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PART 1 INTRODUCTION
1. Introduction: South Korean Politics after Transitions
JeongHun Han, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, and Youngho Cho
2. The History of Korea, 1905–1945
Hyung-Gu Lynn
3.
Tae Gyun Park
PART 2 CORE CONCEPTS
Kwang-Il Yoon 6.
7.
Jungmin Seo
PART 3 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS
PART 4 PARTIES AND ELECTIONS
PART 5 CIVIL SOCIETY
PART 6 CULTURE AND MEDIA
PART 7 PUBLIC POLICY AND POLICY- MAKING
PART 8 THE INTERNATIONAL ARENA
35. The South Korean Development Model 578
Eun Mee Kim and Nancy Y. Kim
36. Korean Reunification 595 Young-Kwan Yoon
37. The ROK–US Alliance: Drivers of Resilience 613
Victor D. Cha and Katrin Katz
38. Evolving Relations with China 629
Heung-Kyu Kim Index 647
List of Contributors
Yooil Bae, Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration, Dong-A University
Dongwook Cha, Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration and Policy, Dong-eui University
Victor D. Cha, Vice Dean and D.S. Song-KF Professor of Government and International Affairs, School of Foreign Service and Department of Government, Georgetown University
Youngho Cho, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Sogang University
JeongHun Han, Associate Professor, Graduate School of International Studies and Chair of the EU Center, Seoul National University
Seung-Jin Jang, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Kookmin University
Dal Yong Jin, Distinguished SFU Professor, Simon Fraser University
Won-Taek Kang is professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Seoul National University
WooJin Kang, Professor, Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, KyungPook National University
Katrin Katz, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, The Korea Society and Adjunct Fellow (Non-Resident), Office of the Korea Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Eun Mee Kim, President, Ewha Womans University
Heung-Kyu Kim, Director, US–China Policy Institute, Ajou University
Nancy Y. Kim, PhD Candidate and Researcher, Institute for Development and Human Security, Ewha Womans University
Sung-han Kim, Professor, College of International Studies, Korea University
Ki-Sung Kwak, Chair of Department, Department of Korean Studies, University of Sydney
Huck-ju Kwon, Professor, Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University
Soonmee Kwon, Professor, Korea Employment and Labor Educational Institute
Alex Soohoon Lee, Associate Research Fellow, Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA)
Han Soo Lee, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, Ajou University
Hyangjin Lee, Professor of Film Studies, Rikkyo University
Jongkon Lee, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Ewha Womans University
Jooha Lee, Professor, Department of Public Administration, Dongguk University
Namhee Lee, Professor of Modern Korean History, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and Director, Center for Korean Studies, UCLA
Sohyun Zoe Lee, Lecturer in International Political Economy, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen's University Belfast
Yeonho Lee, Professor, Department of Political Science and International Studies, Yonsei University
John Lie, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
Sunghack Lim, Professor, Department of International Relations, University of Seoul
Yoojin Lim, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Kangwon National University
Hyung-Gu Lynn, AECL/KEPCO Chair in Korean Research, University of British Columbia and Editor, Pacific Affairs
Kyoung-sun Min, Assistant Professor, Korean National Police University
Woojin Moon, Professor, Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, Ajou University
Ramon Pacheco Pardo, Professor of International Relations, King’s College London and KF–VUB Korea Chair, Brussels School of Governance, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Kyungmee Park, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Jeonbuk National University
Tae Gyun Park, Professor, Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University
Sang-young Rhyu , Professor, Graduate School of International Studies, Yonsei University
Jungmin Seo, Professor, Department of Political Science and International Studies, Yonsei University
Jin-Wook Shin, Professor, Department of Sociology, Chung-Ang University
Byoung Kwon Sohn, Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Chung-Ang University
Meredith Woo, President, Sweet Briar College
Kwang-Il Yoon, Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Sookmyung Women’s University
Young-Kwan Yoon, Professor Emeritus, College of Social Sciences, Seoul National University and Former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Republic of Korea
Part 1
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1 Introduction
South Korean Politics after Transitions
JeongHun Han, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, and Youngho Cho
1. South Korean Politics: Old and New
South Korea is best known for its economic development, democratic consolidation, proactive civil society, and, more recently, for its emergence as a cultural powerhouse. South Korea transitioned from one of the poorest countries in the world in the 1950s into a developed economy by the 1990s. Its economic development model is now being exported throughout the developing world. Meanwhile, South Korea went from dictatorship to democracy in the 1980s, thanks to the re-establishment of free and fair elections in 1987. Over three decades later, it is a consolidated democracy with peaceful transitions of power between parties. In addition, South Korean civil society has been key in the democratic transition as well as its consolidation. Today, it keeps leaders accountable, as the 2016–2017 Candlelight Uprising showed. Furthermore, South Korean culture has been gaining in popularity across the world. Both its traditional and, especially, contemporary cultural expressions are being consumed well beyond East Asia.
The starting point of this handbook is that South Korea has experienced various transitions, including political, democratic, economic, societal, and demographic, and, thus, its contemporary politics are considerably different from its traditional patterns through the process of responding to these transitions. During the 1950s and 1960s, the South Korean state was not functionally differentiated. The country was ruled by personal dictatorship, its economy was based on subsistence agriculture, and most South Koreans lived in rural areas and followed Confucian norms and rituals. Accordingly,
few foreign scholars paid attention to this small, recently war-torn country for which there was little hope.
In recent decades and moving away from this old image, South Korea has created and developed specialised state organisations and the country has institutionalised core elements of liberal democracy such as free elections, multiparty competition, and civil liberties. Moreover, high-tech and service companies have been leading its economy, South Korean cultural industries have been gaining global popularity, and its society now looks hyper-modern. Owing to these dramatic transitions, international society now regards South Korea as a middle power and the country has expanded its interests, as well as its responsibilities, abroad. Overall, South Korea and its politics are far distant from the old image and the grand perspectives that tended to underappreciate the complex and diversified nature of South Korean politics.
Traditional understandings of South Korea indeed do not account for this historical evolution and the complex nature of its politics. Many scholars and political pundits specialising in South Korea describe its politics through two grand perspectives: dynamic and static. On the dynamic side, Gregory Henderson published his seminal book, Korea: The Politics of the Vortex, in 1968. Henderson characterised South Korean political dynamics using a physics analogy: as a strong vortex sweeping all active elements of society upwards and towards centralised power. Henderson applied the popular thesis of the politics of mass society by William Kornhauser (1959) to link South Korean politics to an agrarian and traditional society. In his analysis, the strong unity and homogeneity of South Korea were the main reasons hindering the formation of strong institutions or voluntary associations, preventing change, and, therefore, failing to construct a stable liberal democracy (Henderson 1968: 5).
On the static side, scholars emphasise the cultural legacies of Confucianism. According to this perspective, the Joseon dynasty adopted Confucianism as the state ideology and it eventually became embedded into social and private norms and values (Deuchler 1995). Since then, Confucianism has continued to play an important role in shaping the modernisation trajectories of South Korea and continues to have an enduring impact on its politics and democracy (Kim 2014; Shin 2012). While acknowledging that some aspects of these grand perspectives may still remain relevant, we need to present an updated understanding of South Korean politics, which, by and large, has been overlooked by these perspectives.
We aim to shed fresh light on contemporary South Korean politics and put together this handbook with two underpinning related principles in mind. First, most of the chapters examine South Korean politics since the 1987 democratic transition. The reason is that state development, economic growth, and social and demographic changes began to be reflected in South Korean politics after this transition, which removed the intervention of authoritarian leaders. Second, the authors take a bottom-up perspective to advance our understanding about South Korean politics. Relying on Robert Merton’s (1968) mid-range theory, the different contributors integrate both theoretical and empirical research about specific aspects of South Korean politics. As South Korea has experienced various transitions over the past decades, its politics have changed in a
multidimensional way. And since holistic and grand approaches are limited in detailing specific aspects of South Korean politics, we have divided the handbook into six sections: core concepts, institutions, civil society, culture and media, public policy, and foreign policy.
What changes have been taking place in South Korea’s core political elements such as the developmental state, nationalism, presidentialism, and regionalism? How have democratic institutions, such as elections, the party system, and the judicial body, processed citizens’ interest and values and transformed them into government policies and laws? Has the civil society of South Korea, including interest groups and labour unions, grown in size and attained democratic civility? What are the main characteristics of South Korean culture as it has modernised and globalised? What impacts and implications have decentralisation, new public management (NPM), and growing welfare programmes had on the politics and society of South Korea? And what is the current state of South Korean foreign policy towards North Korea and the superpowers surrounding the Korean Peninsula?
This handbook answers these and related questions by providing state-of-the-art analyses of all significant aspects of South Korean politics. The authors in this handbook share a desire to explain South Korean politics using both theoretical and empirical approaches and to provide a general account of the main characteristics observed in specific domains of its politics after transition. Through this project, the contributors hope that an international audience will gain new knowledge about South Korean politics either in their own right or in comparison to the experience of other countries.
2. Modern History and Core Concepts
Our handbook focuses on the contemporary politics of South Korea after the 1987 democratic transition. However, contemporary politics reflect social, economic, and political changes that the country experienced during the twentieth century. After the Joseon dynasty failed to reform and survive, the modernisation process of the Korean Peninsula was postponed until it gathered new strength following its liberation from Japanese colonialism and later occupation by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1945. With modernisation in the first half of the twentieth century proving impossible, domestic efforts to develop a liberal democracy, an industrial economy, and a modern society took place during its second half, framed by South Korea’s alliance with the United States.
Because these two periods in modern Korean history are crucial to understanding contemporary South Korea, we include two chapters that take stock of what we would lose should we jump straight into present South Korean politics. Hyung-Gu Lynn (Chapter 2) examines major transformations in the period from 1905 to the 1940s such as the emergence of Korean nationalism, the polarisation of left and right independence
groups, and incipient economic development under the period of Japanese occupation. While acknowledging the dominant scholarly narrative about the interplay between Japanese colonial oppression and the Korean struggle against it to achieve national independence, Lynn shows that these transformations are less self-evident than those described in school textbooks. Tae Gyun Park’s (Chapter 3), meanwhile, focuses on the history of South Korean politics from 1948 to 1987. Throughout this period, South Korea underwent several political changes in terms of regime type and president. For the most part, however, South Korea spent these years under de facto or de jure authoritarian rule. Thus, there were decades-long tensions between authoritarianism and progressive forces demanding democratisation. Ultimately, the experience of South Korea during these decades and the political tensions affecting the country helped to shape South Korea’s democratisation and democratic years post 1987.
After these two chapters on the modern political history of South Korea, we provide core concepts whose understanding is the basic foundation to delve into various aspects of South Korean politics. JeongHun Han (Chapter 4) posits that South Korea has been commonly known as a presidential system. However, he also points out that its performance is often questionable from the perspective of the normal dynamics of a presidential system. This is due to the existence and effectiveness of institutions observed in parliamentary systems. In particular, the institutional characteristics of institutions abnormal to presidential systems—thus providing stronger power to the executive—may help us to understand why the power of South Korean presidents is not controlled or checked by other governing institutions, including the National Assembly or the courts, but is often controlled by civil society movements.
Regionalism, covered in Chapter 5, is one of South Korea’s most distinct sociological characteristics. Its importance is reinforced because of its influence on South Korean politics. Defining it as a voting behaviour tendency based on voters’ birth places, Kwang-Il Yoon (Chapter 5) contends that regionalism emerged due to processes of uneven industrialisation and state repression between regions. As the leading politicians— the ‘three Kims’—conducted campaign strategies to mobilise voters according to their birth places, incentives for voters to find alternative channels of representation were weakened. Even though its influence has declined, Yoon posits that regionalism is the only clear political cleavage in South Korea.
Conservative democratisation is a concept separating South Korean democratisation from some other countries. According to WooJin Kang (Chapter 6), South Korean democratisation was the result of a political pact established through a bargaining process between old political elites that remained in power. Instead of reshuffling the entire system, the democratisation process to a large extent preserved the power of the political elites of the old authoritarian regime. This clashes with the role and beliefs of new democratic elites that have emerged post democratisation and which sometimes seek to transform the regime itself. Similarly, the continuation of the policymaking patterns of the developmental state is also present in contemporary South Korea. Meredith Woo (Chapter 7), meanwhile, shows that the country was part of a group of East Asian peers including Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan in which governmental,
bureaucratic, and economic elites worked together to promote economic development. With the advent of democracy and the graduation of South Korea into a developed economy, these links have frayed but have not completely dissipated. Indeed, a developmental mindset characterised by state–private sector cooperation and long-term thinking continues to inform policymaking in South Korea. Sang-young Rhyu (Chapter 8) examines the chaebol using one of the three metaphors in the political economy of South Korea: angels, demons, and necessary evils. According to Rhyu, chaebol are active players in the South Korean developmental state, helping to make South Korea one of the major industrial powers. Nonetheless, the long-standing collaboration between chaebol and political elites also deteriorates the development of social organisations. Political competition has failed to escape from the pattern of conflicts between elite coalitions and the mass public. Therefore, the developmental state and the chaebol face the prospect of having to go their own ways.
Finally, this section discusses how South Korean culture’s strong unity based on nationalism has evolved. Modern nationalism originated from the anti-Japanese independence movement, yet Jungmin Seo (Chapter 9) points out that political leaders have utilised and altered its forms and contents since 1948. Taking the constructivist approach to nationalism and using Benedict Anderson’s definition of a nation as an ‘imagined community’ (1991), Seo contends that South Korean nationalism has evolved throughout major political events such as the Korean War, authoritarian state-building, democratisation, and recent globalisation. Seo concludes that nationalism conditions how politicians and ordinary citizens deal with domestic and foreign issues.
Seen from the perspective of these core concepts characterising contemporary South Korean politics, the profound changes occurring since the 1987 democratisation process might have had mixed effects on the emergence of new dynamics in South Korean politics. On the one hand, political and social divisions have changed as the interests between governing institutions as well as regions and other social sectors have become more heterogeneous. On the other hand, such divisions may not have found channels for their representation. The legacies of the previous authoritarian regime were not completely eliminated, suggesting that political dynamics are still dominated by the same centres of power. Nevertheless, recent changes seem to have weakened the negative influences of authoritarian legacies. The remaining sections of the handbook illustrate in more detail the changes taking place in South Korea.
3. Political Process
Sections 2 and 3 in this handbook examine various aspects of the political process to link peoples’ preferences and public policy. During the democratic movements of the 1980s, the political interests of the whole of South Korean society were concentrated in making the authoritarian leaders step down from the centre of power. This would open the door to choosing new leaders in a democratic way. This homogeneous
orientation to political and societal reform is now no longer valid. More than thirty years after democratisation, the political interests of the South Korean people have become diversified, leading to the emergence of a complex web of groups of people divided by different preferences on various social issues. The extent to which contemporary South Korea’s political process succeeds in responding to this change is the main concern of these two sections.
Section 2, in this regard, explores the political accommodation of the current South Korean Constitution and identifies key defining characteristics of performance among three main constitutional institutions, namely the National Assembly, the executive, and the judiciary. In Chapter 10, Won-Taek Kang argues that the current South Korean Constitution shows clear limitations by producing ‘imperial’ presidents as well as failing to represent the diversity of the contemporary South Korean society. He explains that the focus of the 1988 Constitution lay in re-establishing a fair, free, and direct presidential election system. Consequently, by following the 1962 version of the Constitution, the 1988 version left other issues untouched including human rights, economic liberalism, and institutional consistency. Based on this understanding, he claims that the current Constitution is inadequate to reflect the diversity of contemporary South Korean society.
Under the Constitution, the relationship between governing institutions has sometimes failed to produce the expected checks and balances in a presidential system. Byoung Kwon Sohn (Chapter 11) argues that the role of the National Assembly is still fairly limited, preventing the development of the so-called inter-party consultative system. Instead, the dominant role of the president and the executive branch in the legislative process often results in the atrophy of standing committees and quick, majoritarian decisions without proper deliberation. In contrast, Jongkon Lee (Chapter 12) finds that the strong bureaucratic power tradition has been weakened as the ability of the National Assembly to keep the executive in check has been strengthened. The slightly different evaluation on the relationship between the National Assembly and the executive in these two chapters may lead us to reach the understanding that South Korean society is still waiting for the development of an adequate representative role for the National Assembly, independent of the seemingly weakened power of legislative initiative for the executive. As for the judiciary, Dongwook Cha (Chapter 13) points out how recent relations between the executive and the National Assembly have been mediated by the Constitutional Court. South Korean society did not pay much attention to the role of this court in the early stages of democratisation. But, as the era of dominance by the president and the government has passed, the Constitutional Court is now facing unprecedented political and social pressures to resolve the conflicts between highly polarised political forces.
Section 3 examines the process of political representation and its substantial outcomes in South Korea. Sunghack Lim (Chapter 14) confirms the stable inter-party competition over the years leading to democratic consolidation in South Korea. While blaming regional factionalism, personality-based party organisation and organisational instability for the weak party system institutionalisation of South Korea, his
evaluation of South Korean parties is overall fairly positive. Lim characterises them as a fairly successful actors for democratic governance. Indeed, South Korean parties have frequently changed their labels and organisational structures. But if we make use of a one-dimensional ideological spectrum, the main liberal and conservative parties have remained as representatives of voters in their respective ideological positions. Nevertheless, ideological representation by each party does not imply a substantively successful representation. Kyungmee Park (Chapter 15) covers, in this regard, the level of political representation for different groups of people. In particular, she argues that women’s representation in South Korean society is still lower than the standard for other developed countries. Park also explains that representation for migrants, as well as the younger generation, still remains at a symbolic level. Thus, the stable existence of two main parties on each side of the ideological spectrum does not guarantee the avoidance of marginalisation of some social issues in South Korean society. Woojin Moon (Chapter 16), focusing on electoral competitions in South Korea, highlights how voters’ issue preferences can be weakly represented. He argues that the current mixedmember majoritarian electoral system in South Korea produces a weak proportionality between the vote and seat shares of political parties. In addition, the South–North confrontation tends to distort the programmatic mobilisation strategies of political parties in South Korea. Because of these characteristics, he argues that candidates’ campaigning strategies are more likely to concentrate on mobilising personal votes form their regional base.
Meanwhile, Han Soo Lee (Chapter 17) discusses the potential development of different types of campaign strategies. He argues that the recent advancement of online communication technologies is associated with significant changes in the campaign strategies of political parties in South Korea. Even though Lee cautions against concluding that there is a direct correlation between the use of new media and offline political participation, he analyses the possibility that online communication tools will play a significant role in the process of representing the diversity of South Korean society. While Lee shows the effect of communication technology developments, Seung-Jin Jang (Chapter 18) leads us to pay attention to the effect of diverse issues in the process of representation. He finds that issues such as gender and immigration have only recently begun to become politically significant and attract public attention. Likewise, only in recent years have welfare and redistribution become a prominent area of party competition. As he shows, there are emerging political coalitions among South Korean voters focusing on those issues. Thus, he expects that political competition in South Korea will be affected by the diversification in the type of issues receiving attention.
Overall, all authors studying the representation process in South Korean politics seem to agree that the country’s society no longer has a homogenous purpose as observed in the early period of democratisation. In response to heterogenous preferences, the development of political dynamics different from the early democratising period is required. And indeed, some of them are already taking hold in contemporary South Korean politics and society.
4. Civil Society, Culture, and Media
Sections 4 and 5 examine various aspects of South Korea’s civil society, culture, and media as they relate to the country’s politics. Section 4 focuses on the interplay between civil society and politics. Even though Henderson (1968) attributed the unstable politics of South Korea to a lack of intermediary civic organisations, the authors in this section show that economic development and democratisation have led to the tremendous growth of civil society. The authors concur that South Korean civil society initially grew out of the democratic movement against the authoritarian state before the 1987 transition. But they also show that the democratic consolidation of the 1990s dramatically facilitated its expansion and activism compared to the pre-democratic era. The two main reasons are that socio-economic modernisation equipped South Korean citizens with resources and opportunities to form civic organisations and interest groups, while political democratisation removed barriers to citizens’ associationism and activism in the political process.
The authors highlight that the unity of the democratic movement during the 1980s did not hold and gave a way to diversity and differentiation within civil society. In this context, economic interest groups, labour unions, civic reform organisations, and even new issue groups focusing on issues such as gender or minorities have formed and engaged in politics since the 1990s. In Chapter 19, Jin-Wook Shin demonstrates that civic associations and activism have blossomed not only due to the democratisation movement but also because of their own success. Along with the growth of civil society and activism, three notable changes have been observed in the macrostructure of South Korean social movement: the differentiation of social movements across independent issue areas, the decentralisation of communication and mobilisation structures as well as the ecosystem of social movements, and the ideological division of civil society intensifying competition between groups pursuing conflicting values and reform agendas. Moreover, citizens actively participate in non-profit organisations and politics in comparison with other democratic countries, which confirms that South Korean civil society is vibrant at both the individual and societal levels.
Along the same lines, Yoojin Lim and Yeonho Lee explain in Chapter 20 that the growth of interest groups is evident in four areas: labour unions, economic organisations, professional associations, and public interest groups. If these interest groups were controlled by government during the authoritarian past, they have departed from state influence and demanded their sectoral interests. And if interest groups showed the features of competitive pluralism before the 2010s, they have then headed towards a conflictual pluralism in which they directly clash, and representative organisations such as political parties remain weak.
Soonmee Kwon (Chapter 21) details the internal characteristics of South Korean labour unionism. Growing out of the Great Workers’ Struggle of 1987, labour unions in South Korea have faced a dilemma: they have been under pressure from globalisation
and market-friendly politics, while maintaining militant activism without official channels to communicate with political parties. Indeed, labour unions are internally divided at the ideological level and have failed to shift from enterprise unionism to industrial unionism. They have also failed to establish a working class differentiated from the classes represented by the liberal and conservative parties. Accordingly, the recent dualisation of the labour market has intensified the political marginalisation of labour unions, making militant unionism, including ‘sky protests’, an attractive strategy among union leaders.
Youngho Cho (Chapter 22) examines recent trends and the state of civic culture in South Korea, since the health of a democracy depends on what people think about it. Since the 1990s, public support for democracy has steadily eroded and openness to strongmen and military rule has increased in South Korea. It is notable that this downward trend continued even after the 2016–2017 Candlelight Uprising. The sluggish development of representative institutions has contributed to the steady decline in public support for democracy, causing worrisome signals for the future of South Korean democracy.
The authors in this section identify three general features of South Korean civil society. First of all, large-scale mass protests have continued as evidenced in the 2016–2017 Candlelight Uprising. Second, political polarisation within civil society has been intensifying in that labour organisations have maintained militaristic activism and various interest groups conflict outside of formal politics. Finally, representative institutions have been limited in terms of incorporating and integrating differentiated interests of civil society.
Section 5 examines the links between South Korea’s culture and media and the country’s politics, focusing on how traditional and new communication spaces and tools shape socio-political and politico-economic dynamics. The contributors to this section show that media indeed influences politics. But as media consumption patterns have changed, online media has become more central to politics compared to other types that played a bigger rule during the authoritarian era. Also, politicisation can affect media narratives as well. Thus, media sometimes plays the role of political actor rather than being a medium for objective information to allow informed citizens to form their own views. In any case, and broadly speaking, media and cultural expressions have also served their purpose of allowing for debate among different views.
In Chapter 23, Hyangjin Lee explains the role that cinema and television have played in critiquing South Korean politics, therefore shaping the views of voters and public opinion at large. In particular, cinema and television have been critical of government interventionism, a remnant of the authoritarian years. In the case of cinema, in addition, its popularity continues to make it an influential medium. As for television, its apt use of online communication has preserved its enduring relevance. Likewise, Dal Yong Jin explains in Chapter 24, that the internet and social media have shaped voting behaviour and, more broadly, the political conversation since the early 2000s. They have democratised this conversation by influencing political messaging and giving voice to new groups which found it difficult to be represented in traditional media. At the same time, the
dominance of a small number of internet portals and messaging apps give them a gatekeeper function in that they determine which ideas circulate.
In contrast, the role of the press in shaping public discourse has weakened as KiSung Kwak suggests in Chapter 25. The main reason is its partisanship and identification with either conservative or liberal ideas, which has sowed divisions in South Korea and means that those with a particular ideology will only read the press that conforms to their views. In the case of the press, Kwak explains how the legacy of decades of authoritarianism still affects political reporting and the relationship between the press and political parties. But as Namhee Lee (Chapter 26) explains, the situation is different for public intellectuals that used to rely on the press to influence the circulation of political ideas. Their role has not been diminished but rather transformed. Making use of new means of communication, public intellectuals continue to shape and participate—if not necessarily to lead—public debate. Furthermore, both socially conscious celebrities and experts in a particular field have emerged as new public intellectuals since the 2000s. Meanwhile, popular music plays a different role in politics. As John Lie (Chapter 27) shows, popular music was more political during the years of authoritarianism when it channelled the thirst for democracy. Since democratisation, however, it has become a paradigm of South Korean political economy and globalisation rather than a driver of domestic political conversation. Therefore, the political role of popular music has changed. Today, popular music in general and K-pop in particular supports the political goal of economic growth and globalisation that is central to the contemporary South Korean state.
Culture and media have a big impact on the politics of post-democratisation South Korea. They shape the political agenda, represent different points of view, and provide a communication channel for political parties, civil society, and other groups. Some culture and media organisations have become stronger as the years have gone by, while others have become weaker. But all of them play an important role, as is the case in comparable democracies across Asia and elsewhere.
5. Public Policy and the International Arena
Sections 6 and 7 examine the politics of South Korea’s public policy and international relations. Section 6 shows how bureaucratic government and public policy have changed in the post-developmental and democratic era. Before the 1987 transition, South Korea could be best described as an authoritarian developmental state with centralised government and minimal welfare programmes. When Park Chung-hee launched the developmental state including specific government structures in the 1960s, North Korea was more advanced and belligerent than South Korea (Greitens 2016). Thus, Park sought to avoid a reunification-first policy and direct conflict with North Korea, focusing instead
on boosting security and the developmental state via economic growth. The ultimate purpose was regime survival as well as winning the ‘competition’ against North Korea. This approach provided the necessary impetus for the development of both the state and the economy. The South Korean government was optimised for economic development and security. However, this developmental model became unsustainable and has had to change to respond to new demands emerging from the 1990s.
In Chapter 28, Huck-ju Kwon evaluates the democratic accountability of the South Korean government. Kwon argues that the political control of elected leaders from the national to the local levels has increased, politicising and overwhelming bureaucratic autonomy. Following democratisation, South Korean presidents have undertaken reforms to dismantle the policy regime of the developmental state and to reduce the number of initiatives coming out of the bureaucracy, eventually making performance management less autonomous and effective than before. Government reforms in South Korea need to create a balanced and accountable relationship between elected leaders and professional bureaucrats.
Jooha Lee (Chapter 29) identifies the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis as the critical juncture when South Korea departed from the legacy of developmental welfarism characterised by low government spending and strong emphasis on human capital investment. While the current welfarism of South Korea has become more inclusive by increasing its spending and focusing on vulnerable groups compared to the previous developmental welfarism, its social investment strategies still mix both protective and productive purposes. It is apparent that the dualisation between regular and non-regular work and addressing the aftermath of COVID-19 are two urgent tasks for South Korean welfarism.
When analysing the decentralisation of South Korea’s central government, Yooil Bae (Chapter 30) shows that institutional decentralisation has been enormous. However, the weak administrative and fiscal capabilities of local governments have led to frequent confrontation with the central government and a growing gap among them. Furthermore, dependency on fiscal transfers from the central government and shrinking local populations are expected to increase the burden of local governments and widen regional economic disparities, which may pose a threat to local as well as national democracy.
Meanwhile, Kyoung-sun Min (Chapter 31) divides corruption into two types: petty and grand. Min demonstrates that the democratisation and economic development of South Korea have dramatically reduced the petty corruption experienced by ordinary citizens and lower-class officials, but more efforts are needed to control grand corruption, especially linked to presidents. While democratisation and the use of internet technology explains a low level of petty corruption, the legacies of crony capitalism and prosecution power explain the persistence of grand corruption.
Overall, the old centralised, developmental, and authoritarian government of South Korea has been adapting to the pressures of democratisation, globalisation, decentralisation, and need for social protection. Recent governmental and political efforts have focused on institutional domains, but they are yet to create a balanced and reciprocal relationship between elected politicians and professional bureaucrats.
Section 7 examines South Korea’s foreign and defence policy since the transition to democracy. South Korea has become more ambitious, dynamic, and self-confident. It has emerged as a middle power, one whose history of democratic and economic development plus military upgrading has equipped it with a strong political narrative to underpin its foreign policy. But even though politics may not have a huge impact on the ultimate goals that South Korean policymakers would like to achieve (e.g. reunification with North Korea, a strong alliance with the United States, or promoting economic growth), liberals and conservatives do not always agree on the instruments to achieve them. Thus, domestic politics influence foreign policy insofar as changes in government can lead to the prioritisation of some specific tools of foreign policymaking over others.
In Chapter 32, Ramon Pacheco Pardo shows that foreign policy has remained relatively stable in terms of structures, goals, and available tools in spite of the level of political polarisation in South Korea. To a large extent, this reflects that South Korea is a middle power, which has both advantages and constraints. One of the key advantages is that South Korean politicians and policymakers agree on the range of issues that their country should be focusing on, thus providing continuity. When analysing South Korea’s security and defence policy, Sung-han Kim and Alex Soohoon Lee (Chapter 33) find that South Korea faces two key security dilemmas that underscore this stability in terms of structures and goals: the North Korean nuclear threat and US–China strategic competition. These dilemmas are decades old, which underscores the extent to which South Korean foreign policy is determined by developments outside its control. However, Kim and Lee caution, competing beliefs mean that South Korean policy choices have fluctuated between liberal and conservative administrations. This is the result of each camp having different beliefs about the best ways to promote South Korean national interests.
With regards to the economic dimension of foreign policy, Sohyun Zoe Lee explains in Chapter 34 that the overarching goal of promoting growth through foreign economic policy remains unchanged. This has been a cornerstone of South Korean foreign economic policy dating back decades, given the extent to which the country has benefited from global trade openness. But governments differ in terms of how to achieve this goal. And they also have different ideas about the role of the chaebol and other civil society groups in economic policymaking. If there is one area in which liberals and conservatives agree when it comes to foreign policy, it is in positing South Korea as a development model and an aid donor. Eun Mee Kim and Nancy Y. Kim (Chapter 35) explain that this is a cornerstone of South Korean foreign policy, given the extent to which South Korea benefited from external support when it was a developing country. And they argue that South Korea’s success story ultimately is the result of policy flexibility, a lesson that the country is trying to export.
When it comes to South Korean relations with third countries, three stand out: North Korea, the United States, and China. In Chapter 36, Young-kwan Yoon finds that South Korea’s policy towards North Korea has also been in flux because liberals and conservatives identify differently vis-à-vis Korea’s other half. The ultimate goal of reunification remains unchanged, regardless of South Korean domestic politics, and has been a staple of the country’s foreign policy since its foundation. But the means to achieve this
goal do not. This is the result of opposing views about North Korea’s nuclear programme and the regime’s stability. Similarly, Victor Cha and Katrin Katz (Chapter 37) show that South Korea’s liberals and conservatives agree on the need for a strong alliance with the United States. This has been a staple of South Korean foreign policy since the Korean War. However, liberals and conservatives differ in terms of how much autonomy South Korea should exercise within the alliance. In general, liberals believe that autonomy should take precedence over the alliance. For conservatives, in contrast, the alliance is an enabler of South Korean autonomy. In Chapter 38, Heung-kyu Kim assesses the relationship between South Korea and China. The two countries only normalised diplomatic relations in 1992, but, of course, Sino-Korean historical relations date back centuries. Kim explains that this proximity means that the gravitational pull of China inevitably affects South Korean foreign policy, particularly in an area marked by strategic competition between South Korea’s neighbour and its ally, the United States. In this context, South Korea has had to learn to carefully navigate relations between the two powers to avoid being affected by their bilateral competition.
All told, the politics of South Korea in relation to its presence in the international arena have evolved substantially since the country’s democratisation. As South Korea has become more developed and democratic, debates about how to pursue the country’s core foreign policy interests have grown. The goals may not change much regardless of who is in power, but the means to achieve them are affected by domestic politics.
6. South Korea’s Democracy
By critically evaluating the contemporary politics of South Korea in their areas of expertise, most of the contributors to this handbook point out that South Korean politics have been moving in the direction of introducing the principle of checks and balances over the South Korean presidential system. Different groups, including political parties and civil society, have developed diverse channels to make their voices heard. Strong state-led developmentalism has been replaced by a thriving market-driven economy with heterogenous demands. Instances and practices of international cooperation and mutual learning have eroded the unity of political elites, now divided into competing groups with different reference points behind their policy orientations.
Accordingly, both the vortex-like instability of Henderson (1968) and the static culture of Confucianism have limits in explaining the contemporary dynamic of South Korean politics. This is the case because South Korea has experienced social, economic, and demographic transitions over the past half-century and its democratic politics has accompanied—as well as enabled—those changes. The dynamics of contemporary South Korean politics have often followed from developments on civil society. The number of interest groups has expanded as a result of economic development, on the one hand, and the interplay between representative politics and a modernised society on the other.
In the literature analysing political development and democracy, there are two contrasting views. According to the modernisation paradigm of Seymour Lipset (1959), a stable democracy emerges as a consequence of socio-economic modernisation. Socio-economic modernisation empowers the middle class, breeds civil society with interest groups and civil organisations, and supports the accumulation of cultural capital supportive of democratic legitimacy. On the other hand, Huntington (1968) posited that socio-economic modernisation does not necessarily lead to democracy but tends to cause political instability because of the changes it brings. The reason behind Huntington’s claim is that the speed of socio-economic modernisation is normally faster than that of political development, and therefore (political) democracy is not likely to attain institutional stability in changing societies. Despite the academic debate between these two views, both approaches agree that South Korea is as an exemplary case of a country which has successfully achieved socio-economic modernisation and political democracy following a sequential path (Fukuyama 2014).
Taking mid-range perspectives rather than grand theories, this edited volume aims to provide an in-depth and accurate evaluation of South Korean contemporary politics as well as the evolution of its democracy as a system and as a practice. The volume explains and discusses their strengths and weaknesses, the areas in which there has been more change since the 1980s and the areas in which shifts have proceeded more slowly, and the reasons why South Korean politics and democracy have evolved in a particular way. It is our hope that readers of this volume gain a deeper understanding of how South Korea got to the point it is at today, appreciate the country’s remarkable evolution from the late 1980s onwards, and come up with their own analysis to debate the ways in which South Korean democracy might evolve in the future.
Bibliography
Anderson, B. (1991), Imagined Communities (New York: Verso).
Deuchler, M. (1995), The Confucian Transformation of Korea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Fukuyama, F. (2014), Political Order and Political Decay (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
Greitens, S. (2016), Dictators and Their Secret Police (New York: Cambridge University Press).
Henderson, G. (1968), Korea: The Politics of the Vortex (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Huntington, S. P. (1968), Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
Kim, S. (2014), Confucian Democracy in East Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press).
Kornhauser, W. (1959), The Politics of Mass Society (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press).
Lipset, S. (1959), ‘Some Social Requisites of Democracy’, American Political Science Review 53, 69–105.
Merton, R. K. (1968), Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: The Free Press).
Shin, D. C. (2012), Confucianism and Democratization in East Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press).
Chapter 2
The History of Korea, 1905– 1945
Hyung- Gu Lynn
1. Introduction
The period of 1905–1945 in modern Korean history has had a long-lasting and outsized impact on the public memory in Korea. Post-1945 political leaders such as Rhee Syngman, the first president of South Korea, and Kim Il-sung, the first leader of North Korea, mined the period as a source of political legitimacy and public appeal by invoking their anti-Japanese, pro-independence activities overseas during these years. School textbooks in both Koreas continually reinforce a binary narrative pitting Japanese colonial oppression against Korean resistance and independence movements, while legal and political issues stemming from the period have plangent resonance in bilateral relations between South Korea and Japan in the 2020s, despite the decades that have passed since liberation in 1945, and the fact that normalised diplomatic relations between the two countries were established in 1965 (Lynn 2000).
The dominant narrative in the scholarship, especially from 1945 to the mid-1980s, also focused on Japanese colonial oppression and the Korean struggle for national independence. While further documentation of independence movements and colonial atrocities remain essential areas of research, these have been supplemented by other approaches that have helped to generate additional depth, precision, and nuance. More specifically, historians have analysed the processes and the causes driving the formation or the expansion of modern Korean nationalism under the crucible of colonial rule; the intensification of fractures along the entire political spectrum; the socio-economic transformations and the emergence of a middle class during the 1930s; the implications of industrialisation, mobilisation, and militarisation that occurred from 1936 as lodestars for the array of economic planning and mobilisation, policies implemented in South Korea in the 1960s, the so-called developmental state; and the dissipation of monarchy as a sustainable form of government.
