Studies of Contemporary Chinese Politics in Korea: An Assessment.

Given the extraordinary pace of across-the-board expansion in Korea-China relations, the lack of assessments on the state of studies of contemporary Chinese politics in Korea is a crucial void to be filled. This evaluative article first offers a socio-demographic sketch of the Korean scholarly community of contemporary Chinese politics. More specifically, it examines how the epistemological community has evolved over the last half century in terms of generational and orientational changes. The second section assesses scholarly outputs in the field of contemporary Chinese politics by looking at monographs, refereed journal articles and doctoral dissertations produced by Korean scholars. The article concludes with some suggestions for further advancement of the studies of contemporary Chinese politics, which may be applicable to Korea as well as to the peer communities in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]