South Korea's Democracy Saved Itself (2024)
carnegieendowment.org
carnegieendowment.org
For example, martial law decree no. 1 said "Activities of national assembly, local assemblies, political parties, and all political activities such as political association, assembly, demonstration are hereby forbidden". Decree was widely published and it is a strong evidence that Yoon intended to violate the constitution and disable the legislative branch. Yoon is now claiming "it was copy and pasted from old authoritarian martial law decrees by mistake". No, really. It doesn't make any sense by itself, but moreover, this can't possibly be the case because South Korean local rule was introduced after democratic transition so no mention of "local assemblies" is possible in old decrees. I mean, lying is pretty difficult, reality has surprising details...
Pretty much every elected legislature ever uses this excuse and gets away with it again and again and again at each election cycle. They will fight tooth and nail to prevent a precedent to the tune of "it's your job to know" even if the precedent is against the executive because even that is too close for comfort.
"Sec. 4. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or" [2]
Or all the generic legal documents that say "void where prohibited by law" and etc. In general, writing a document that complies with the law seems to be not a requirement.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_executive_orders_in_...
[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20250121003847/https://www.white...
In this case, seems pretty clear cut though.
Sounds like a standard "democratic leader" these days.
The sheer contempt the older generation of Korean politicians have to democratic norms is disheartening but sadly not surprising.
While all countries show hallmarks of gerontocracy, I feel it's much more stark in South Korea given how rapidly SK shifted from developing to developed.
Hopefully the younger generation of Koreans can finally take the mantle of power, but I'm pessimistic about it - at best it'd be scions from monied families that have done well since the Park era if not all the way to the Japanese era.
> The democracy movement isn’t just history but is also actively taught in schools as part of national identity.
Education is the beginning. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." [1]
> Conservative leaders now have to choose between democratic principles and party loyalty.
To choose party (or any other) loyalty over democratic principles and the constitution is treason. For any voters to support such a party implies a deep failure to instill democratic principles and knowledge of history.
[1] _ https://www.monticello.org/exhibits-events/blog/eternal-vigi...
Yet we have small ultra orthodox Christian party in parliament who take a literal interpretation of their Bible. Amusingly they swear allegiance to said constitution on the Bible...
The high court has repeatedly over the last 150 years ruled that the constitution> all gods and religions. I suppose one could take a principled view that religious folk commit treason but honestly they're pretty harmless really.
The Dutch do many things better. ^_^
> one could take a principled view that religious folk commit treason but honestly they're pretty harmless really.
I agree that it is usually so... until they start making public policy.
Being loyal to one's party is something they all do (except for a handful of people who may very well be turncoats). You can't reasonably interpret hiring "loyalists" to positions that you have every legal right to fill as anti-democracy, in general, because everyone does it. You certainly wouldn't expect someone to tolerate disloyal and disobedient subordinates if they had the choice, would you? There needs to be some discretion but many jobs are promised to supporters long before any election.
The good news is every year things improve by a huge %. Younger Koreans are more and more honest, reasonable, kind-hearted and selfless.
Just give it another generation or two.
[1]:https://www.populationpyramid.net/republic-of-korea/2023/
I guess unique challenges will call for unique solutions. Maybe 50% of the population of 2100 will be robots or something and we will be living in Star Wars.
A Gulf-style exploitative guest workers program with migrants from Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Nepal, etc doing (literal) shit jobs.
This is already the norm in Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, and similar abuses to those that happen in the Gulf happen as well, but just don't get reported in English language media.
It's ironic because Koreans used to be bottom tier guest workers in Saudi and Gulf back in the 1980s and up to the 2000s
They are better than they were 10 years ago, but the bottom half of society still earns peanuts.
This is the same reason why you still see Chinese migrant workers in Korea and Japan as well, like the 20 that died when that battery factory in SK burnt down a couple months ago [0]
The brutal reality is that GDP growth doesn't fully equate to growth in developmental standards. As long as a janitor in a developed country can earn more than a college graduate in a developing country, the arbitrage will continue.
For example, a specialist doctor (extremely selective - you only get 1 chance to apply) in Vietnam who doesn't specialize in something plastic surgery adjacent will end up only earning around $1,000-$1,500 a month in Saigon working 60 hour weeks with only 1 day off. That's why my SO left for the US. Yet she was still better off than most Vietnamese - who would be working 70-80 hours earning maybe $100-$300/mo at most in a factory, running a stall, or working in the service industry.
At the end of the day, the median household income in all the countries I listed remain below the $500/mo mark, so there is and will remain a reservoir of desperate people for the foreseeable future.
[0] - https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-lithium-battery-facto...
What? Corruption would be a drag on economic growth, not a boost to it...
Abstract: Several cross-country studies have found that corruption is detrimental to economic growth, but the
findings are not universally robust. We utilize the economic freedom index to examine if corruption can facilitate
growth by allowing entrepreneurs to avoid inefficient policies and regulations when economic freedom is limited.
Using regression analysis, we find that corruption is growth enhancing when economic freedom is most limited but
the beneficial impact of corruption decreases as economic freedom increases. Not all areas of economic freedom
affect the corruption-growth relationship equally. In particular, we find that when we analyze individual areas of
economic freedom the beneficial effect of corruption disappears most quickly when the size of government and the
extent of regulation decrease.
And now that it is prosperous and the rising tide has lifted all ships, it'll be a few more generations before they can largely clean up the corruption and nepotism that has been along for the ride.
Until they go extinct?
Chaebols are very strong in Korea, but that undermines the relative strength of the (commissioned) Military and the Prosecutor's office in Korean society.
Both of these organizations are very traditional and conservative in mindset, but also have extremely tight and cliquish behaviors, and will tend to rally around someone who is a member of the "in-group".
And this is why Yoon has survived for so long, because significant portions of the political and quasi-civil society supported and would have enabled his attempted coup.
Meanwhile parliamentary systems have a much stronger track record imo.
I remember seeing Americans cheering when the president got impeached, going on about how "this is how you do it in a democracy", even though there's a pretty decent chance that the next guy or the guy after him will just pardon him.
> A fully functioning UN Command is at the top of the chain of command of all forces in South Korea, including the U.S. forces and the entire South Korean military...
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea#United_States_cont...
Despite the headline, it would seem fair to claim that the US is acting as an anchor here to the South Korean government.
I wouldn't suggest there is anything improper here since the South Korean army is around half a million strong and can do what it wants, but in the event of a coup I imagine the US would be playing a significant deciding factor. How the military moves is what ultimately matters in an uprising, particularly the opinions of the top generals.
Yes, but on which side?
That's the joke. US consistently supported SK coup(er)s (there's been several) as long as the couper is anti-communists / aligned with US geopolitical interests. The last two in late 70s were post Combined Forces Command, and including this one, with capacity of US intelligence, it's hard to rationalize US did not know what was going to happen.
The korean war veterans must have felt so proud..
You can argue if what Yoon did was illegal or not, but it was close enough to legal that the military obeyed his orders.
It's just out of a strike of luck that the martial law was retired.
That part of the constitution seems ludicrous to me, it means their democracy is in constant danger; it's amazing that both parties haven't prioritized fixing it.
Without that approval the best you're looking at (from his perspective) is mass unrest which an opportunistic nation like their neighbor could foment, support, and exploit.
Oh and has send thousands of its citizens to die in Ukraine.
When the USSR collapsed in the 90s, they no longer had any source for oil owing to sanctions. Their farming was thus severely impaired, and starvation was the predictable result.
We then post facto gave them emergency aid, likely with the idea of turning the people against their government and to the people starving them for geopolitics. Shockingly, it didn't work.
Their deepening relationship with Russia is mostly just a return to the past.
I think this is yet another example of how sanctions are quite a useless tool. If we'd straight up gone for the carrot (perhaps simply trading oil for arms at fair market rates) instead of waiting to starve people first, North Korea could very possibly be a friendly nation today.
Of course this sounds absurd only because most people don't realize South Korea was also under brutal dictatorships for most of its life since the Korean War (their first democratic election was in 1987) - big difference is those dictatorships were backed by the West and allowed to engage in more normal trade and development.
Realpolitik is far dirtier (and often painfully myopic) than most realize. I'd love to read a textbook about current times from a few hundred years from now...
We require more minerals…
1. Cut communications;
2. Make sure the troops you send to capture critical objectives are hardcore loyalists (or at least paid exceedingly well).
Presidents may be impeached, removed from office, or even die, but the system will never fail.
Unless the people themselves want to give up on democracy and… oh, I don't know, let's pick a random example out of thin air… storm government buildings to stop the process to keep their desired leader in power.
We all believe things that are poorly-supported by facts, possibly serving an agenda we don't understand, and are clearly stupid when viewed rationally and with better information.
I will not defend their actions, but I have some compassion for the well-meaning dupes, and I wish the legal process could neuter their manipulator-perpetrators.
South Korea is an oligarchic democracy, and, as the paper points out, has developed deep political divisions between the left- and the right- in its society.
The deposed South Korean President was a favourite of the Biden administration ( https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2022/07/yoon-suk-yeol-i... ) because of his pro-western and pro-business values and his political willingness to militarily commit to western / US foreign policies against China and Russia. (He is the first South Korean President to attend a NATO summit, has been public about his desire that South Korea be a part of an "Asian NATO" - Quad + Jarokus + AUKUS - supported sanctions against Russia and has even supplied Ukraine with the artillery they badly needed).
Some of Biden's and Yoon's foreign policies seem to have backfired on South Korea as North Korea's near-total alienation, that previous US and South Korean administration had achieved, to economically and military weaken it, is now over. (Russia and North Korea have signed a new political and military alliance, committed to help each other if the other is attacked and, North Korean troops will not only get upgraded armaments from Russia but are also getting battle trained in real warfare conditions in the Russia-Ukraine war). Many South Koreans are not thrilled about this, because the most serious and imminent threat for South Korea has always been from the North Koreans. While many South Koreans understand that a military alliance with the US means that they cannot disregard US foreign policy concerns, many in the left- are concerned that there was still enough room to manoeuvre to not aggravate both China and Russia so much that they are now openly hostile against South Korea too.
I believe this was one of the underlying tension between the Yoon's administration and the opposition - instead of trying to create a democratic political consensus in South Korea about his policies, he suddenly decided to deal with valid criticism about his domestic and foreign policies by attacking the opposition as “pro-North anti-state forces”. (This was stupid as even though latent anti-war sentiment amongst the South Korean working class is high, the left-leaning opposition Democratic Party are also inclined to the idea of joining the US lead anti-China military alliance and a consensus on foreign policies atleast was very much possible.)
His political bungling and attempt to tarnish the opposition as North Korean stooge now means forming political consensus will be now more difficult and further polarise South Korean polity, thus allowing Russia, China and the US to interfere more in their political affairs.
I fear democracy in South Korea is still under threat, just it is in many other parts of the world facing similar political polarisation.