This research aims at assessing the changes that have occurred to the nationalist minjung academic community, formed during the 1980s. The academic community advocated “nationalist minjung studies” in conjunction with academic activities outside of the university establishment and social movements that had been seeking social revolution. The community thus gave birth to counter-discourses in the knowledge community that had differentiated themselves from those of the 1960s and 1970s. The nationalist minjung academic communities, however, have been declining rapidly following the disintegration of the Soviet socialist block in 1991, the rise to power of a civilian government in South Korea and the adoption by that government of a new policy on knowledge. In an attempt to cope with the crisis and institutionalization of the 1980s nationalist minjung academic communities, alternative academic communities emerged in the 2000s that sought experiments distinguished from the institutionalized order of the collegiate establishments.