Democracy in name, democracy in essence

By Andrei Lankov

As the summer comes, so too arises the opportunity for the Republic of Korea to celebrate the 30th anniversary of its democratic transformation. While officially the ROK always portrayed itself as a liberal democracy, for all practical intents and purposes it became such only as the culmination of several events reached critical mass in the summer of 1987, an event most often described as a revolution in the minds and imaginations of nearly all Koreans.

When the ROK was officially founded in August 1948, it professed an allegiance to the principles of liberal democracy as understood at the time. However, this commitment was to a large extent theoretical. The first ROK President, Syngman Rhee, a life-long independence activist, was certain that any Korean democracy should include him as an unchallengeable and, essentially, irreplaceable head of state and powerful ruler.

Lasting twelve years, from 1948 to 1960, Rhee's administration was a time of relatively soft authoritarian policy somewhat similar with what is commonly observed in many states of the Middle East. While he was willing to use force against the radical, often Stalinist Left, Rhee could be severe when dealing with his opponents. Major opposition figures were jailed or even executed, elections were heavily interfered with, and a personality cult of Syngman Rhee was introduced ― several degrees less than the Kim family cult in North Korea, to be sure, but not entirely dissimilar.

In April 1960 Syngman Rhee was overthrown by a popular revolution. He was replaced by a regime known as the ‘Second Republic' which was probably Korea's first honest experiment with democracy. It did not go well, though: the system began to slide into a chaos. Just a year into the experiment, a group of military officers, led by General Park Chung-hee staged a successful coup that would bring strong-man authoritarianism to the ROK for nearly three decades.

Many public intellectuals nowadays blame Park for single-handedly derailing the trajectory of liberation in the ROK. There is a revisionist school of thought, however, less sympathetic to this recrimination.

In any case, by the dictators' standards General Park behaved with some constraint during the first decade of his rule, and his regime could be described as a semi-democracy. However, in 1972 the country quickly began to change into a characteristic military dictatorship. At the same time, a very successful economic policy of the Park regime would make South Korea the fastest growing economy in the world, and helped to transform the country from a poor backwater to an economic powerhouse within a generation.

In October 1979 Park Chung-hee was killed by his intelligence chief whose motivations remain unclear to this day. Park was succeeded by another military general, Chun Doo Hwan. The transition was marked by massive pro-democracy rallies (sometimes referred to colloquially as ‘Seoul spring') which culminated in a popular revolt in the southern city of Gwangju, brutally suppressed by government forces. Chun Doo-hwan survived these challenges and remained in power until 1987.

Ultimately, the military dictatorship's grasp on the country was slowly weakened by what the generals (and many others) saw as the greatest achievement of the military regimes ― record-breaking economic growth. This development fundamentally changed South Korean society. A nation of semi-literate peasants remade itself into a nation of highly-skilled workers, engineers, business leaders, medical doctors and professionals. This new, educated, and ambitious middle class were not willing tolerate what their parents saw as normal or, at least, acceptable: censorship, repressive government, lack of political participation. They wanted democracy.

Faced with pressure from below, Chun Doo-hwan decided to step down in 1987, selecting yet another general, Ro Tae Woo, to take his place. Under the constitutional arrangement at the time, the election of an appointed successor was nearly guaranteed. The wholly transparent and blatantly obvious intentions of the military elite to keep themselves in power generated massive outrage among the new middle class, students, professionals, and labor activists.

Outrage culminated in June the same year, in a monumental public protest known as the ‘June Democracy Movement.' As many as 700,000 people took to the streets and demanded change ― a number which remained unsurpassed until the recent rallies against President Park Geun Hye, daughter of Pak Chung-hee, in late 2016 and early 2017.

The protests worked. In late June 1987 the government gave in, conceding to direct and competitive elections, a relaxation of censorship, and other steps towards democracy. Thus, the ROK became a democracy, not only in name, but in practice. Just three decades later, it is not only the most mature democracy in Asia, but a leading example for the entire region.

Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. Reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.