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What Is Putinism? M October 2017, Volume 28, Number 4 $14.00 What Is Putinism? M. Steven Fish Vladimir Kara-Murza Leon Aron Lilia Shevtsova Vladislav Inozemtsev Graeme Robertson and Samuel Greene Eroding Norms and Democratic Deconsolidation Paul Howe Iran’s 2017 Election: Two Views Abbas Milani Ladan Boroumand Marc F. Plattner on Democracy’s Fading Allure Gi-Wook Shin & Rennie Moon on South Korea’s Impeachment Drama Michael C. Davis on Constitutionalism in Asia Ken Menkhaus on Somalia’s Elections Staffan Lindberg et al. on Measuring Democratic Backsliding Social Media and Democracy Joshua Tucker, Yannis Theocharis, Margaret Roberts, and Pablo Barberá SOUTH KOREA AFTER IMPEACHMENT Gi-Wook Shin and Rennie J. Moon Gi-Wook Shin is professor of sociology and director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. Rennie J. Moon is associate professor of research methods at Un- derwood International College of Yonsei University and the 2016–17 Koret Fellow at the Shorenstein Center. In just over a year, between April 2016 and May 2017, a series of dra- matic events roiled the domestic politics of South Korea (hereinafter Korea). Things began normally enough: An election to fill all 300 seats in the unicameral National Assembly went forward as scheduled on 13 April 2016. A presidential balloting was set to follow in due course near the close of 2017 as the incumbent, Park Geun Hye of the right-of-center Saenuri (New Frontier) Party,1 finished the single five-year term that the constitution allows. In late October 2016, however, a lightning bolt of scandal electri- fied the scene. President Park and her confidante, Choi Soon Sil, faced charges of cronyism and other forms of corruption. Massive protests against Park broke out; millions of citizens in this country of 51 million became involved. The demonstrations would go on into the new year. They culminated in the first-ever successful impeachment of a Korean president on 10 March 2017, when the Constitutional Court issued a unanimous 8–0 ruling upholding the Assembly’s December 9 impeach- ment vote. Two months after the March ruling, on May 9, a snap presidential election elevated Moon Jae In of the left-of-center Democratic Party to the highest office. This special election featured five major candidates, an exceptionally large presidential field. In 1987, four people had run, and Korea has also seen three-way races (in 1992, 1997, and 2007). All these together can give the impression of a fragmented party system, though in truth the tendency of smaller parties to merge into larger ones soon after an election has maintained what has largely been a two-party Journal of Democracy Volume 28, Number 4 October 2017 © 2017 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press 118 Journal of Democracy system. Will the present five-party structure move back toward the usual bipartism? That remains to be seen. With only 40 percent of the As- sembly under their control, Democratic Party leaders hoped to find a way to merge the People’s Party (a faction that had spun off from the Democrats in early 2016) back into Democratic ranks. Dispensing with any transition period, newly elected President Moon took the reins of power the day after the balloting. The right side of the political spectrum, having lost because it split over impeachment and other issues, contemplated its loss of power and asked itself how it could chart a course back. In an established democracy such as Korea, a string of tumultuous even if peaceful events can seem perplexing. Has a country widely known as an exemplary case from the global “third wave” of democra- tization suddenly fallen under the spell of populist agitation and lapsed into deinstitutionalization? Some observers have said as much. “The wave of populism that fueled Brexit, the rise of Donald Trump and the fall of Italian leader Matteo Renzi has reached South Korea,” proclaimed one Bloomberg News correspondent.2 That is not the best characterization of what happened, however. The events of 2016–17 were not an attack on democratic institutions, but rather a movement to redress their violation by Korea’s political elite. The truth is that protest-led reform has been an integral part of Korea’s political development for decades. In 1960, student-led protests forced authoritarian chief executive Syngman Rhee (the Republic of Korea’s first president) to leave office. In 1987, it was street demonstrations that pressured the dictatorship of President Chun Doo Hwan to accept the re- forms that marked Korea’s transition to democracy. Given this history, it makes more sense to view protest-led reform in Korea as a legitimate channel through which democratic political energies can flow. Nonetheless, this stunning reversal of political fortunes, with an un- precedented impeachment as the turning point, poses a number of ques- tions about Korean politics and where it is headed. What accounts for President Park’s extraordinary fall? What are the main challenges, so- cioeconomic as well as political, that confront Korean democracy in the wake of these events? Can President Moon’s new government live up to high postimpeachment expectations, especially with a National Assem- bly in which his Democratic Party controls only two-fifths of the seats? What does it all mean for the future of Korean democracy? The Road to Impeachment President Park’s impeachment was unexpected. Pressures from be- low triggered it. It was the second impeachment of a chief executive in Korean history: President Roh Moo Hyun had been impeached by the National Assembly in 2004, less than a year and a half after his 2002 Gi-Wook Shin and Rennie J. Moon 119 election, but the Constitutional Court overruled the attempt to oust him from office. The impeachment of Roh, a politician of the center-left, had been the work of parties opposed to him, which at the time enjoyed a large majority in the Assembly. His foes accused him of having violated his presidential duty to maintain electoral neutrality by publicly urging his supporters to vote in the April 2004 election. President Park’s im- peachment a dozen years later, by contrast, had clearly come at the in- stigation not of political elites, but of civil society. Many leaders who at first felt hesitant about impeaching her later backed the move as popular pressure for it escalated. Park Geun Hye (b. 1952) is the daughter of the late President Park Chung Hee (1917–79), the leader of a 1961 military coup who ruled Korea for eighteen years until his own intelligence chief assassinated him, and who is still revered by many as the father of modern Korea. Although her 2012 victory over former top Roh Moo Hyun aide Moon Jae In had not been overwhelming (she had defeated him by 51.6 to 48 percent), she was nonetheless something of a political darling. In the last quarter of 2016, all that changed when a media bombshell burst. Korean news organizations had discovered that sixty-year-old Choi Soon Sil, allegedly a shaman or medium and the holder of no public office, had been improperly and illegally influencing the official decisions of her longtime friend President Park and the Park administration. A special investigation later found that Park had relied heavily on Choi in the handling of key matters both foreign and domestic. Exploit- ing her close ties to the president, Choi had pressured business leaders and government officials for personal gain. While scandals involving presidential relatives have not been uncommon in Korean history, a cor- ruption case directly implicating the president was something new (for- mer presidents Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo had gone to jail in 1996, but that had been for their roles in coup-plotting). The news of the “Choi-gate” scandal infuriated the public, and Park’s approval rating dropped through the floor, plunging in just weeks to a microscopic 4 percent, the lowest ever for a Korean president. Park tried apologizing repeatedly, but this did not assuage public anger. Calls began to rise for her to be investigated, with critics urging her to resign or face impeachment. In the eyes of much of the public, she stood con- demned as a figure who had violated democratic principles and regressed toward practices that smacked of the country’s authoritarian past. From the first protests on 29 October 2016 to the Constitutional Court’s final impeachment verdict on 10 March 2017, tens of millions took part in the street protests, mainly in the capital city of Seoul but also across the country. Smaller rallies organized by Park supporters took place as well. While the process of ousting Park was dramatic and the outcome was unprecedented, change in Korea has often been driven by civil society. This has largely been due to the weakness of Korean political parties. 120 Journal of Democracy A typical party is built around a single leader at the center, without a strong party base grounded in grassroots demands or interests. Political scientists call Korea’s parties “cadre parties” (elite- rather than mass- oriented), “electoral-professional parties” (focused on winning office To those who had voted rather than enacting platforms), and for her in the last election, “catchall parties” (not reflecting the Park s misbehavior interests of any particular class or ’ 3 represented a retreat back group). In Korea, civil society orga- nizations do the work of aggregating toward the authoritarian interests and addressing demands that years and a rejection of parties do in systems where they are the democratic principles stronger. that they had fought so The 2016–17 protests illustrate hard to establish.
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