Globalization and Democracy: The Case of South Korea

Abstract

This paper addresses several issues regarding globalization and democracy in the case of South Korea. First, discussing the early history of Korean politics and characteristics of democratic transition in 1987, we consider the 1987 transition in the country to have resulted from domestic struggles. Second, the “1987 Regime” had been made by “passive revolution” among conservative political elites, which had worked as constraining conditions on democratic development. Third, the stable shifts of civilian governments in South Korea since 1987 have been conditioned by increasing globalization effects, which engage different actors, such as chaebols, global investors, technocrats and new politicians, all of whom form a neoliberal bloc. The “1997 Regime” which was born under conditions of the 1997 financial crisis had two possibilities in the beginning: one was a democratic one and the other was a neoliberal one. The neoliberal bloc has constrained the full realization of the former and made the latter prevail in Korea until now. Finally, democracy under conservative hegemony is fragile to crisis because its narrow class base in party politics makes the government unable to defend the socio-economic security of the majority of citizens exposed to negative globalization effects.