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The masses who gathered together to commemorate the liberation.(1945, ⓒ Lee Kyung-mo)
struggle for the institutional democratization of the state. By the
same token, the history of democratization in Korea should be
seen as a macro-historical process that unfolded subsequent to
national liberation, was characterized by reciprocal dynamics,
and in which a wider range of movements coexisted and
interacted with each other for the attainment of‘socio-
economic democracy’
,‘producer-oriented democracy’
, or
‘democracy in the life-world’
.
The Korean experience constitutes a veritable treasure
house for theorization and inspiration for alternative
perspectives on democracy; indeed, the democratization
movement in Korea has attracted much attention from around
the world for its resilience and militancy, and it has influenced
similar movements in other countries. At a time of on-going
transition, a need is also felt to reflect the significance of
democratization in Korea in the context of the global history of
democratization and, from that position, examine the
alternatives for future progress.
This study will first consider the‘state-building’period of
1945~1953; i.e. from the moment of liberation from colonial rule
to the signing of the armistice at the end of the Korean War, in
50
the context of the consolidation of a cold war, division-defined,
anti-communist system. It will then explain the course of
democratization in the period immediately following; paying
particular regard to the main actors and their objectives. The
trajectory of democratization in Korea is, therefore, divided into
three periods: the first of which extends from the
commencement of the series of authoritarian dictatorships in the
post-Korean War period to the‘Gwangju Democratic Uprising in
1980. The second period is from May 1980 to June 1987, the time
of the‘June Struggle for Democracy’
, and the third is from June
1987 to the inauguration of President Roh Moo-hyun’
s
administration in 2002.
2 From Liberation to Division of the
Korean Peninsula
52
human casualties and the devastation of almost the entire
territory, had its roots in this short‘liberation period’between
1945 and 1950. It was, in effect, the culmination, the fusion, and
the explosion of most of the socio-political conflicts and
contradictions that characterized the circumstance of two
separate systems attempting to exist in what had so recently
been one country. In Korea, the direct experience of such a war
made it possible to utilize the ideology of anti-communism as a
hegemonic tool for mobilizing passive popular consensus; a
mechanism for inculcating the politics of fear. This, in turn,
rendered it possible for the institutions of the Republic of Korea
to reiterate constantly the powerfully emotive concepts of anti-
communism and national security as ostensibly indisputable
grounds for political legitimacy.
Since the Korean War came to an end by armistice1, it
was almost inevitable that a politically and ideologically
asymmetric structure, biased towards the extreme right wing,
would develop in Korea. It became an institutionalized construct
whose salient features were based upon the consolidation of the
cold war ethos, the raft of implications stemming from the
physical division of the peninsula, and an anti-communist
imperative so extreme that every member of society was
required to exercise a mechanism of anti-communist self-
censorship. In other words, the particular experience of the civil
war was converted into an individualistic, internalized, pseudo-
consensus dominated by the notion of‘anti-communism for
security’which became the defining characteristic of social
54
character of a‘right wing society without resistance’
. In the
process, the ability of civil society to restrain the state weakened
markedly and the use of violence by agencies of the state
became extensive. Justified by its‘anti-communism for security’
mantra, Korea had become a national security state, and
terrorism was exercised widely by the First Republic
administration led by Rhee Syng-man. It should be noted that
the huge ruling apparatus that had grown during the period of
colonial rule was further reinforced during the Korean War, and
was then able to blend seamlessly into the institutional structure
of the security state. At the core of the coercive power of the
security state were an enlarged police force and army, while
normal political processes such as party politics and
parliamentary politics inevitably atrophied under the security-
oriented dictatorship.
In the Rhee Syng-man regime all power was
concentrated in the hands of one person, the president. As he
assumed the authority of all administrative power and was
located above all parliamentary restraint, his influence became
privatized and personified. Under Rhee’
s rule, political
institutions, including the Constitution, remained democratic in
shape, but the actual practices were conducted in an
authoritarian fashion, resulting in a strange and unstable
construct of democracy as the institutional framework and
authoritarianism in all practical applications. Liberal democracy,
the expressed prime objective of the state, became the disguise
of a philosophy that destroyed democracy and individual freedom
56
Progressive Party, led by Jo Bong-am, and the April 19
Revolution (see below). The Progressive Party emerged after the
war and began to threaten the conservative political framework
put in place by the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party, by
advocating policies under the banner of peaceful reunification
and the realiszation of rights and interests of victimized people.
The Progressive Party appealed to the public by pursuing a third
line, detached from both the capitalist system of the South and
the socialist system of the North. In the presidential election of
1956, the Progressive Party proved its eponymous potential in
the legitimate political space by securing an astounding 2.16
million votes. However, this success alarmed the established
conservative political forces, which eventually initiated a police
round-up of all Progressive Party cadres, the cancellation of the
party registration and, finally, the indictment of its leader, Jo
Bong-am, on a charge of espionage on behalf of North Korea.
At his trial, Jo was sentenced to death, and was thus effectively
removed from the political scene. This incident clearly
demonstrated and reaffirmed, by dint of the tacit approval of
the opposition party and the silent majority, the potency of the
anti-communist ethic and the extent to which it could instil fear
in the minds of political opponents and the wider population and,
in so doing, gain their acquiescence. It is a salutary reflection of
the entire political landscape of the time.
Repercussions from the political backwardness prevalent
during the Rhee Syng-man regime’
s First Republic burst to the
surface in the general election on March 15, 1960. An
58
coup was characterised, on the one hand, by features of a
security-oriented dictatorial rule inherited from the Rhee Syng-
man era and translated into a‘military dictatorship’ . On the
other hand, it was a regime which revised the old, negative,
anti-communist objectives of the state, and combined them with
a more positive imperative for‘modernization’through state-led
economic development plans. In effect, this approach opened up
a‘developmental era’in which a new national mobilization was
possible; and which led to the defining of the regime as a
‘developmental dictatorship.’It was in this period that the
tension between dictatorship and democracy burgeoned, as
diverse conflicts and confrontations were created by the rapid
Park Chung-hee and coup d'etat ′ leading figures watching a street parade by the Military Academy cadets
supporting the military coup. (1960, ⓒ Kim Chun-kil)
60
laws, has its roots in the same background of public acceptance
and silence.
The climax of Park Chung-hee’
s dictatorial rule was the
declaration of the Yushin (revitalizing reform) Constitution and
the imposition of the Yushin regime in October 1972. The Yushin
regime can only be described as a historical crime committed by
Park and his acolytes, and was a manifestation of their greed
for power. In fact, it was the third coup engineered by Park in
his efforts to suffocate democracy; following the May military
coup of 1961, and the Constitutional‘coup in office’of 1969
which enabled him to serve for a previously prohibited third
term.
In terms of power structure, the main feature of the
Yushin regime was the overt concentration of all power in the
President’
s hands and the concomitant dismantling of all
institutional arrangements that were designed to prevent such a
circumstance. The process was presented to the populace as
‘democracy the Korean way’
. Under the provisions of the Yushin
regime, South Korea was a republic in name only. In reality, the
extent of the power wielded by the President alone, with virtually
no conventional checks and balances in place, was comparable
to that of an absolute monarch. Although the Yushin
Constitution ostensibly prescribed democratic parliamentary
procedures, which in normal circumstances would serve the
principles of division, the mutual constraint of power, and the
politics of dialogue and compromise, any attempts by the
populace to express political freedoms and the rights of
2 The practice of courts routinely to award the sentence demanded by the state
prosecutors in the initial indictment rather than use judicial discretion.
mechanisms to justify the role of the regime in maintaining
national security. In the Park Chung-hee system of governance,
development goals such as the Saemaul (new village) Movement3,
the 10 billion dollar export plan, the Great Leap of the 1970s,
and the Great Ambition of the 1980s4 were symbols of
hegemonic domination, while Presidential Emergency Decrees,
Garrison Decrees, and the imposition of Martial Law were
symbols of the state oppression that ran in parallel.
During the Park era, a state of martial law was declared
on three occasions, covering 31 months in all. In addition,
Garrison Decrees were imposed three times, lasting for five
months altogether, and Emergency Decrees nine times, for a
total of 69 months. It can only be assumed that it did not
appear abnormal to Park and his followers that for almost half
of the 18 years in which he was in power the Korean people
were subjected to the imposition of harsh and repressive
‘emergency’legislation.
Among the legislative instruments, Emergency Decree No.
9, issued on May 13, 1975, was the severest, and effectively
placed the entire nation in a wartime state of alert. In order to
avoid violation of any of the provisions in this decree, citizens
62
had to conduct themselves almost like imbeciles, pretending not
to hear anything of a
‘sensitive’
nature, or say anything that
could possibly be construed as seditious or inflammatory. In the
‘age of repression,terror, and death’that Park Chung-hee had
created, virtually anything could be interpreted as‘sensitive’
,
‘seditious’
, or‘inflammatory’
.
3 The rural community development campaign initiated and led by Park Chung-hee in
the 1970s. In rural areas it was aimed mainly at the modernization of rural life and
economy, with programmes ranging from cultural reform to income enhancement
guidance. In the cities it was more akin to a government-led mobilization, often
accompanied by state indoctrination.
4 Themes of Park Chung-hee’ s speeches.
(ii) Movement politics and the end of Park’
s rule
5 The most symbolic demonstration led by university students during the June 3 Struggle.
6 A series of demonstrations from March to June 1964 protesting against the first ROK-
Japan treaty meeting. By signing an agreement of war reparation with Japan, the Park
regime sought a diplomatic breakthrough accompanied by a substantial aid package;
resources essential for continued economic growth in Korea. The regime brought the
public protest to an end on 3 June 1964 by declaring a state of martial law and
arresting 348 protest leaders.
tensions multiplied and, when young woman workers at the YH
company Trade Union went on strike in 1979 demanding basic
rights7, and anti-government riots broke out in the cities of
Busan and Masan8, the ruling bloc split over how to handle the
crisis. This triggered the assassination of Park Chung-hee on 26
October 1979 and, in turn, the collapse of the Yushin regime.
With respect to the democratization movement of this
period, two features stand out. First, until the time of the
Gwangju Democratic Uprising in May 1980 (see below) the
movement had unfolded with a fundamental adherence to
liberalism, and had striven towards the common goals of
toppling the military dictatorship and restoring political
democracy. As a consequence, it was frequently presented in
terms designed for a broad and diverse appeal; for example, the
‘One Million Appeal for Constitutional Revision’(1973) and the
‘March 1st Declaration for Democracy and National Salvation’
(1976). This characteristic is related to the leading actors in the
movement, who could not be regarded as‘social forces’rooted
in the working class, but who were, in the main, liberal-minded
‘dissident’intellectuals and students, who usually organised
themselves within universities and religious institutions. It is
66
uncommon, and certainly unprecedented in other parts of the
world, for a strong collective resistance to be formed from
scattered and sporadic actions occurring mostly in universities
and religious institutions.
Second, concurrently there was an active pro-democracy
movement consisting of workers, farmers, and the urban poor;
all of whom were striving for freedom from want and other
7 A sit-in strike in August 1979 staged by trade union members of the YH Trading
Company, a wig manufacturer. The strike was held inside the headquarters of the main
opposition party. Workers demanded guarantees of basic rights after the company
decided to close down the business.
8 Wide-spread protests in the cities of Pusan and Masan in October 1979 against the
Park regime.
objectives encapsulated in
social and economic
democracy. This element
found expression in the
Gwangju Housing Complex
Riot9 in 1971, which was the
largest collective action by
the urban poor since
Yi So-sun sobbing in sorrow with her son's
portrait at the funeral ceremony of worker Chun liberation, and
Tae-il. (1970)
demonstrations by farmers,
such as the Ham-pyong
Protest for Compensation
for Sweet Potatoes10 in 1976,
and the farmers’
cooperatives democratization movement11. The self-immolation of
9 Riot staged by the urban poor who had been forcibly evicted from various squatter
areas in Seoul by the city authority and relocated in sub-human living conditions in
the Gwangju area.
10 Wide-spread protest by farmers against the government’ s agricultural policies in 1976,
triggered by the government’ s failure to purchase the promised amount of sweet
potatoes from the growers.
11 Most farmers’cooperatives were ineffective until voluntary farmers’groups staged this
campaign in the 1980s. It began with the demand to introduce direct elections for
cooperative leadership.
the worker’
s rights struggle at the Han-gook Textiles Company,
and the activities of the YH Union (see above). Chun Tae-il’
s
action not only signalled the start of the democratic labor
movement, but also resulted in a far deeper awareness of social
reality on the parts of leading figures in the pro-democracy and
other progressive social movements.
His death forced liberal movement forces to reflect upon
their existing minimalist democratic agendas, and incorporate
more concrete issues such as the right to livelihood of workers,
the urban poor, and other grassroots disadvantaged. Chun’
s
action also became the seed for a new social alliance, between
workers and students, as well as a pivotal moment after which
intellectuals became engaged in the industrial sectors, and
religious groups expanded into industrial mission work.
68
A. Multiple Coup d’′ and the May 18
etat
Gwangju People’
s Struggle
68
A. Multiple Coup d’′ and the May 18
etat
Gwangju People’
s Struggle
longest recorded coup in the world) and filled the void left by the
late Park Chung-hee. The group was led by Generals Chun
70
Republic that actually produced it and, from the perspective of
the movement agency, the central motive force came from the
collective memory of the Gwangju massacre in May 1980 and the
deep rage it generated.
The Gwangju carnage was a critical moment for self-
reflection on the parts of all those involved in the
democratization movement. First and foremost it generated an
awareness that the movement thus far had not developed into a
force sufficient to transform either the state or the power
system within it. In other words, the realization dawned that
while the movement had expressed conscientious and moral
criticism of oppressive political power and economic inequality, it
had lacked both the intent and a fully coherent formula for
changing the social structure and creating an alternative system.
Those involved then came to reflect upon the movement’
s lack
of leadership of the calibre necessary to convert the energy and
dynamics manifested in spontaneous activities at the grassroots
into a system-transforming movement. The people’
s struggle in
Gwangju was the epitome of revolutionary upheaval, and had
demonstrated the potential of the Korean populace to
fundamentally transform the state. What was lacking was the
quality of leadership to provide a central focus for mass struggle
as well as bring unity and direction to the spontaneous,
dispersed, and sporadic protests of diverse groups. Such change
in perception was accompanied by a spread of distrust and
withdrawal of confidence in regard to the actual leaders of the
democratization movement in the 1970s.
72
anti-reunification and anti-democracy. Almost all student-led
demonstrations prior to 1987 echoed with the battle-cry
‘Remember Gwangju’
; and the memory of Gwangju also served
as a backdrop to the emergence of a distinct atmosphere of
overt anti-Americanism. There was no room for moderation in
the minds of students integral to these movements; as far as
they were concerned the Chun regime was devoid of legitimacy,
and its collapse was a primary objective. As a social group
effectively free from existential conditions, students formed their
resistance to the status quo from their sense of debt to
‘Gwangju’and their discontent at the gulf between the reality of
life and their ethical ideals and standards. When a campus
autonomy measure was introduced, student movements gained a
wider mass base on the campuses and challenged the stability of
the Fifth Republic by carrying out large-scale mobilization,
taking a determined lead in political struggles, and systematically
supporting all spontaneous popular protests.
Together with the growth of the student movement,
various dissident groups such as religious associations,
academics, writers, and ex-journalists began to set up pro-
democracy organizations. The‘Youth Alliance for
Democratization Movement’was established in 1983, and the
‘Alliance of People’
s Movements for Democracy and
Reunification’was set up in 1985 as an umbrella organization for
a number of separate movements. Identifying democracy and
reunification as its two main objectives, the latter organization
provided a central leadership for many of the grassroots, pro-
12 This refers to the period when the regime relaxed somewhat its persecution of alleged
dissidents.
A large-scale struggle by workers who have mobilized heavy machinery. (1987)
74
workers at their places of work, and focused more on the
provision of worker’
s citizenship and improvements to working
conditions rather than on realizing workers’class interests.
From 1985 the mass-based trade union movement gained
considerable momentum, and in that year staged the first
solidarity strike since 1960, in the Guro industrial area of Seoul.
The strike resulted in the formation of the Seoul Labor
Movement Alliance; an organization that became a model of
‘mass political organization’
.
Serious confrontations between Korean farmers and
governmental authorities began in April 1985, when farmers
launched nation-wide protests against US pressure to open up
the Korean agricultural market. Meanwhile, the urban poor
movement evolved predominantly in Seoul, the capital city, and
focused initially on protests against the city administration’
s
unilateral and violent drive to redevelop poor districts. Clashes
between protesters and municipal authorities sometimes resulted
in the deaths of local residents.
Waves of protests and resistance involving various
sectors culminated in June 1987 with a nation-wide uprising
against the Chun Doo-hwan regime. It was, in a sense, a
‘nationaliszation of Gwangju’
, as Korean people rose up for one
cause, democracy, in a broadly based movement that
transcended regional, factional, and class boundaries. The mass
mobilization, under the leadership of the‘National Movement
Headquarters for Attaining a Democratic Constitution’
,
created the biggest oppositional alliance that the regime had
13 This was Chun Doo-hwan’ s response to the nation-wide protests, and included the
re-establishment of direct presidential elections as its main concession.
A national workers convention for inheriting martyr Chun Tae-il's spirit and amending evil labor acts. (1988)
76
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intensity of state repression decreased and the basic rights of
citizens, in a liberal democratic sense, were expanded by
ideologically liberal governments, each of which identified itself
in terms such as‘civilian government’
,‘government of the
nation’
, and‘participatory government’
. However, reforms
undertaken up by these liberal-oriented governments lacked
thoroughness, largely because they were promoted from top
down, and were limited by macro conditions of a transitional era.
The central problem was that the requisite scope of the
rearrangement of existing power was not matched by the
degrees of support and motivational impetus emanating from the
predominantly conservative political representation; on the
contrary, the governments who proclaimed democratic
credentials were, in practice, too generous in the compromises
they struck with‘status quo-oriented’elements. The
normalization of politics and the accommodation of pluralistic
competition was repeatedly delayed, and the extant conservative
political representation thrived in the resultant vacuum, fuelling
region-based factionalism and socio-cultural regionalism in the
process. In effect, the growth of democracy in Korea was
suspended, and the establishment of a vicious cycle of crises of
participation and crises of representation became inevitable. As
long as the conservative-dominated party system remained
intact, it manifested its discrepancies in proportion to the
acceleration of class differentiation, restoration of progressive
political forces, and rapid growth of civil society, including
intensified social conflict. The political representation neither
80
were liberal forces whose main interest was to democratize
political institutions, while on the other there were radical
elements promoting socio-economic democratization, producer
democracy, and democratization of international relations.
Secondly, the social movements consisting of grassroots people
such as workers and farmers became central to the radical
movement politics, reinforcing the more traditional student and
intellectual groups.
In the second sub-period, from the early 1990s to the
present time, several changes have taken place within the
democratization movement. As political democratization
progressed over time, pro-democracy activism focussing on
anti-dictatorship became weaker, as did the so-called‘all-out
people’s resistance’line. Other efforts to democratize the
economic base also underwent significant changes. In one
regard, the collapse of European socialist states and the global
rise of neo-liberal capitalism so had a wider effect on Korean
society that it became more conservative, and, in the process,
put the radical intellectual movement in crisis and disarray. In
another regard, the class-based mass movement progressed
rapidly; most notably with the formation of the Korean
Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), a labor organization that
was to become a leading actor in the democratization
movement.
A key feature of this period is that the post-democracy
agenda, previously ignored and marginalized, assumed greater
prominence, triggering various post-democracy social
82
the merging of three political parties15, an attempted
constitutional revision towards a parliamentary cabinet system,
an increase in staple commodity prices, housing shortages, the
threat to the livelihoods of ordinary people brought about by
comprehensive import-liberalization, and a series of political
corruption scandals.
However, the anticipated‘June Struggle’did not occur, in
spite of several deaths and the fact that the democratization
movement had made plans for it. This constituted a success for
14 Roh Tae-woo’ s Democratic Liberal Party, the party in power at the time.
15 The minority ruling party recreated itself as a majority party by merging with two of the
three opposition parties in a secret deal which isolated Kim Dae-jung’ s party.
the ruling elite’
s efforts
to minimize or reverse
the‘revolutionary’
trend towards
democratization, and
was the first setback to
the popular, all-out,
Environmental organizations denouncing the Government
for its anti-environmental policies. struggle against the
government. It left a
painful legacy and a
sense of defeat in the
collective memory of all
those who had taken to
the streets in May 1991.
It was also a disaster from the democratization movement
84
independent political formation of popular forces.
A civil’movement, or the movement politics of
citizenship, had hardly existed before 1987, but expanded its
scope enormously in the early years of the 1990s. The reason
for this is to be located in the nature of the liberal social
movement within the old pro-democracy movement, that
developed into diverse forms of civil’movement in the space
created by the events of 1987. According to the Civic
Organizations Almanac 2000, Korea had 4,023 non-
governmental organizations (NGO’
s), or more than 20,000 if
branch organizations are included. In the process of accelerating
growth, the initial groups showed conservative characteristics;
epitomized by the Citizens’
Coalition for Economic
Justice established in 1989.
Later in the 1990s,
however, civil society grew
with the expansion of
86
1989), the National Association for Democracy and National
Reunification (December 1991), and the National Alliance of
People (March 2001) were formed to set and promote national
agendas and raise issues concerning democratic reforms.
These developments also led a change in the internal
composition of the people’
s movement itself. For example,
organizational and mass-movement aspects have increased
since 1987 whereas intelligentsia and individual aspects, which
predominated before 1987, have decreased. Diminished also is
88