Has South Korean democracy hit a glass ceiling? Institutional‐cultural factors and limits to democratic progress

Abstract

This article critically examines the state of South Korea's consolidated democracy in the post-2016 Candlelight period. More specifically, I identify a "glass ceiling" in raising the quality of South Korean democracy, drawing attention to institutional-cultural factors as an underlying barrier for further democratic progress. Political culture reinforces existing institutional design flaws such as a strong executive and a weak political party system. This in turn creates a permissive environment encouraging ruling parties to protect the presidency and implement the Blue House's agenda through means which do not necessarily comport with liberal democracy. After presenting data from several indexes that measure the quality of democracy in South Korea, I discuss how institutions and culture interact to limit democratic advancement. I then use the Sewol ferry disaster during the conservative Park Geunhye administration and implementation of South Korea's inter-Korea engagement policy during the progressive Moon Jae-in government to illustrate my argument. K E Y W O R D S democracy, freedom of speech, political culture, protest, South Korea ¿Ha alcanzado la democracia surcoreana un techo de cristal? Factores institucionales-culturales y límites al progreso democrático: Este artículo examina críticamente 540 | YEO el estado de la democracia consolidada de Corea del Sur en el período de Candlelight posterior a 2016. Más específicamente, identifico un "techo de cristal" para elevar la calidad de la democracia surcoreana, llamando la atención sobre los factores institucionales y culturales como una barrera subyacente para un mayor progreso democrático. La cultura política refuerza los defectos de diseño institucional existentes, como un ejecutivo fuerte y un sistema de partidos políticos débil. Esto, a su vez, crea un ambiente permisivo que alienta a los partidos gobernantes a proteger la presidencia e implementar la agenda de la Casa Azul por medios que no necesariamente concuerdan con la democracia liberal. Después de presentar datos de varios índices que miden la calidad de la democracia en Corea del Sur, analizo cómo las instituciones y la cultura interactúan para limitar el avance democrático. Luego utilizo el desastre del ferry de Sewol durante la administración

Seeds of Mobilization

“…As a result of these challenges, Korean democracy is considered to be incomplete (e.g., J.-J. Choi 2012; D. C. Shin 2018), in stagnation (J. Kim 2018), limited (Yeo 2020), or backsliding (e.g., Haggard and You 2015;Kang and Kang 2014;G.-W. Shin 2020). Although assessing the current state of democracy in South Korea is beyond the scope of this book, we may nevertheless want to reconsider the idea that it is simply a degenerative form of democracy; we may want to consider it instead to be a democracy with its own unique characteristics.…”

Do institutional governance and state fragility affect institutional quality in Asian economies?

“…The study also takes institutional quality as a dependent variable instead of an independent one, which most studies have taken before [ [11] , [12] , [13] , [14] , [15] , [16] ]. With this study, an insight into selected Asia economies' governance practices and their effects on other countries can be examined in a simplified way [ 17 , 18 ]. In the past study, Bertocchi and Guerzoni [ 19 ] applied the Country Policy and Institutional Assessment and state fragility nexus in African countries, and Nguyen and Vo [ 20 ] discussed the corporate governance in banks in ASEAN; however, no study has explored the further analysis of CPIA in other regions yet, which makes this study interesting and fills the gap.…”

Democratic Ceilings: The Long Shadow of Nationalist Polarization in East Asia

“…These are not formal violations of the law, but tactics and actions aimed against the political opposition that routinely violate the informal democratic norms of mutual tolerance and forbearance (Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018). Examples include deliberate efforts to weaken checks and balances, subversion of due process, and strategic censorship of the opposition (Yeo, 2020). Yet are East Asian democracies really backsliding?…”