Light of the East: Korea’s 100-year march toward democracy
by Gregory C. Eaves
August 3, 2017
Kim Dae-jung wrote in November 1994 that, “Asian authoritarians misunderstand the relationship between the rules of effective governance and the concept of legitimacy. Policies that try to protect people from the bad elements of economic and social change will never be effective if imposed without consent; the same policies, arrived at through public debate, will have the strength of Asia’s proud and self-reliant people.” Kim went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 and was president of Korea from 1998 to 2003.
He was describing Asian democracy, and South Korean society has been a shining light along the path toward modernity and civil society for the past 100 years, especially so in 2016 and 2017. In October 2016, a series of million-person demonstrations began in Seoul. Every weekend, the people protested the president’s corruption and influence peddling. By November, 1.9 million people were involved. This continued until March 2017. Though massive in scale, it was civilized in process. The demonstrators were calling for impeachment, a legal removal of a mad king. This was a legislative process, not a lynch mob.
By 2017, Korea had shown the world — and East Asia especially — how democracy is meant to function. A free press uncovers corruption or election abuses. The people come out peacefully onto the streets. The National Assembly, realizing which way the winds are blowing, votes for impeachment. The Constitutional Court upholds that decision. The president is removed from office, thrown in prison, and now faces trial. Extraordinary elections are held and a new president enters office with a popular mandate.
Korea today is at the vanguard of Asian democracy and peaceful civil engagement, but only after a century of trials and tribulations. The process began much earlier.
During a pro-democracy demonstration on June 9, 1987, a university student was hit on the head with a tear gas canister. On June 10, it was decided that the incumbent dictator would, again, win the upcoming elections. On June 18, 1.5 million people took to the streets in 16 cities. On June 26, 1 million people in 34 cities marched against him. On June 29, the dictator capitulated to their demands: he agreed to amend the constitution and to release Kim Dae-jung from prison. On July 5, that same university student from above died of his wounds and 1.6 million people marched in his funeral on July 9.
Before that, in the elections of 1960, a free press found that ballot tampering and election fraud had taken place. This caused a small demonstration in a rural town, but then the police opened fire and a kid’s body was found floating in the harbor. The press further uncovered that the kid had been killed by being hit in the head with a tear gas canister. By April, student-led democracy activists were marching in the streets of Seoul. Professors and teachers joined them. Police refused to fire on the crowds. On April 26, 1960, that dictator stepped down and fled to Hawaii, dying in July 1965.
Even earlier, society faced a bifurcation in the mid-1900s. Nationalism was the natural response to colonialism, but Korea faced industrialization, too, in the 1910s and 1920s. In response, the wealthy land owners founded the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, in Kuomintang Shanghai in April 1919. The response from the workers was to found the Communist Party of Korea, under Comintern auspices, in Seoul in secret in April 1925. Together, these two modern political entities were society’s response to modernization, and they also began the Great Korean Civil Rupture.
The cork in the bottle keeping these civil pressures contained was colonialism. Unfettered after August 1945, the conflict erupted. Who would define our society and our future? What does it mean to be “Korean”? A Korean Civil War erupted (1945-1953), taking place parallel to a U.S.-China war (1951-1953), which both took place within the larger Cold War (1945-1991). All three overlapped on the Korean Peninsula and all three were hot, until Stalin died in March 1953 and the dogs of war were kenneled. Unresolved, these wars left two wounded Korean polities on the field of battle. Though tragic, this Great Korean Civil Rupture has allowed South Korea to modernize without the “Chinese Burden” that exists in North Korea and elsewhere.
Stretching back even further to the birth of modern Korea, the first steps in democratic progression came from the seeds of nationalism. A march for independence took place in Seoul on March 1, 1919. Thirty-three nationalists met to read out a declaration of independence. Wildly popular, and burning with the upswell of a recently realized common ethnic identity, the crowds grew. The Japanese colonial constabulary panicked and opened fire, and police cracked down nationwide. In March and April 1919, estimates range from 550 killed and 12,000 arrested, up to 7,500 killed and 46,000 arrested. This nationalism was Korea’s first step toward eventual independence and democracy.
Even though Korea leads Asian democracy today, it is still searching for the answers to the ultimate questions, the same questions faced before by many non-Western societies. How can we modernize and still retain our culture? Do we have to Westernize in order to modernize? How do we reap the fruits of modernity from our own garden? For a century, Korea has been finding its own answers.
In 1919, nationalism was barely budding, with modernization just over the horizon, and democracy far away. A century on, Korean democracy has surpassed that in both Japan, the first non-Westerner to modernize, and Taiwan. Worldwide, only Tokyo, Taipei and Seoul have been able to face the Rise of the West head on as equals, with blooming economies, brilliant technologies and booming democracies. It seems that Kim Dae-jung was right. “Policies arrived at through public debate and democratic processes have the strength of Asia’s proud and self-reliant people.” Korea stands tall among them.
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