Korea Institute Newsletter - June 1999, vol. In a year of remarkable happenings in Korea, both politically and economically, what is perhaps most remarkable of all are three things that did NOT happen. First, the country's still fledgling democratic system did NOT break down, either in the unprecedented transition to political power of an opposition party the ruling elite had for decades branded as subversive and had blocked with every means at its disposal, or even in the context of the worst economic crisis since the Korea War. Important in keeping the system intact, of course, was Kim Dae Jung's strategic self-transformation and cultivation of the conservatives, as well as the new government's respect for democratic politics, but even more important was a strong popular commitment to a democratic political culture that honors the electoral process and will no longer tolerate political usurpation or arbitrary governance.
History is important here.
Common arguments of the past that democracy is alien to Korean culture or inappropriate given Korea's level of development hold little persuasive power today. The March First Movement in 1919 demanding an end to Japan's colonial control of Korea was also an expression of democratic outrage against illegitimate government. But it was really the long years of political struggle in South Korea, first against the legal and electoral abuses of the Rhee government, and later against successive authoritarian military regimes in the 1970s and 1980s, that indigenized democratic politics in the country. By 1987 the movement was so widespread that the Chun Doo Hwan government was forced to make concessions that would have been unthinkable a decade earlier. The presidential election of 1992, which brought the first of South Korea's two most famous dissident politicians to power, albeit on the ruling party's ticket, also set a standard for untrammeled elections that helped insure Kim Dae Jung's victory in 1998.