Dongkyu Yeom

I study the dreams and aspirations voiced in South Korean leftist thought during the 1980s, the decade of democratic revolution. I argue that Marxism was not only the foundation but the very substrate of discourse in this era, enabling a profusion of visions for alternative worlds—visions now almost unimaginable, as Marxism has since completely lost its legitimacy, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of global socialism.

My work dwells on three such dreams—of a socialist political-economic system reaching beyond the confines of South Korean capitalism; of international solidarity, where South Korean leftists conceived themselves as part of the Third World, imagining futures that could only emerge through collective struggles against capitalist–imperialist forces together with the Third World; and of national reunification, conceived not merely as the restoration of a divided land but as historical progress toward a more democratic society. These were never only Korean dreams; they carried the conviction that Korea’s place in history might stand as a precedent for articulating an alternative universality.

Through an intellectual-historical approach, my dissertation seeks to reconstruct this rich landscape of thought, with Marxism at its center. Yet I aim not only to recover the language and meanings of leftist discourses, but also to listen for what exceeded them: aspirations that appeared only as historical catachreses—yearnings without proper referents, impossibly waiting for their time, and yet continually setting desire in motion toward the horizon of a utopian world.

Research Interests

• Modern Korea
• Intellectual History of Political Economy
• Marxism
• Postcolonial Theories
• The Third World Movement.