Civil Repair and Boundary Tension Between Civil Sphere and Economic Sphere|RISS 상세보기

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

A series of scandals related to credit information have generated much attention from Korean civil society. The controversies were triggered over the use and protection of credit information but concluding with contrasting institutional changes. To explain such a difference, this paper suggests exploring how an economic sphere specific problem could be challenged by civil sphere and how boundaries between the two spheres could be reconstructed in Korea. This paper argues that the existence of multiple cultural codes creates incomplete reconstruction of boundary relations in less established democracies. With Alexander’s dynamics of civil repair, this study investigates two events, the 2000 credit amnesty and the 2014 credit information breach. It is found that the two events were interpreted as destructive intrusion to civil sphere with the language of the social whole and such societalizations initiated institutional civil repair. However, as shown in the 2000 credit amnesty case, the reconstruction of boundary relations is not always concluded with fundamental institutional reforms in civil society with multiple cultural codes, namely the democratic code and developmental code. In particular, when a successful reinterpretation against reforms by elites in economic sphere depends on developmental code, an intervention of civil sphere to economic sphere leads to a quick return to intra-sphere control or the realignment of inter-sphere boundary that may reflect economic sphere interests. Nonetheless, as democratic code becomes dominant in Korean civil society, fundamental reforms in economic sphere are likely to be promoted.

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