Seeds of Mobilization: The Authoritarian Roots of South Korea’s Democracy

Joan E. Cho, Associate Professor of East Asian Studies, Wesleyan University

September 27, 2024  |  12:15 - 1:30 PM
SRH 3.122

On Friday, September 27th, the Clements-Strauss Asia Policy Program hosted Dr. Joan Cho, Professor East Asia Studies at Wesleyan University, for a book talk on Seeds of Mobilization: The Authoritarian Roots of South Korea’s Democracy. See photos from the event here.


Joan Cho is Associate Professor of East Asian Studies, and Associate Professor by courtesy of Government, at Wesleyan University. Her research and teaching interests are authoritarianism, democratization, social movements, and authoritarian legacies in Korea and East Asia. Dr. Cho’s first book, Seeds of Mobilization: The Authoritarian Roots of South Korea’s Democracy (University of Michigan Press, 2024), examines the roles of industrialization and tertiary education in South Korea’s nonlinear path to democracy. Her work on authoritarian regime support, South Korean democracy movement, and electoral accountability in post-transition South Korea are published in Electoral StudiesJournal of East Asian Studies, Studies in Comparative International Development, and Routledge Handbook of Korean Culture and Society. Dr. Cho is also an adjunct fellow (non-resident) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Korea Chair and associate-in-research of the Council of East Asian Studies at Yale University. She was previously Vice President and governing board member of the Association of Korean Political Studies and a 2018-2019 CSIS-USC U.S.-Korea NextGen Scholar. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the Department of Government at Harvard University.

The Asia Policy Program is a joint effort of the Clements Center for National Security and the Strauss Center for International Security and Law