Regionalism in South Korea: Its Origins and Role in Her Democratization

• Date: 01 December 2004
• Published date: 01 December 2004
• DOI: 10.1177/0032329204269982
• Author: Keedon Kwon
• Subject Matter: Articles

10.1177/0032329204ARTICLEPOLITICS & SOCIETYKEEDON KWON

Regionalism in South Korea:

Its Origins and Role in Her Democratization

KEEDON KWON

This article investigateshow South Korea was able to make relatively smooth demo-

cratic transition and deepening by relying on recent scholarship on democratiza-

tion. It argues that this may be attributed in part to Korea’s regionalist politics. Its

detrimental implications for democracy in general nonetheless. Despite its region-

alism in Koreaserved democratization in two ways: first, by helping Korea’spolitics

move from the principled confrontation between the democratic forces and the

authoritarian forces to the morepragmatic contestation between regionalist politi-

cal actors; second, by guaranteeing major political actors some minimum political

power and thus providing them with motivations to adhere to Korea’s fledgling

democratic game.

Keywords: regionalism; democratic transition; electoral democracy;

presidentialism; compliance

This article provides an interpretation of the democratization process in South

Korea (Korea), relying on recent scholarship on the so-called third-wavedemoc-

ratization. It appears from a comparative perspective that Korea transited to and

has deepened democracy quite smoothly. Hard pressed by the large-scaledemo-

cratic mobilizations in June 1987, Chun Doo-Hwan’s plain-clothes military

regime submitted to people’sdemands for democratization and entered intonego

-

tiations with the democratic forces for transition to democracy. A direct popular

I would like to thank Erik Wright, Edward Friedman, Pamela Oliver, Gay Seidman, and Ivan

Ermakofffor their valuable comments on earlier drafts. I am particularly grateful to Erik Wright, who

took great pains to read almost every version of the essay and made so many useful suggestions. The

remaining flaws of the essay, however, are solely mine.

POLITICS & SOCIETY, Vol. 32 No. 4, December 2004 545-574

DOI: 10.1177/0032329204269982

© 2004 Sage Publications

545

presidential election was held in December of the same year. Three government

changes—two intraparty changes in 1993 and 2003 and an interparty change in

1998—have since taken place through three procedurally free and fair presiden-

tial elections. During the period of deepening democracy, Korean politics has also

solved two thorny problems that any fledgling democracy is likely to face;

namely, what Huntington calls the torturer problem—“how to treat authoritarian

officials who had blatantly violated human rights”—and the praetorian prob-

lem—“how to reduce military involvementin politics and establish a professional

pattern of civil-military relations.”1Inthat process, no coup d’état was attempted.

It appears that no other countries in the third-wave democratization enjoyed such

a combination of rapid establishment of electoral democracy and relativelycom-

plete clearing off of the authoritarian past.2

In retrospect, Korea’sdemocratic transition and deepening might seem to have

been destined to be a smooth success. Korea, afterall, was free of such agonizing,

treacherous problems as economic hardships and ethnic conflicts that have

bedeviled some newly democratizing countries such as Argentina, South Africa,

Nigeria, and so on. This retrospective image, however,misses a number of signifi-

cant risks that Korea’sdemocratization faced. Korea had to pass through a critical

period no less risky and murky than in other countries, especially from 1987to

1993. This can be seen more clearly when we compare Korea’s democratization

with the other countries that Huntington classifies into “transplacement” or nego-

tiated transition to which Korea also belongs. What usually characterized

transplacement was “exchange of guarantees” with regard to mutual security,

power distribution, and so forth to diffuse the political tensions inherent in the

transition period.3In Poland, for example, the Round Table Pact in 1988 stipu-

lated that 65 percent of the Sejm be elected in noncompetitive elections, guaran-

teeing a certain degree of power to both the regime and the opposition. In Czecho-

slovakia, too, powerwas shared by dividing the cabinet positions between the two

parties.4In contrast, what was negotiated between the military regime and the

democratic forces in Korea was,in effect, only on the issue of direct popular presi-

dential election. No other binding guarantees for democratic transition were

explicitly negotiated, and everything,including especially the destiny of the mili-

tary regime, was perceived to hinge on the result of the foundational presidential

election scheduled for December 1987.

More generally, Korean politics has had an institutional fragility that could

have been detrimental to its newly emerging democracy:the presidency in Korea

has been so powerful as to be called “imperial.”5Recent scholarship has explored

the issue of whether presidentialism or parliamentarism is more conduciveto

democracy.Linz, who is responsible for the recent debates over this issue, argues

that presidentialism may bring more perils to democracy than parliamentarism,

primarily because the former involvesa zero-sum game and concentrates all polit-

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