The gradual emergence of the Republic of Korea (ROK) as a modern liberal democratic nation state is a product of struggle and resistance. This can be seen in a number of key instances, including: popular and student-led national independence opposition (via the 1919 March 1st movement) to the colonial forces of Japan during the pre-1945 period; the post-liberation civil war between progressive and conservative forces from 1945 to 1950; the ideological and strategic conflict between North and South Korea during the Korean War, 1950–53; and the longer contest between the forces of authoritarianism and democracy that defined much of the post-1945 period, particularly between 1961 and 1987.
Rapid post-war economic development fostered a process of modernization, including mass education, social awareness and the development of a prosperous middle class, that arguably contributed to the emergence of South Korea as one of contemporary Asia’s most successful democracies. Invited (along with Australia and India) to the 2021 G7 summit in the UK as part of a wider democratic group of nations (the D10), South Korea also was one of the first countries to hold successful national elections in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Assembly elections of April 2020 saw the governing Democratic Party of Korea win a decisive three-fifths majority of seats (180 out of 300) in the country’s unicameral parliament on the back of a record 66 per cent turnout that suggested strong public engagement with the democratic process.
A further sign of democratic activism is the remarkable experience of late 2016, when cumulatively some 17 million South Koreans, over a three-month period, gathered in Seoul’s Gwanghwamun district (close to the presidential Blue House) to protest against corruption associated with the administration of the then president, Park Geun-hye – this striking example of mass politics and the ability of citizens to hold their leaders to account led to the president’s impeachment by the National Assembly and her eventual removal from office in March 2017.
Taken at face value, South Korea is a consolidated democracy with many of the structural features that are evidence of effective governance. These include: a codified separation of powers between a national legislature (elected every four years), a strong presidential executive (limited to a single five-year term), and a constitutionally defined legal framework (with a process of judicial review via the country’s constitutional and supreme courts); diverse print, television and social media; and an engaged citizenry that participates in the political process via membership of labour unions, religious and social associations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and via large-scale public demonstrations by groups both on the left and right of politics.
However, there are multiple reasons to question the extent to which democratic norms and procedures have become firmly established in practice. Qualitative and quantitative surveys of South Korea’s democratic culture, by organizations such as Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders and the V-Dem project, have frequently ranked the country low relative to other comparable democracies in terms of indicators that include press freedom, individual autonomy and political rights. For example, during President Park’s tenure from 2013 to 2017, Reporters Without Borders ranked South Korea 60th out of 180 countries for press freedom. More generally, since the most recent transition from authoritarian, military-led government to democracy in 1987, the country has, in the words of one recent analysis, ‘… unequivocally advanced, but it has not reached the upper tier status of advanced democracies’. Other observers have suggested that South Korea has been susceptible to a pronounced risk of ‘democratic backsliding’.
Common to populist movements is a form of political activity motivated by anger, perceived inequalities, distrust of governing elites and intolerance of the views of rival political groups.
Some critics go even further, interpreting contemporary political patterns as indicative of a crisis of democracy. Professor Gi-Wook Shin of Stanford University suggests that South Korea is in the grip of a ‘democratic depression’ or ‘decay’, and that it is grappling with the destabilizing forces of populist politics similar to those currently evident in many liberal democratic polities. Likening this phenomenon to a disease, rather than categorizing it as a temporary aberration or as evidence of a gradual evolution of democratic norms, Shin underlines the prevalence of a ‘zero-sum politics, in which opponents are demonized, democratic norms are eroded, and political life grows ever more polarised’. The metaphor of disease is particularly apt when discussing populism, a phenomenon that resists clear theoretical definition but which many observers consider a ‘pathological’ weakening of a country’s democratic culture, institutions and norms. Common to populist movements is a form of political activity motivated by anger, perceived inequalities, distrust of governing elites, and intolerance – or at times outright rejection – of the views of rival political groups. Protest per se is not enough to mark a movement as populist in form. The critical ingredient is an exclusive sense of who the legitimate ‘people’ are in a given political (typically national) setting, often based on historical narratives of collective identity rooted in myth, questionable historical evidence and appeals to emotion at the expense of rational analysis.
Other observers are, by contrast, more positive about the resilience of South Korea’s democratic values, pointing instead to a robust pluralism in the political discourse and to the importance of citizen-led activism as a barometer of healthy political engagement. Such positions nonetheless acknowledge the institutional limitations and politically regressive instincts (on the part of some political actors) that South Korea, in keeping with other liberal democracies, has faced in recent years.
The following analysis seeks to make sense of this contradictory set of evidence in order to assess the strengths and limitations of democratic governance in contemporary South Korea, while also setting the current situation against the backdrop of past political developments in the post-1945 period. South Korean politics today can be described as heavily ‘path-dependent’: that is, shaped by institutional innovations from earlier eras but also by cultural norms and competing visions of the nation that continue to affect political discourse and behaviour. Institutional imperfections and entrenched identities can amplify the rivalry and competition inherent to the process of democratic contestation, but it remains an open question whether South Korea has yet succumbed to populism, particularly in terms of any retreat into an intentionally exclusionary and anti-pluralist view of national legitimacy and rigid definitions of what constitutes ‘the people’.
Debates over competing narratives of the past in South Korea remain fierce, and there is a still a partisan tendency among some (though not all) politicians to frame their opponents as illegitimate and not representative of national norms. Moreover, there are instances (detailed below) in which the institutions of government have been weaponized to discredit or marginalize political opponents. These patterns are not dissimilar qualitatively to the populist politics of other democracies (for example, the US under Donald Trump, or India under the leadership of Narendra Modi), but results from the latest presidential contest in 2022 suggest that the South Korean electorate is able to remain dispassionate in making its electoral choices and that voters are willing to move beyond some of the bitter divisions of the past.
Notwithstanding this positive trend, history still matters. It might seem counterintuitive to devote so much time to the past in order to understand modern-day politics in South Korea, but there is compelling evidence to suggest that earlier developments – including institutional innovations, past competitions for political power, and not fully resolved debates over identity politics – continue to shape, sometimes decisively, the political landscape. South Korea is not alone in being influenced by recent history (Japanese politics, for example, is similarly shaped by the legacy of the past). But without a detailed appreciation of these influences, it is difficult to understand the choices of voters and leaders, as well as the country’s policies at home and abroad.
