Two Spheres of Korean Politics: Knowledge Production and Dissemination across Linguistic Divides

Political science research is produced in both English and local linguistic spheres, yet work from local spheres remains overlooked in global academia, even when such research can offer deeper contexts that English-language research cannot fully capture. This study asks: How do knowledge production and dissemination patterns differ between these linguistic spheres?Using scholarship on Korean politics as a critical case, we analyze bibliographic data from major Korean and international political science journals.Knowledge Production: We map how research topics evolve and distribute across the English and Korean linguistic spheres.Citation Practices: We build citation networks to compare the share of local-linguistic citations and the network centrality of cited works, asking whether scholarship builds on local discussions or globally foundational studies.Knowledge Dissemination: We examine dissemination along three dimensions: quantity (how often an article is cited), scope (the breadth of outlets that cite it), and quality (the prestige of those outlets).Our findings reveal a sharp linguistic divide. Scholarship in the Korean linguistic sphere spans a broader array of topics and relies heavily on locally accumulated knowledge, whereas work in the English linguistic sphere concentrates on a narrower set of globally salient questions, cites sources located at the structural core of international networks, and secures greater reach and recognition.In short, local scholarship supplies essential contextual depth, yet the English sphere remains the gatekeeper of visibility and authority—shedding light on the broader politics of global knowledge production and dissemination.