Bipolar Orders

The Two Koreas since 1989

Hyung Gu Lynn

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781848134966
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Korean History
• Index: History

North Korea and South Korea are never far from the news headlines - one for the alleged danger it poses to the world, the other for its apparent capitalist success story. In Bipolar Orders, Hyung Gu Lynn analyzes the processes driving both countries since the 1980s. North Korea has experienced severe economic deterioration and increasing international isolation, while South Korea has undergone democratization and witnessed the emergence of a vibrant consumer culture. Paradoxically, this growing gap in ideologies and material standards has led to improved relations between the two countries. Why has this counterintuitive development occurred? Is North Korea really a threat, and if so, for whom? This book provides a substantive, accessible, and timely examination of the complex and compelling histories of the two Koreas.

1 | Pandora’s Box?
South Korea’s Democratization and Consolidation

Seoul was the capital of the Chos

n dynasty for around six hundred years. It has been the locus of political, economic, and cultural activities since the establishment of South Korea in 1948. A succession of kings, aristocrats, colonial bureaucrats, charismatic politicians, and military dictators ruled from the seat of power in Seoul, and the physical legacies of their rule still dot the urban landscape amidst the densely packed apartments, automobiles, subways, skyscrapers, shops, and people. North of the Han River, it does not require a practiced eye to detect the sprawling restored royal grounds dating from the Chos

n period, or the neoclassical architecture left behind by the Japanese colonial rulers. South of the Han, the dense forests of skyscrapers and apartment blocks are physical testaments to the massive development projects undertaken in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

However, it would take more effort to find among the innumerable streets monuments or memorials marking the most significant political transformation in South Korea’s contemporary history. Most people in Seoul know where the main gate of Yonsei University is located, since it is known throughout the country as one of the top three universities in South Korea. There are likely far fewer people, though, who know the way to the unassuming concrete, four-storey building buried in the back streets about a fifteen-minute walk away from Yonsei University. The small entrance leads to a museum built in 2004 to honor Lee Han-Y

l (Yi Han-Y

l), a student activist who was killed in 1987 during pro-democracy demonstrations.

The relatively obscure location of a museum dedicated to a pro-democracy martyr is a contrast to everyday life at the time. Throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s, the areas around the main gates of university campuses would often fill with thick clouds of tear gas as demonstrators and police clashed. The term “tear gas” is exceedingly misleading in its innocuousness. Once the tear gas grenades exploded, voluminous, white clouds enveloped demonstrators, and within a matter of seconds their eyes, noses, and throats burnt as if someone had poured liberal doses of undiluted acid onto their faces. Hours after a demonstration, even after the white smoke had dissipated and the air looked clear again, the sting from the remaining vapors caused passersby to become instantly and violently lachrymose.

These demonstrations and clashes were not restricted only to university campuses or only to Seoul. From 1960 on, students and laborers in various cities throughout South Korea, armed with rocks and Molotov cocktails, battled military police or private union-busters. In the 1970s, smoke-filled cafés that are no longer extant were the sites for innumerable and “illegal” discussions of democracy, and the streets around the major university campuses were the scenes of demonstrations and clashes between military police and student activists. And, the few times South Korea made the international news headlines throughout much of the 1980s were when particularly large-scale confrontations broke out between the masked students demonstrators and the helmeted riot police. In June 1987, anti-government and pro-democracy demonstrations reached record numbers and intensity.

During one such clash between demonstrators and riot police on June 9, 1987, in front of the main gate of Yonsei University, a tear gas grenade hit Lee Han-Y

l directly on the head, critically injuring him. Demonstrations and street fighting escalated in the streets of Seoul – highways were closed off, demonstrators launched gas bombs at government buildings, and in some clashes students overpowered the riot police. A nationwide demonstration march on June 27 mobilized an estimated 1.8 million people throughout the country in 37 cities.

After days of intense demonstrations, on June 29, 1987 the South Korean government issued a “Democratization Declaration,” an eight-point reform program that in essence established a blueprint for democratization. The unexpected announcement left the demonstrators scrambling to declare victory, while officials gathered to reform the constitution and implement the promises of direct presidential elections, protection of human rights, and reduction of restrictions on the press. Presidential terms became limited to one five-year stint under the new constitution. Lee Han-Y

l died from his injuries in hospital on July 7, unable to witness the epochal changes about to come. On July 9, when his funeral procession ended in front of Seoul City Hall, an estimated 1 million people gathered to honor one of many martyrs for democracy in South Korea’s history.

In the 1960s and 1970s, South Korea and North Korea were both ruled by authoritarian regimes: democratization after 1987 has launched South Korea on a clearly divergent path from the North. Previously noted for its combination of authoritarian governments and economic development (the so-called “developmental state”), South Korea is now widely seen as a case of successful democratization and democratic consolidation. If Polish advocates of combining authoritarianism with market reform were known in the late 1980s as the “South Korean” faction, some Cambodian NGOs (non-governmental organizations) dedicated to democratization in the twenty-first century consider South Korea to be a model for democratization.¹

Despite an array of calls for caution and scepticism about democratic consolidation issued by domestic and foreign observers, democracy has taken root in South Korea. Four presidents have been elected under the 1987 Constitution – Roh Tae-Woo (No T’ae-U) in 1988, Kim Young-Sam (Kim Y

ng-Sam) in 1993, Kim Dae-Jung (Kim Tae-Jung) in 1998, and Roh Moo-Hyun (No Mu-Hy

n) in 2003. Even with some obvious problems inherent in reducing complex nation-states into simplistic statistical rankings, a 2006 survey placed South Korea at 34 out of 150 countries on its democracy scale, just behind Japan at 32 and Israel at 33.²

In the South Korea of the twenty-first century, a whole generation has never tasted tear gas. Even if the occasional call for a military coup reverberates through a meeting hall in 2006, the danger of such an event happening in actuality seems distant. Academics and policy makers in South Korea study and debate the long-term significance of the events of 1987. Some scholars decry the “1987 system” as ultimately a top-down set of reforms that did not go far enough. Nonetheless, without a doubt, the most significant political change in South Korea after the mid-1980s was the transition from a series of authoritarian dictatorships to a functioning, sustainable democracy. The most significant not because democracy is the apogee of human achievement, the universal terminus for history, or because modernization theory has become retro-chic in some circles, but simply because 1987 marked an epochal transformation in the political structure and society of South Korea.

What factors explain how democratic transformation in South Korea, which widened the political gap with North Korea, occurred? How did democratic consolidation occur? What new developments emerged in South Korean politics during the process of democratic consolidation? This chapter focuses on the political dimensions in answering these questions. Chapter 2 will deal with the socio-economic aspects in more detail.

Democratization: 1960—1987

Why was it that democratic transformation occurred in South Korea in 1987 rather than 1989, and was it the inevitable outcome of the technological and moral efficacy of liberal democracy, as Francis Fukuyama argued in his The End of History?³ The answer is that the democratization process had its roots firmly in domestic South Korean history, rather than being primarily caused by external pressures following the end of the Cold War in 1989. In addition, there was considerable individual agency and historical contingency: there was little that was inevitable about the process.

There are several views among academics on the causal factors behind democratization in South Korea. These generally revolve around discussions of socio-economic levels, the power and scale of the demonstrations, external intervention via US public declarations, and moral arguments. Rather than emphasize the primacy of one factor over another, it is best to see democratization in South Korea as a historically contingent convergence of multiple factors. In other words, several necessary but not sufficient variables had existed before. It was not until June 1987 that these collided into an epochal moment.

The “threshold model” suggests that collective action of any kind requires a certain critical mass before growing, as people make a series of choices based on seeing how many others are joining before deciding to participate in a movement. This helps explain both gradual and sudden change – somewhat akin to explaining how water warms up gradually before boiling, then seemingly suddenly turns to steam.⁴ I would suggest that this model is the most appropriate one for explaining how the effects of cumulative resistance against forty years of authoritarian rule in South Korea boiled over in 1987 due to several key precedents and factors, ultimately resulting in the transformation into a democracy. Thus, a combination of four major factors was required to make democratization possible in 1987: the cumulative effect of decades of protest met by repression; the emergence of the middle class; the impact of foreign pressures and precedents; and internal divisions and miscalculations by the government.

Cumulative history and thresholds

First, it is important to acknowledge the impact of long-term trends and domestic precedents. South Korea had previous, albeit abbreviated, experiments in democracy before 1987. In many senses, the democratization process embodied Reinhold Niebuhr’s statement that, “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.”⁵Repeated cycles of repression and resistance infuse South Korean political history. Three strongmen had governed the country until 1987 – Syngman Rhee (Yi S

ng-Man) from 1948 to 1960; Park Chung-Hee (Pak Ch

ng-H

i) from 1961 to 1979; and Chun Doo-Hwan (Ch

n Tu-Hwan) from 1980 to 1987. Massive civic demonstrations challenged and eventually undermined all three regimes – in 1960, 1979–1980, and 1987. The first two regime changes failed to engender sustained democratic governments, but the memory of each – if not the direct outcome – contributed to the gradual attainment of the threshold point.

In April 1960, massive student demonstrations helped overthrow Syngman Rhee. Trading on the prestige that his independence activities during the colonial period gave him with the South Korean public, and armed with extraordinary powers under the anti-communist National Security Law, Rhee dominated the political landscape from 1948 to 1960, ruthlessly suppressing all significant rivals. The April Revolution was in large part a reflection of the public’s disgust with widespread and constant corruption, but also a set of socio-economic changes. Improve- ments in the level of literacy, and increases in the number of educational institutions produced more students in higher education. Unemployment rates, however, remained high for university graduates, and economic development still appeared elusive.

Eight months before the March 15, 1960 presidential and vice presidential elections, Rhee executed one rival on charges of communist activities. The main opposition candidate for president died a month before the elections. Not surprisingly, Rhee won the presidential elections with 88% of the vote. However, the vice presidential election race between the opposition’s Chang My

n and Rhee’s right-hand man, the unpopular Lee Ki-Bung (Yi Ki-Bung), was widely expected to go Chang’s way even with tainted ballots. When the result was announced as a landslide victory for Lee, there was little doubt that the election had been rigged.⁶ On the same day, March 15, a massive demonstration to protest electoral corruption took place in the southeastern city of Masan. On April 11, a fishing boat in Masan harbor discovered the bloated body of sixteen-year-old Kim Chu-Y

l. Protruding from one eye was a fragment of the tear gas canister that had hit him directly during the March 15 demonstrations. The discovery of the body and Rhee’s denial of involvement sparked nationwide student protests. “Anti-communist” groups that had been fostered by Rhee clashed violently with students on April 18. On April 19, some 30,000 students marched toward the presidential office to protest the election rigging when military police fired on them, resulting in at least 124 deaths and over 558 injured. Outraged by the election rigging and the attack on unarmed students, the public called on Rhee to hold new elections or resign.⁷ US officials urged Rhee to reform the government. Amidst the escalating pressure, on April 28 Lee Ki-Bung committed suicide with his entire family. Rhee finally stepped down on April 29, 1960.

The interim government announced a new constitution in June, and in late July, the popularly elected Chang My

n government took over the reins of power. It proved to be short-lived. There were several reasons for this, including the fact that the so-called April Revolution may have been more about protesting against corruption than about calling for systemic change. Chang My

n and his party were the beneficiaries, not the vanguard, of the April Revolution. In addition to issues of moral legitimacy, the new government was ulcerated with internal conflicts and hampered by economic woes. Its half-hearted purges of former Rhee loyalists, the proliferation of political demonstrations by left-leaning organizations under its watch, and seemingly vacillating leadership led to rising discontent among the citizens and the military. On May 16, 1961, Major General Park Chung-Hee, aided by his nephew-by-marriage Lieutenant General Kim Jong-Pil (Kim Chong-P’il), led 250 officers and 3,500 soldiers in a swift and effective coup that met with only token resistance. A paltry force of fifty military police was mobilized to defend the Chang government.⁸

In the twenty-first century, Kim Chu-Y

l is largely forgotten even...