| One of the significant signs that distinguish modern politics from traditional politics is the emergence of political parties and the development of party politics. As an important part of indirect democracy, party politics, together with parliamentary politics and electoral politics makes up of the basic framework of modern democratic politics. It is party politics' democratic nature and its special functions that make it play an important role in the development of modern country's political process. Compared to early modern countries' party politics, the base of later modern countries' party politics is much weaker, and its task is more arduous. Besides the commitment to promote democratic politics, namely the establishments of democratic regimes and systems, later modern countries' party also has another task on their shoulders, that is, to provide foundational support for the democracy development, namely the direct leadership and promotion of social modernization. Whether their party politics is mature or not becomes one of the crucial factors to realize their political modernization. Therefore, in order to study later modern countries' political transition, it is very necessary to investigate and analyze the interactive relationship between these countries' party politics and the phenomenon of political transition.As a typical later modern country, Korea, with its great success in economic development and political transformation, obviously has its unique value in summarizing and researching the experience and lessons. In addition, Korea is a typical oriental country. Therefore, the research on Korean political modernization has a certain degree of cultural significance. Taking into account that both Korea and China are later modern and oriental countries, China should be able to learn a lot from Korea's experience. Undoubtedly, the successful political transition and the establishment of democratic politics of Korea are accelerated by the combined effect of multiple factors. Among these factors, the direct and crucial factor is the promotion of Korean political parties. However, according to the current research in this issue, researchers did not pay great attention to this factor. Therefore, we can say that, to some extent, this paper is a pioneering study of Korean political transition which attempts to comprehensively analyze Korean political transition from the perspective of party politics.At present, there are four major theoretical paradigms to analyze political transition that are structure analysis theory, civil society theory, strategy choice theory and institution change theory. After briefly discussing the contents, characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of these paradigms, I think that these four paradigms still have some deficiencies and defects. Based on this viewpoint, I proceed to study Korean political transition from the unit level, namely the party politics level, in order to absorb their advantages and avoid their shortcomings and then build a new and more perfect analytical framework. And in order to effectively support this analytical framework, under the guidance of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, I have mainly adopted traditional research methods, including historical research methods, normative analysis methods and comparative analysis methods, as well as some empirical research methods.When we discuss Korean party politics in the context of Korea's political transition, one indispensable precondition is that we must investigate and study systematically and succinctly the development of Korean party politics which has undergone dramatic changes at different times during postwar period. In fact, the reason why these works are made is to provide historical facts and background materials for later specific description and analysis of the interactive relationship between Korean party politics and political transformation. In addition, through this long period historical research, we can understand and feel the inextricably relations between Korean party politics and political transformation more clearly from an overall and macro perspective. In this paper, the postwar Korean party politics has been divided into three kinds, which are the party politics during "democratic experiment" period, the party politics during authoritative rule period and the party politics during democratic period. Through the study of Korean party politics' development trajectory, we can find that Korean party politics' development is closely related to Korean political evolution.Korean political parties, the core of Korean political transition and democratic development, must have a significant impact on Korean political transition as well as the consolidation and development of democratic politics. In this paper, I particularly review the different operation processes of Korean political parties in different Korean development eras, which are the authoritarian period, political transformation period and democratic period, and conclude that Korean party politics has made important contributions to Korea's political progress and democratic development throughout the political period. During the authoritarian period, the democratization function of Korean party politics is embodied on the institutional existence of opposition and the arduous struggles they have done for democratization. During the political transformation period, Korean political parties become the direct operator of Korean political transition. Korean oppositions play an important role in the process of overthrowing Korea's authoritarian rule. Subsequently, the ruling and opposition parties set up a new democratic institution after consultation and cooperation. And during the democratic period, the smooth rotation of different types of political parties not only eliminate the harmful influences of authoritarianism, consolidate democracy, but also make Korea's democratic system successfully get through the initial instability of transformation.Without doubt, there is a very close relationship between the development of Korean party politics and the historical process of political transition. Therefore, we should study and analyze in depth the status of the relationship and the challenges they have faced. First of all, I reconsider the specific role that Korean party politics have played in the course of political transition through two new dimensions, constitutional dimension and representative dimension. Secondly, I minutely analyze the challenges Korean party politics have faced in the new political era. Subsequently, I further analyze the adaptive changes Korean party politics should be taken in the democracy consolidation stage. Finally, I generalize and extract some characteristics of the relationship between Korean party politics and political transition. And then, I also summarize some enlightenment that may be useful for us. At the end of this paper, in order to point out this study's regional significance, I try to conduct a preliminary analysis and exploration of East Asia's political transition from the perspective of party politics.
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