Translating Global Values into National Contexts: The Rise of Environmentalism in South Korea

Since the 1970s, the global rise of environmentalism has attracted growing attention from the social sciences. Although most studies acknowledge the lack of a direct link between environmental activism and environmental policy changes, grassroots activists, social movements and NGOs are widely considered to have made a significant contribution to the global spread of environmentalism. Recently, this standard account has been strongly challenged by neoinstitutionalist approaches. In lieu of elevating the role of local activists, they explain the global rise of environmentalism as a top-down process by stressing the importance of the so-called ‘world environmental regime’. In an attempt to bridge this conceptual divide, the present article examines the interaction between local/national activists and the world environmental regime in the case of South Korea. Based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of statements, network data and surveys, this study describes the social mechanism driving the rise of environmentalism and demonstrates that its accession was equally shaped by the expansion of the world environmental regime, national configurations of power and the cultural creativity of environmental activists.