June 1987 was a tough month for many South Koreans. For weeks, the streets of downtown Seoul and other major cities were clogged by protesters who demanded the end of authoritarian rule. Clouds of tear gas filled the city skies as riot police tried to reclaim control. It seemed almost impossible to tiptoe around the violent clashes because “all streets in urban areas were virtual battlefields” (Cumings 1997: 387). On June 29, the chairman of the ruling Democratic Justice Party (DJP), Roh Tae Woo, finally conceded to grassroots pressure and announced an eight-point measure addressing political reform. It signaled the victory of “people power,” and most South Koreans greeted it with a sigh of relief, if not excitement. It seemed as if South Korea was finally returning to normalcy. However, the nascent South Korean democracy continued to show signs of trouble on multiple fronts.
First, democratic change unleashed a new round of militant protests. South Korean workers rose up in contentious collective action immediately after the June 29 Declaration, which escalated into an unprecedented wave of labor protest in the following months. Labor protest tapered off by the autumn of 1987, but militant action calling for fair wages, better working conditions, and the freedom to organize continued into the late 1980s and the 1990s. In the late 1980s, rural farmers started to mobilize against the government’s agricultural policies that they had long seen as hostile to their interest. Talks over the impending opening of the rice market was of a particular concern, not only to farmers but also to Koreans in general to whom rice had long been held as the foundation of their culture. Residents of poor neighborhoods who were under eviction threats amidst expanding urban development and street peddlers whose livelihood was jeopardized by street beautification projects were also among the most militant. And students took advantage of the newly open political space to “nationalize college protest” (NPH 1988: 20).
On the other hand, politics was growing extremely ill-tempered in the unicameral National Assembly as the ruling party failed to secure majority status for the first time in South Korean history. Taking advantage of their newly found leverage, the opposition parties refused to cooperate with the ruling party in many issues and often took the political initiative on their own. This would have been inconceivable a few years earlier. Trapped in a political limbo and not knowing how to find a way out through democratic problem-solving, president Roh and his DJP sought solution in a secretive three-party merger that brought two opposition parties, the Reunification Democratic Party (RDP) and the New Democratic Republican Party (NDRP), together to form a mammoth Democratic Liberal Party (DLP) that would command more than two-thirds of the National Assembly seats. On January 22, 1990, the three leaders held their hands up high in front of flashing cameras and declared the three-party merger as a historic “decision for national salvation.” Many disagreed. The 1987 democratic transition in June 1987 and the three-party merger that took place in 1990 share important similarities. Both events represent elite attempts at stabilizing politics in response to mounting political challenge. In both cases, the goal was to reduce the levels of uncertainty and restore political stability by offering partial concession to political challengers. Concessions invariably involved power sharing with segments of the opposition, but were also made to ensure that the preferences of the incumbents would prevail. Nevertheless, far from achieving stability and control, both solutions bred new political upheaval as a byproduct. Despite efforts at regaining stability and normalcy, large-scale street protests persisted and the political process remained stagnant. Why was this the case?
On the founding day of the Democratic Liberal Party, 80,000 students and members from chaeya and minjung groups launched furious protests in 17 cities across the nation. […] In Seoul, protestors swarmed the streets near Myŏngdong at 5:40 pm chanting “Disband DLP! Out with [president] Roh!” slogans, as they hurled stones and Molotov cocktails at the riot police, who responded with a barrage of teargas in return. At 6:30 pm, 20,000 protestors held an hour-long assembly at the Fountain Square in front of Shinsaegye Department Store. By 7:30 pm, a large police force began approaching the protestors from the City Hall and the South Gate directions, shelling teargas from dozens of automatic armored vehicles. Protestors split and retreated in four directions, but continued to fight back throwing pavement blocks and Molotov cocktails late into the night, until 11:00 pm. […] The United States Information Service building was set on fire and five police vehicles were destroyed by Molotov cocktail attacks.
(Dong-A Ilbo, May 9, 1990)
In this chapter, I closely examine the unfolding of events that comprised the critical moment of South Korea’s transition to democracy (1984–1988) in order to unpack the dynamics that led to this imperfect solution. My argument is plain and simple: workers, farmers, and disadvantaged South Koreans continued to engage in unruly protest politics in post-authoritarian South Korea because their interests and demands were marginalized from the new political framework. I contend this was due to their weak organizational capacity at the time of transition, as well as the economic conditions that favored elite interests. While many students, workers, and segments of the subordinate classes played an instrumental role in the pro-democracy movement, their organizations lacked strong grassroots base and their leadership depended largely on the symbolism and established networks of the opposition elites, exemplified by Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam. This lack of autonomous organization posed an obstacle for the subordinate classes, which undercut their chances of participating in the drafting of the new democracy as an independent player. Complicating this dynamic was the high growth economy at the time of transition that allowed the authoritarian incumbents to frame the political challenges of the subordinate groups as a threat to the economy, thereby driving a wedge between the subordinate groups and the middle classes. As a consequence, a new democracy emerged with a significant portion of the population left out of the system of political representation. Widespread protests and political instability were the inevitable outcomes of such a condition.
The remainder of the chapter is organized into four sections. First, I look into the phase of political liberalization that laid the groundwork for the democratic transition in June 1987, with a special focus on identifying diverse political groups that are usually blanketed under “civil society.” In the second section I dig deeper into the contentious interactions that underlay the transition process and unpack how contending interests within the pro-democracy opposition played out. Next, I examine the conservative nature of South Korea’s transition and offer my analysis of its origin and outcome. Lastly, I discuss the implications of the South Korean mode of democratic transition by way of conclusion.
Liberalization and political configuration in the early phase of transition
Ever since the establishment of its First Republic in 1948, South Korea (or Republic of Korea) has functioned as a bulwark against communist expansion in East Asia. While democracy was nominally introduced, this geopolitical significance provided South Korean rulers with an excuse for authoritarian politics that was largely condoned by their American patron. An anti-communist political system firmly took place as a result, which was by nature autocratic and sustainable only through the extensive use of coercive apparatus. Nevertheless, South Koreans erupted in collective challenge against autocratic rule whenever opportunities arose, creating brief moments of democratic hope that would only be crushed by the rise of another strongman. According to historian Michael Robinson, what characterized South Korean politics in the first half-century of its birth was “a cycle of constitutional manipulation, building [of] public tension, and mass protest [that] made for considerable political instability” (Robinson 2007: 122).
Within this cycle, Park Chung Hee’s 19-year rule (1961–1979) stands out as the most significant. On the one hand, his authoritarian tactics of social and political control, especially under the Yusin system in the 1970s, left a huge imprint in South Korea’s authoritarian politics (Ogle 1977; Sohn 1990). With the advent of the Yusin rule, the National Assembly was dissolved, political parties disbanded, and presidential elections were suspended to allow Park’s presidency for life. As the tentacles of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) deeply penetrated the everyday lives of Koreans, basic human rights were severely curtailed, including the freedom of speech and assembly. By the mid-1970s, South Korea was ruled through various emergency decrees, including the notorious Emergency Decrees No. 4 that allowed arrests without warrants and No. 9 that prohibited the spread of “rumors,” that is, any information that the regime found irksome. On the other hand, Park’s authoritarian reign was also a period of rapid economic growth. Based on the capacity of the government to discipline and mobilize its citizenry toward a national goal of economic development (Amsden 1989; Kim and Park 2003), Park Chung Hee’s planned economy pulled the majority of South Koreans out of absolute poverty and spurred South Korea ahead of the North Korean economy by the late 1970s. Despite draconian political rule, it was ordinary Koreans’ excitement over economic growth and their dream of an affluent life that served as the backbone of the political legitimacy for Park’s authoritarian regime.
However, economic growth did not prevent South Koreans from expressing their political discontent. By the late 1970s, protests against Yusin rule were on the rise, culminating in mass protests in the southeastern cities of Pusan and Masan that led to the declaration of Martial Law (Lee 2010: 78–91). The rivalry within the elite circle that aided Park exacerbated the indecision over how to cope with the crisis, eventually ending up in Park Chung Hee’s assassination by one of his most trusted men and head of the KCIA, Kim Jae Kyu. The sudden downfall of Park’s rule brought about another brief moment of democratic hope. As political leaders started to work on a roadmap for democracy in the spring of 1980, the suppressed voices of civil society exploded. This “Spring of Seoul” would be brutally crushed by another military strongman, Chun Doo Hwan. Chun’s rise to power began when he was given the responsibility to investigate Park’s assassination. However, he had bigger political ambitions. On December 12, 1979, Chun and his colleagues arrested the Army Chief of Staff on charges of conspiring in the assassination of Park Chung Hee and took full control of the military. By early 1980, he seated himself as the head of the KCIA, thereby fully consolidating his political power. After expanding martial law to the entire country and orchestrating a bloody massacre in the city Kwangju in May 1980 (Scott-Stokes and Lee 2000; Shin and Hwang 2003), Chun quickly filled in the political vacuum created by Park Chung Hee’s assassination and took firm control.
Inheriting the authoritarian state structure with enormous capacity for social control and repression, Chun rewrote the constitution in order to ensure political control in the National Assembly, set up the Basic Press Law and used it to close down hundreds of media organizations leaving only those that could be used as the regime’s mouthpiece, kept hundreds of opposition leaders under a political ban, if not in jail, and was never shy to use force to quell any signs of political challenge (Cumings 1997: 379–380). Nonetheless, Chun had to find ways to compensate for his lack of political legitimacy. In addition, he had to face a society that was growing increasingly diversified, sophisticated, and contentious. This compelled Chun to invest agg...
