the 1987 democracy declaration that opened the Korean political system, minjung SMOs faced dramatic changes in their organizational fields of action, with a proliferation of new citizen (simin in Korean) social movement and public interest organizations (Kim 2009). These organizations formed to voice reformist advocacy on a range of issues of concern to their largely middle-class membership base.…”

“…The KWPA, in particular, seems to reflect the ''leaders without members'' syndrome that plagues many Korean civil society organizations (Kim 2009). While KWPA leaders are effective in educational outreach activities in transnational policy space and are able to play the same role domestically, as evidenced by their campaign to teach urban and suburban women about the benefits of consuming traditional foods, whether they are able to orchestrate grassroots mobilization among the rather invisible farm women base to effect policy action at local, regional, and/or national levels is uncertain.…”

Paradigms Found: Phronesis and Pragmatic Humanism for International and Domestic NGOs

“…Also, there is not enough literature, perhaps a few dozen articles on academic or pragmatic topics, and we could use more. To characterize the literature, most NGO material presents area studies, like NGOs in Africa or Asia; policy advice (Kim, 2009;Yarrow, 2008;Guinn, 2008); and managerial direction based largely on organization direction and policy (Uvjn and Jain, 2000). There are also some adventures into foundation money and how to get it (Fowler, 2008).…”