The Origins Of Conservative Democracy In South Korea: Nation-Building, Democratic Transition, and Middle-Class Politics

After more than twenty years since the democratic transition in 1987, South Korea witnessed an ironic political scene, in which a daughter of the former dictator Park Chung Hee, Park Geun Hye, was elected as the new president in the winter of 2012. This paper argues that the middle class largely shaped the post-democratization trajectory in Korea by resisting any significant social reforms and preventing furthering social equality and redistribution. While the middle class is believed to be a strong supporter of representative/electoral democracy to have led a democratic transition in Korea, the middle class has also been the one that resisted significant socioeconomic reforms implemented by the center-left governments including the Kim Dae Jung and Roh Mu Hyun administrations. This paper examines the origin of conservative democracy in Korea in which the middle class played a key role as a status-quo political actor. To do so, this paper traces the historical process of nation-building and economic development, through which the middle class was emerged by the support of the authoritarian state and became an exclusionary social group that advanced its own class interest against the less privileged. In addition, the current geopolitical situations that have confronted with North Korea for more than half a century also contribute to preventing any left-leaning policies from taking place and in turn to strengthening right-wing power. By looking at political dynamics of historical context, class alliances, and political discourse, this paper will broaden the understanding of the relationship between the middle class and democracy in transitional periods.