Building Democratic Institutions in South Korea

Chapter 8 ended with a direct election and a new constitution. This chapter describes the institutions that system now has and the evidence that it counts as a democracy. My source is one overview article on South Korean politics. It gives the structure and a few assessments but almost no dates for the years after 1987, so this chapter cannot narrate the presidencies or the peaceful transfers of power that the course outline promised. That gap is stated below.

The Structure

Civil Society and Party Politics

The source says the country operated under military authoritarian rule until 1987, after which "constitutional guarantees of freedom of association and expression expanded the scope of civil society." Two parties dominate: the centrist-left Democratic Party and the conservative People Power Party. Scholars describe an emphasis on "politics of the individual" over party loyalty, sometimes called a "partyless democracy."

How Democratic Is It?

• The Economist Intelligence Unit rated South Korea a "full democracy" in 2022.
• V-Dem indices ranked it the fifth most electorally democratic Asian nation in 2024.
• The source says the country experienced periods of democratic stagnation, particularly from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s.

Accountability for the Past

Chapter 7 recorded that Chun was tried in 1995 to 1996 and pardoned in December 1997, and that 18 May became a national memorial day in 1997. Those events suggest a system prosecuting a former ruler and commemorating Gwangju within a decade of 1987, but the sources do not describe how the trials came about, so this is an observation, not a finding.

Hands-On Exercises