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Civil society is considered as an important building block of development, its actors key intermediaries between citizens and the state. The course will explore the role civil society has played in Korean economic development and how it has been, in turn, shaped by the growth experience. We will also study how Korean civil society has been responding to political and economic instability over the last decade. The strong civil society that led the country to democratization in the 1980s made a comeback and removed a corrupt president in 2017. Tensions within civil society at times have exacerbated social divide, as we are seeing in the recent clash of feminist and anti-feminist movements over deep-rooted misogyny and gendered citizenship debates. While traditional charities have been on the decline, there has been a surge of social and solidarity economy organizations such as cooperatives and social enterprises in response to concerns of climate change, growing economic inequality and social injustice. We explore these topics using conceptual frameworks from the literature on movements, nongovernment organizations and social enterprises.