Korea: Triumph amid turmoil

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 9, Issue 2, 1998, Pages

  Steinberg, David I ^a  

^a GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 18744432127     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jod.1998.0033     Document Type: Article

References (14)

1. The uprising itself was a product of han. The government charged that Kim Dae Jung had fomented it; in fact, Kim's arrest was simply the spark that set it off.
2. The Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (along with the political system under which it operated and retained power for many years) was the explicit model for the January 1990 formation of the Korean government's Democratic Liberal Party, which Kim Young Sam and Kim Jong Pil joined with the idea that the party could remain in power by alternating factional candidates for the single-term presidency.
3. This change was approved at the end of December by the National Assembly under legislation that allows anonymous individuals to buy government bonds. The goal was to entice hidden funds into public finance. It may, however, slow the drive against corruption (the real-name system exposed the corruption of former presidents Roh Tae Woo and Chun Doo Hwan) and reduce tax collections.
4. For the former, see Fareed Zakaria, "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy," Foreign Affairs 76 (November-December 1997): 22-43; for the latter, see David I. Steinberg, "Continuing Democratic Reform in the Republic of Korea: The Unfinished Symphony," in Larry Diamond, ed., Deepening Democracy in Korea (forthcoming).
5. For the former, see Fareed Zakaria, "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy," Foreign Affairs 76 (November-December 1997): 22-43; for the latter, see David I. Steinberg, "Continuing Democratic Reform in the Republic of Korea: The Unfinished Symphony," in Larry Diamond, ed., Deepening Democracy in Korea (forthcoming).
6. Only 20 percent of Koreans trusted political parties, while 23 percent trusted the National Assembly, 58 percent trusted the courts, and 77 percent trusted "most people." Richard Rose and Doh Chull Shin, "Discerning Qualities of Democracy in Korea and Post-Communist Countries" (paper presented at the Seventeenth World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Seoul, South Korea, August 1997).
7. President-elect Kim determined that he would install in the Blue House a type of "censorate" modeled on that of the Chosun Dynasty (1398-1910) to ensure that he would receive independent views concerning his own performance. Korea Herald (Seoul), 5 January 1998.
8. See David I. Steinberg, "Human Rights and Civil Society in Korea: The Influence of Orthodoxy and Ideology," Korea Journal 37 (Autumn 1997): 145-65.
9. It is significant that many urban areas traditionally have been in opposition camps, and that opposition legislators were elected only from those, areas until the mid-1980s. In rural regions, government control was far stronger through complete control over institutional credit; the setting of producer rice prices and the purchase of a significant percentage of the rice crop; the operation of the cooperatives that provided consumer goods in times of shortage; and surveillance.
10. Doh Chull Shin, "The Evolution of Popular Support for Democracy During the Kim Young Sam Government" (paper delivered at a conference on "Institutional Reform and Democratic Consolidation in Korea," Hoover Institution, Stanford, California, 8-9 January 1998). The data that follow are from that paper, except where noted. One should consider that Kim Young Sam assumed office in 1993 with the highest popular-approval rating of any president in polling history (90 to 95 percent) because his legitimacy could not be questioned. Yet as his administration faltered on a number of fronts and he was accused of being too "imperial" in style, his popularity plummeted, hitting a low of 5 to 10 percent in November 1997.
11. Currently in Korea there is a wave of nostalgia for General Park. His economic successes were notable, and he was widely regarded as personally abstemious, whereas today corruption is endemic and obvious. His wife was also admired. Forgotten in this euphoria are his destruction of civil liberties and the authoritarian regime that was designed to make him president for life. Ironically, this desire was fulfilled, for he ruled until his assassination.
12. For a number of similar conclusions, see Doh Chull Shin and Huoyan Shyu, "Public Opinion in New Democracies: Political Ambivalence in South Korea and Taiwan," Journal of Democracy 8 (July 1977): 109-24.
13. Shin, "Evolution of Popular Support for Democracy During the Kim Young Sam Government." Shin finds that in Korea, support for democracy in theory is essentially comparable to that in many European countries, but more pronounced than in Brazil, Chile, Poland, and Russia.
14. Doh Chull Shin and Richard Rose, "Koreans Evaluate Democracy: A New Korean Barometer Survey" (University of Strathclyde Studies in Public Policy No. 292, Glasgow, 1997), 10-11.