Is Democracy Holding Up in South Korea?
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Today on State of the World, is democracy holding up in South Korea?

You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. It's Wednesday, January 8th. I'm Greg Dixon. In South Korea, authorities have so far still not been able to arrest impeached President Yoon Song-yal following his failed declaration of martial law over a month ago. The country remains mired in a political crisis.

Political scientists are studying the health of democracy in South Korea. And as NPR's Anthony Kuhn in Seoul tells us, they're drawing comparisons to recent events in the U.S. Within hours of President Yoon Song-yeol's declaring martial law on December 3rd, the world watched as protesters convened on the parliament.

lawmakers scaled walls and tussled with soldiers. They made it inside the building and voted to overturn the decree. Some experts describe what Yoon did as an attempted self-coup, that is, an attempt by a sitting leader to keep or extend his power by sweeping away checks and balances such as parliaments or election results.

Aurel Croissant is a political scientist at Heidelberg University in Germany. The South Korean declaration of martial law is a textbook example of such a self-coup. For many South Koreans, their experience naturally raises comparisons with January 6, 2021, in the U.S. One difference between the two is that the U.S. did not declare martial law. Instead, it was aimed at overturning election results.

Yoon, meanwhile, tried to break the resistance of an opposition-controlled parliament. The essential feature of the action is similar. The attempt to prevent another branch of government from performing its constitutional duties and holding the government accountable. Both ruling and opposition parties see themselves as trying to save Korean democracy, while the other side is trying to sabotage it.

At a recent rally of Yoon's supporters, 62-year-old housewife Im Kum-ja says she just couldn't stand watching the opposition-controlled parliament paralyze the government. I came out because I was worried about the country. We need to protect our country's liberal democracy. But I am afraid we will turn into a communist country. Im argues that President Yoon had no choice but to use martial law as a legitimate tool of governance.

But Aurel Croissant warns that robust civil societies such as South Korea's are being weakened by political polarization. Polarization is like a virus. We have evidence that under certain circumstances, polarization makes Democrats accept undemocratic behavior by their own political party. It also makes it hard, he adds, to reach compromises that are necessary to run a government and make policies.

The U.S. has praised South Korea's democratic institutions for holding firm. But Klaasso argues that if they had held, Yoon would not have been able to declare martial law even for a few hours. South Korea's democracy is strong in reacting to crisis, but it's very weak in preventing crisis.

One factor is, of course, that the institutional safeguards, the guardrails didn't work. Seoul National University political scientist Kang Won-taek says that part of the problem lies in the way South Korea's political system was designed and built. The core of Korea's democratization so far has been focused on holding fair and democratic elections for president. Kang argues that the system has reached its limits.

and some of the president's powers now need to be redistributed. A debate on this issue has been going on for some years. Another reason Yoon's self-coup failed is that the military balked at using force to impose martial law. One factor in that, Kang says, is the events of May 1980.

South Korea's then-ruling military junta sent troops to crush pro-democracy protests in Gwangju City, killing around 200 civilians. That's all from Gwangju.

It was all because of the incident in Gwangju that claimed so many victims. The soldiers felt extremely ashamed after witnessing the incident in Gwangju. South Korean author Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year for books including human acts that dealt with the trauma of Gwangju. In Parliament last month, opposition floor leader Park Chan-dae mentioned two of the questions Han raises about Gwangju.

Can the past help the present? And can the dead save the living? As I experienced the civil strife of the December 3rd martial law decree, he said, I would like to answer yes to the question, can the past help the present? Because May 1980 saved December 2024.

Aurel Croissant notes that South Korea and the U.S. are both representative democracies, where people select representatives to govern for them. When the representatives fail, citizens must mobilize to protect their rights themselves.

Croissant quotes. What Darren Atsumoblo, the Nobel Prize winner in economics, said four years ago, civil society is the last line of defense for democracy. And he's right. South Koreans have been mobilizing for over 100 years, Croissant adds, learning lessons from 35 years of Japanese colonial occupation and more than 25 years of military dictatorships. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Seoul. That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening.

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