Citizens and State Relations: What's in Presidential Inauguration Addresses

This working paper examine how people and the state appear in the words and sentences of presidential inaugration addresses in Korea. The corpus consists of 21 inauguration addresses, from the 1st President to the 21st President. Each address is treated as an independent unit of analysis, and the study records frequencies and relative frequences of major terms as well as actors, objects, and predicates in sentences containing references to citizens and the state. It distinguishes actions directed from citizens toward the state or government from actions directed from the state, government, or president toward citizens, and arranges the results chronologically. The full-corpus analysis identifies citizens’ duties and participation; service, protection, and responsibility by government and presidents; citizens’ choice and conferral of authority; sovereignty and ownership; and links between national development and citizens’ lives and happiness. The report presents these results as a basic research resource.