The worrying democratic erosions in South Korea | Hacker News Reader

The worrying democratic erosions in South Korea

newyorker.com

44 pointsl3mure40 comments

Perhaps there is a better archive link:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230930133128/https://www.newyo...

They were never truly democratic in the first place, I don't see what the problem is. The strategic value of their country lies primarily in their geographic location and the tech oligopolies (similarly for Japan, Japan's democracy story is even more sordid).

This. Although you are downvoted but that's it.

"Strategic value" is hardly the only thing that matters for the welfare of a country -- actually it sounds more like an outsider's perspective on how a country can be useful for some other people. Also, it is totally false that Korea (or Japan) was never "truly democratic". Sure, they've had their issues and continue to, but that's why it is important that they keep moving in the right direction. This has actually been a very common path for lots of countries around the world to have troubled democracies and gradually improve but not without some hiccups.

Look at the opening paragraphs, the author of the article clearly views South Korea from a strategic lens first and foremost. It's the dominoes theory all over again.

There are very few/no "true democracies" in the world. Even the USA is not a "true democracy" because a presidential candidate can win the majority vote but still lose the election.

But there are a lot of governments with democratic elements integrated into them, including USA, Japan, South Korea.

No, they are a functioning liberal democratic republic. Irrespective of their geopolitics. They managed to impeach and jail a sitting president.

I won’t claim to know the details of this specific case but removing a leader from power and imprisoning them isn’t unique to liberal democracies. I wouldn’t say that specific event is proof of a functioning liberal democracy without a lot of qualifiers on the circumstances and methods.

Can you point to an instance of a non liberal democratic top leader being removed from power on account of their crimes within the established legal framework

“Within the legal framework” is one of those qualifiers I mentioned. Like I said, I’m not familiar with the details in the SK case.

It just seems unrelated to the concept, frankly. I'd imagine if you wanted to measure democracy you'd have to measure actual representation somehow. This is at best measuring a proxy of a proxy of representation. I find the conflation of "liberal democracy" and "rule of law" to be pretty disturbing.

"LIBERAL democracy" requires "rule of law".

She was removed by the legislative and the judiciary branches according to the constitutional procedure. Her removal was well justified. The relevant qualifiers were present, thus the impeachment is relevant to the discussion and rebuffs the frivolous claim I was replying to.

>They were never truly democratic in the first place, I don't see what the problem is.

I would say they should become more democratic, not less. Democracy itself is a value and a scale of degree and countries becoming more democratic usually correlates with other things people value (various freedoms and rights being respected, happiness and quality of life, and other things).

>They were never truly democratic in the first place

[citation needed]. What does 'truly democratic' even mean anyway?

>Japan's democracy story is even more sordid)

How so?

> Politics in Japan in the post-war period has largely been dominated by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been in power almost continuously since its foundation in 1955, a phenomenon known as the 1955 System. Of the 31 prime ministers since the end of the country's occupation, 24 as well as the longest serving ones have been members of the LDP.[4] Consequently, Japan has been described as a de facto one-party state.[5]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Japan

Democracy is dying worldwide.[1][2]

- Russia had real elections for a while, but got rid of term limits and now seems to have a president for life.

- China now has a premier for life.

- Israel seems to now have a premier for life. (15 years and counting, despite some short gaps)

- The US has Trump.

- India has become an "electoral autocracy".

A common factor is dysfunctional legislatures/parliaments. This leads to the executive taking over more legislative power. Then a "strongman" emerges. Then the legislative branch becomes irrelevant.

It's also a common factor that the current crop of autocratic national leaders are under-performers. There's not an Eisenhower, a Ben-Gurion, a de Gaulle or an Ataturk in the bunch. Let alone a Roosevelt or a Churchill.

[1] https://freedomhouse.org/issues/democracies-decline

[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/half-worlds-democracies-declin...

Core tenet of Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation (any guesses as to their leanings?)

> The plan would perform a quick takeover of the entire U.S. federal government under a maximalist version of the unitary executive theory – a theory proposing the president of the United States has absolute power of the executive branch – upon inauguration.

("Tenet", not "tenant". A core tenant is the big store in a mall.)

Thank you

Can you explain the Trump bit more?

He was essentially democratically elected, served 4 years, and is now running in democratic elections again.

He tried to overturn and end democracy. It was kind of a big deal. Many in jail now. Many more soon to follow including him.

There was no serious threat to democracy during January 6, nor was anyone seriously planning a coup (as opposed to Trump perhaps delusionally thinking he had won). January 6 is basically the Reichstag Fire of our time, but with the Democratic Party playing the role of the ruling party using a few miscreants as an excuse to persecute their political opponents.

There appears to have been a very serious plan to stop the counting by removing VP Pence from the scene. This would have left the election uncertified, and then various alternative panels of “fake electors” would have emerged to challenge the count. There was even a plan hatched within the political DoD leadership to declare marshal law and put the military on the streets to violently crush the ensuing protests. This has all been reported on and a few Google searches will turn up all the citations you apparently missed.

And there's evidence that Trump directly orchestrated this alleged plan?

The guy who sent the mob to the capital to start the whole conspiracy in action?? Are you being glib? Yeah, there's evidence. Maybe look in to the court documents for the 90+ felonies he's been charged with? Or idk, anything he has said about it? You have to be willfully sticking your head in the sand at this point or one of the cult members. Hope it's the former.

Stochastic terrorism. Please don't be an apologist. I like democracy.

This level of brainwashing is flabbergasting…

January 6th or not, the very fact that Trump intentionally persistently spread misinformation to delegitimise an election he lost is a clear and direct attack on the central pillar of democracy.

The election was not stolen. He knew. He lied and used his media reach to convince tens of millions of people that the election was fraudulent when it wasn't.

What more do you want?!

What do you think about attempts to overturn Trump's electoral win back in 2016? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_electors_in_the_2016... On December 14, the Unite For America campaign released a video[36] published on YouTube and other media addressed directly to Republican electors urging that each of them individually, plus 36 of their colleagues (at least 37 Republican electors in total), vote for a Republican other than Donald Trump for President. The video featured numerous public figures,[37] including Debra Messing, Martin Sheen, and Bob Odenkirk, urging Republican electors to prevent a Trump presidency, expressing several times the message: "I'm not asking you to vote for Hillary Clinton". In electing an alternative Republican, the featured speakers ask the elector to become an "American hero" by using the elector's constitutional "authority" to give "service and patriotism to the American people" through a vote of "conscience."[36] It was kind of a big deal https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/michael-moore-appeals-gop-el...

Is that a serious question?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Kavanaugh_assassination_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shootin...

And in between refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost the election

Not very democratic

https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-virus-outbreak-voti...

Financial sector and banks are doing well world wide.

What is "electoral autocracy"? You mean "democracy" where parties actually deliver what people voted for?

I want to plug this comment because it's on to something I've maintained in my own discussions on US politics:

"A common factor is dysfunctional legislatures/parliaments"

Yes. In the USA Congress is by far the most stuck on stupid federal branch. Fixing it by having a bombastic moron in the wrong branch (Trump) didn't help. It was an attempt to fill a power vacuum of congressional leaders that don't who have no institutional credibility because there is no leadership credibility.

All the serious unresolved domestic problems:

- debt

- gun laws

- federal legislation on abortion

- tax fairness

- border control and coherent immigration policy

- lack of prohibitions on various forms of lobbying and trading

- rollback of dod frank and some other regulations which may need fixing

Are all about Congress.

Like a sick company where the employees and management whine and complain about the other while customers are irked, there's presently no statesman (states woman) to moderate.

In this power vacuum the extreme right morw so and extreme left less so are in the ascendancy.

The recenr departure from a more normal legislative branch is newt gringrich during Clinton

It’s not a coincidence that autocratic leaders underperform, it’s baked into the cake. If you can’t replace a leader who performs poorly, then you're going to perform badly across various measures. A few autocrats can buck this trend in the short term but very few can maintain it for the long term, even if leaders are replaced with younger leaders cut from the same cloth. The fact that most first-world nations are liberal democracies might be a wild coincidence, but it’s much more likely that the system works better than the alternative.

In some sense that’s comforting, since autocracy is self-correcting. In the other hand, the USSR maintained power for over seven decades. Self-correction can be too slow to help most people.

The US elected Trump, then voted him out of office. This is democracy.

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