Andrew Yeo (Brookings Institution/Catholic University), Soomin Seo (Sogang University), and I contributed to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Behind Closed Doors: Corruption in Democracies Podcast, specifically the third episode (“Trouble in the Blue House”) on Park Geun-hye’s corruption scandal and impeachment in 2016-2017.
Public engagement
How South Korea’s Authoritarian Past Shapes Its Democracy
I had the opportunity to contribute a lead article for the December 2022 issue of The Diplomat on how South Korea’s authoritarian past shapes its democracy.
Read full article here: https://thediplomat.com/2022/11/how-south-koreas-authoritarian-past-shapes-its-democracy/
Interview on Tiananmen (featured in Foreign Policy)
Tiananmen Crushed Asia’s Wave of Rebellion
China’s shadow darkens democratic hopes today.
A dissident student asks soldiers to go back home as crowds flood into central Beijing on June 3, 1989. CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
From the middle to the end of the 1980s, youth-led democracy movements transformed several of Asia’s largest economies. It was a dramatic shift for a region that had previously been dominated by illiberal regimes, a mixture of left- and right-wing authoritarians. Within just a few years, students, dissidents, and radicals had brought democracy to South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines, three of the largest economies in the region. In 1989, it seemed like the largest and most influential country, China, might even follow the path of not only its neighbors, but its Communist brethren in Eastern Europe.
That, of course, did not happen. On May 20, martial law was declared, and on June 4, the army was bloodily deployed against the remaining protestors. At the time, the Tiananmen Square clampdown was condemned by most of the world, but it was not seen as the last hope for democracy or liberalization in China. Taiwan’s White Terror in the 1950s had arguably been as harsh as any crackdown by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but it was never able to squash the opposition fully. The Gwangju uprising and massacre, when South Korean paratroopers shot hundreds of civilians, was as recent as 1980—and, in 1987, South Korea had become a democracy.
Korean autocracy was as old as the People’s Republic of China. But so was resistance. “Korea has always had democracy movements,” said Joan E. Cho, an assistant professor of East Asian studies at Wesleyan University. “There were smaller groups in the 1960s, bigger in the 1970s, and the 1980s was the pinnacle.”
China too had seen previous protests, such as the Democracy Wall movement in the late 1970s. “In the 1990s it really did feel like the [end of the] party’s regime was just a matter of time,” said Isaac Stone Fish, a senior fellow at Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations. “They were able to keep the lid on Tiananmen, but at some point they would slip.”
It was not the case. Tiananmen would be the last mass democracy movement in China. China has not seen anything even remotely approaching the scale of what happened in 1989, when students and workers took not just to the streets of Beijing but occupied the center of many major Chinese cities. The only major anti-government actions since then have been fueled by national or ethnic sentiment in marginal territories such as Xinjiang and Tibet.
And it’s not just China. The 1980s democracy wave was to be the last in Asia, confounding observers who believed that economic growth would lead to greater liberalism.
The 1980s democracy wave was to be the last in Asia, confounding observers who believed that economic growth would lead to greater liberalism
The few success stories, such as Indonesia, which overthrew its dictatorship in 1998, are more than outweighed by the autocratic backsliding that has taken place in Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines. Only two members of that wave, South Korea and Taiwan, can be said to have grown as democracies.It is hard to find a single universal factor to the 1980s democracy movements across Asia. Many factors were at play, including swelling youth populations due to rapid birth rates in previous decades, economic growth, and the influence of Western media and a burgeoning local press. While they all operated in a similar geopolitical environment—had had strong support for democratization from the United States, Japan, and European nations—they were locally led, and their strategies were particular to the authoritarian regime each faced.
But one reason why democracy has been curtailed may be China itself, whose shadow has grown broad. China is now the top trading partner of, and foreign investor in, most of its neighboring countries. That may be having a coercive effect on neighbors such as Cambodia, where long-term dictator Hun Sen’s crushing of the civil opposition in the last few years took place with Beijing’s backing and blessing. In Thailand, while the junta maintains a veneer of democracy, relations with China have grown ever closer even as Washington has chastised them.
“China’s influence has been there after countries took an authoritarian turn,” said Maiko Ichihara, an associate professor at the School of International and Public Policy at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. Chinese money and investment can buffer what could have been, in the past, sanctions or other reprisals from Western countries. “Democratic backsliding has been maintained due to the economic influence of China.”
It also means the role of the region’s democracies is limited. Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan were, in previous decades, democratic and highly developed, and offered models for China. Now, the tables have turned.
“In the 90s there was the idea that countries like Taiwan and Japan could push for change in China,” said Stone Fish. “Now, a lot of those countries are trying to figure out how to prevent China from changing them.”
The goal in Korea should be peace and trade – not unification
The goal in Korea should be peace and trade – not unification
Last week, the world witnessed a first tangible step toward a peaceful, prosperous Korean peninsula.
On April 27, 2018, Kim Jong-Un became the first North Korean leader to step foot in South Korea – where he was welcomed by South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
A few days later, the South Korean government reported that Kim had promised to give up his nuclear arsenal under certain conditions.
While some viewed the summit with skepticism and issued reminders about Kim’s villainous past, others began talking of a unified Korea – a reasonable reaction considering that the leaders signed a document called the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula.
The intentions of these two leaders is key. For while Donald Trump and Xi Zinping and Vladimir Putin may tweet and hold meetings, it is the nearly 80 million Koreans who will determine the future of how they will share their peninsula.
As scholars who study Japan, Korea, and East Asia – we know that the “Cold War” has always been “hot” in Asia. That’s why we suggest the focus now should be on forging new ties with North Korea. The question of how South Korea and North Korea will merge can be left for the future.
To understand why, it’s helpful to remember why Korea was split into two countries in the first place.
Creating two Koreas
In August 1945, in the basement of the State Department in Washington, D.C., two American army officers traced a line across a National Geographic map and divided the Korean peninsula — at the time colonized by Japan — at the 38th parallel.
This division was part of an Allied vision of Japan’s impending defeat.
Many – especially the Russians – had anticipated that Japan would be divided like Germany.
After all, it was Japan, not occupied Korea, who was the enemy combatant. Yet the Soviets acquiesced to the American idea.
Ideological camps among Koreans that had taken root under Japanese oppression challenged one another for expression in the following months. Eventually, the communists gained leadership in the north and their challengers in the south.
Five years later the Korean War erupted to claim the lives of one in eight Koreans. Tens of thousands of international participants would also die in what history books flatly name the first major conflict of the Cold War.
The 1953 armistice ending the fighting in Korea more or less followed the 1945 line. Under this agreement, Koreans who had collaborated, resisted, or simply endured Japanese rule prior to the Korean War (1950–1953) now found themselves assigned entirely new identities: “North Korean” and “South Korean.” The meaning of these names has diverged and morphed into new realities on both sides since then.
The view from South Korea
In South Korea, people often refer to the Korean War as yugio — literally 6.25 – referring to June 25, 1950 when the grandfather of today’s North Korean leader ordered his troops to cross the border and attack the South. This state-sanctioned narrative reinforces an antagonistic relationship. The North is framed as the aggressor, the South as an innocent victim, and the U.S. and the West as the savior of South Korea. Not unimportantly, North Koreans call the same history, “The Fatherland Liberation War.”
While the 2015 Asan Report finds that more than 80 percent of South Koreans “dutifully” answer that Korea should be reunified, fewer than 20 percent support immediate reunification. Their sense of an ethnic bond is decreasing and reunification is mostly seen as an economic burden.
In 2010, former president Lee Myung-bak proposed a “reunification tax” to support the costs of reunification, whenever it came. The tax proposal received little support from the public or among politicians, especially after the North’s attack on a South Korean warship Cheonan and the shelling of the South’s Yeonpyeong Island later that year. Speaking in 2014, Former president Park Geun-hye also tried to promote a positive image of reunification calling it a “jackpot” (daebak).
She claimed that reunification – a combination of North Korean labor and South Korean technological advancements – would create jobs and strengthen the Korean economy.
Despite government’s effort to reposition the reunification issue, public opinion data show that South Korean youth are only increasing their detachment from North Korea.
An easier path
So, if an older generation’s understanding of reunification is a hard sell, what is the path forward?
South Korea could instead seek a peaceful coexistence of two Koreas with free trade, free exchange of people, and no military threats. Perhaps public support for reunification may re-emerge and strengthen as ties are strengthened through increased exchanges at the civil level and greater economic independence in the North, thereby lowering the “costs of reunification.”
One of the main reasons there has not yet been a resolution to the “North Korea problem” has been persistent, divergent dreams of reunification. For the U.S. and South Korea, a reunified Korea would be a liberal, capitalist democracy. For North Korea, China, and Russia, a reunified Korea would not be a close ally with the United States, and certainly would not host U.S. troops.
Over the last 30 years, the benefits of a divided Korea have only increased for those outside the peninsula. Initially, North Korea served as an important “buffer state” between the communist China and Russia to the north and the democratic and capitalist countries of South Korea, Japan – and their ally the United States. Even after the Cold War ended, ideological differences among these important geopolitical players has continued, reinforcing the benefits of North Korea’s liminal status.
If we can follow public opinion in South Korea and temporarily abandon the dream of a single Korea, it is possible to see that everyone would benefit from a peaceful, prosperous, non-nuclear North Korea. China’s economic success has demonstrated that a country can take advantage of markets without becoming a capitalist democracy. It can offer North Korea guidance on how to develop using the Chinese model.
If neighboring countries opened up their markets to trade and offered targeted foreign direct investment, North Korea can experience the kind of economic miracle that Japan, South Korea, and China have already enjoyed.
If the United States and its allies can offer security guarantees to North Korea, it should not need to hold onto its deadly nuclear weapons.
If North Korea can recognize that it is in everyone’s interest that North Korea not only continues to exist but becomes more prosperous, perhaps Kim Jung Un will make good on his promise to let go of his nuclear ambitions.
Once North Korea is more economically independent, maybe reunification can be conducted as a joyful reunion between equals. That day is far in the future, however. In the present, powerful negotiators must find the skill to chart a path towards peace and prosperity for North Korea. If they can manage it, they will have left a great legacy to the world.
Alexis Dudden, Professor, University of Connecticut; Joan Cho, Assistant Professor, East Asian Studies and Government, Wesleyan University, and Mary Alice Haddad, Professor, Wesleyan University.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.