1 Prologue

The modern history of Korea can be

said to have begun in 1945 with the deeply
emotional liberation from the Japanese
colonial rule. A retrospective analysis reveals
that the pattern of that history has assumed
a distinctly dual character. On the one hand,
the narrative has been scarred by the
tragedy of national division, the brutality of
civil war, and the widespread terror and
suffocation of democracy inflicted by
autocratic dictators and the institutions of a
fascist state. This dark facets of Korea’
s
recent past may be summarized as‘a history of barbarism
driven by insanity which witnessed countless sacrifices’
. On the
other hand, however, that history is also a proud testimony to
the epic struggle by ordinary people in their determination to
regain human dignity and replace oppression, exploitation,
discrimination, and marginalization with true and universal
48 democracy. As the narrative unfolded, major political crises were
encountered at approximately ten-year intervals. Following the
political breakthrough in 1987 the country entered a period of
transition from dictatorship to democracy which, itself, also
contained elements of tension and conflict at various societal
levels.
The democratization in Korea was characterized by
dynamic interactions between the state, political society, and
social movements, but the fundamental force moving it forward
was the pressure exerted from below. Both the initial inception
and the continuing progress of democratization were possible
only because of the presence of this powerful motive force. In
the sense that the attainment and maintenance of democracy
requires rearrangement of the relationships between the state,
political circles, and civil society, these imperatives were
achieved in Korea by virtue of the momentum afforded by an
irresistible dynamic.
A more systematic understanding of democracy requires
one to consider the democratic transition of a country from a
viewpoint beyond individual events, such as the change from an
authoritarian or military regime to a civilian or elected
government, and to look at democratization movements in terms
broader than popular resistance against dictatorship or the

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49

The masses who gathered together to commemorate the liberation.(1945, ⓒ Lee Kyung-mo)
 struggle for the institutional democratization of the state. By the
same token, the history of democratization in Korea should be
seen as a macro-historical process that unfolded subsequent to
national liberation, was characterized by reciprocal dynamics,
and in which a wider range of movements coexisted and
interacted with each other for the attainment of‘socio-
economic democracy’
,‘producer-oriented democracy’
, or
‘democracy in the life-world’
.
The Korean experience constitutes a veritable treasure
house for theorization and inspiration for alternative
perspectives on democracy; indeed, the democratization
movement in Korea has attracted much attention from around
the world for its resilience and militancy, and it has influenced
similar movements in other countries. At a time of on-going
transition, a need is also felt to reflect the significance of
democratization in Korea in the context of the global history of
democratization and, from that position, examine the
alternatives for future progress.
This study will first consider the‘state-building’period of
1945~1953; i.e. from the moment of liberation from colonial rule
to the signing of the armistice at the end of the Korean War, in

50
the context of the consolidation of a cold war, division-defined,
anti-communist system. It will then explain the course of
democratization in the period immediately following; paying
particular regard to the main actors and their objectives. The
trajectory of democratization in Korea is, therefore, divided into
three periods: the first of which extends from the
commencement of the series of authoritarian dictatorships in the
post-Korean War period to the‘Gwangju Democratic Uprising in
1980. The second period is from May 1980 to June 1987, the time
of the‘June Struggle for Democracy’
, and the third is from June
1987 to the inauguration of President Roh Moo-hyun’
s
administration in 2002.
 2 From Liberation to Division of the
Korean Peninsula

The liberation of Korea from the

Japanese colonial rule on August 15, 1945
was the dawn of an epoch in which the
old established colonial order would
collapse and be replaced by a new
structure. It was to be a time of all-out
contests between various political and
social forces regarding the precise extent
of the abandonment of colonial mores and
feudal legacies, and the detailed
characteristics of the nation-state in the

Korea Democracy Foundation

new order. Immediately after the cessation
of colonial rule, the process of post-
colonial state formation gave way to a
progressive state led by left wing forces which, generally
speaking, based their agendas on the interests and the
aspirations of the Korean people. However, the American
Military Government (AMG) was the external power imposed on 51

Korea after liberation, and it became an instrument for pressing

on Korea policies which served the interests of the United
States. The AMG violently repressed and then totally destroyed
the nascent state being formed by Koreans and replaced it with
the‘cold war, division-defined, anti-communist’model alluded
to above. Following this failure to establish a unified nation-
state, Koreans watched the domestic contests taking place
between diverse internal factions combining with interventions
by foreign forces, and culminating in civil war.
This process was not straightforward. It involved violent
political and social confrontations nation-wide, and the forced
 dissolution of the‘people’
s
committees’
, the‘September General
Strike’and the‘October People’
s
Struggle’
, in 1946; the‘Cheju Island
April 3 Struggle’of 1948, the‘Yeosoo-
Suncheon Incident’in October of the
same year and, finally, the Korean War.
The process was violent because it
represented a‘great ideological
reversal’in the period immediately
following national liberation; that is, a
radical shift away from the political hegemony of the dominant
left wing forces to that led by anti-communist, right wing
forces. It was during this period that the organizations and the
political and economic capacities of the working class, and other
popular elements, which had been growing since liberation, were
destroyed. Also eradicated were the left wing opposition alliance
that had been formed after liberation and the‘anti-division’
nationalist opposition alliance that opposed the establishment of
two governments on the Korean peninsula.
The Korean War, which resulted in more than five million

52
human casualties and the devastation of almost the entire
territory, had its roots in this short‘liberation period’between
1945 and 1950. It was, in effect, the culmination, the fusion, and
the explosion of most of the socio-political conflicts and
contradictions that characterized the circumstance of two
separate systems attempting to exist in what had so recently
been one country. In Korea, the direct experience of such a war
made it possible to utilize the ideology of anti-communism as a
hegemonic tool for mobilizing passive popular consensus; a
mechanism for inculcating the politics of fear. This, in turn,
rendered it possible for the institutions of the Republic of Korea
to reiterate constantly the powerfully emotive concepts of anti-
communism and national security as ostensibly indisputable
grounds for political legitimacy.
Since the Korean War came to an end by armistice1, it
was almost inevitable that a politically and ideologically
asymmetric structure, biased towards the extreme right wing,
would develop in Korea. It became an institutionalized construct
whose salient features were based upon the consolidation of the
cold war ethos, the raft of implications stemming from the
physical division of the peninsula, and an anti-communist
imperative so extreme that every member of society was
required to exercise a mechanism of anti-communist self-
censorship. In other words, the particular experience of the civil
war was converted into an individualistic, internalized, pseudo-
consensus dominated by the notion of‘anti-communism for
security’which became the defining characteristic of social

Korea Democracy Foundation

relations and conduct for both individuals and groups. This was
tantamount to the construction of an anti-communist
regimented society. The historical and structural conditions
created by the imposition of this right wing dogma functioned as
a most effective mechanism for rationalizing state violence and
dictatorial rule; furthermore, its influence long constituted a
serious obstacle to democratization and democracy movement 53
politics in Korea.

The First Period of Democratization

1 As opposed to capitulation, surrender, or the signing of a formal peace treaty. Thus, in

terms of international law, a state of war still technically exists between North and South
Korea.
 3
A. The Rhee Syng-man Regime

As has been noted, the capacity and capability of the

nascent working class,
and other extra-
governmental popular
sectors that had evolved
via anti-imperialist
national liberation
movements was
A helicopter aboard a United Nations Forces delegation to
the armistice talks is taking off the ground to start for
destroyed in the course
Gaeseong. This is the location where the present
Panmunjeom is located. (1951, ⓒ Lee Kyung-mo)
of violent political
confrontations
conditioned by the
exogenous influence of
the AMG and by the
social trauma of the Korean War. Following the division of the
peninsula and the cultivation of an overtly anti-communist
regimented society, The Republic of Korea has rapidly assumed,
through a series of political levelling measures after the war, the

54
character of a‘right wing society without resistance’
. In the
process, the ability of civil society to restrain the state weakened
markedly and the use of violence by agencies of the state
became extensive. Justified by its‘anti-communism for security’
mantra, Korea had become a national security state, and
terrorism was exercised widely by the First Republic
administration led by Rhee Syng-man. It should be noted that
the huge ruling apparatus that had grown during the period of
colonial rule was further reinforced during the Korean War, and
was then able to blend seamlessly into the institutional structure
of the security state. At the core of the coercive power of the
security state were an enlarged police force and army, while
normal political processes such as party politics and
parliamentary politics inevitably atrophied under the security-
oriented dictatorship.
In the Rhee Syng-man regime all power was
concentrated in the hands of one person, the president. As he
assumed the authority of all administrative power and was
located above all parliamentary restraint, his influence became
privatized and personified. Under Rhee’
s rule, political
institutions, including the Constitution, remained democratic in
shape, but the actual practices were conducted in an
authoritarian fashion, resulting in a strange and unstable
construct of democracy as the institutional framework and
authoritarianism in all practical applications. Liberal democracy,
the expressed prime objective of the state, became the disguise
of a philosophy that destroyed democracy and individual freedom

Korea Democracy Foundation

rather than promoted them. The irony is that this was all done
in the name of democracy. A series of incidents during the
period encapsulates how the Rhee regime systematically
destroyed democratic
constitutional order; it included
the Busan political scandal of
1952, the Constitutional 55
Jo Bong-am sitting in traditional
Korean clothes at a court. amendment scandal of 1954, the
(1958, ⓒ Kim Chun-kil)
National Security Act scandal in
1958, the judicial murder of Jo
Bong-am, the leader of the
Progressive Party, in 1959 (see
below), and the closure of the
Gyung-hyang Daily newspaper in
the same year.
The period of time from
the liberation on August 15, 1945
to the April Revolution in 1960 is
 marked by two opposing
histories; on one side
there was the dictatorial
rule dependent upon
foreign support, and a
deepening of the national
division, while on the
other there was the
popular opposition and
resistance to that
authority and division.
During the period that
followed the Korean War,
movement politics
Citizens watching the removal of the Rhee Syng- languished because of the
man Statue. (1960, ⓒ Kim Chun-kil)
severity of social
conditions created by the
war and the impositions of
a security-oriented
dictatorship. Two
exceptions to the suppression of movement activities were the

56
Progressive Party, led by Jo Bong-am, and the April 19
Revolution (see below). The Progressive Party emerged after the
war and began to threaten the conservative political framework
put in place by the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party, by
advocating policies under the banner of peaceful reunification
and the realiszation of rights and interests of victimized people.
The Progressive Party appealed to the public by pursuing a third
line, detached from both the capitalist system of the South and
the socialist system of the North. In the presidential election of
1956, the Progressive Party proved its eponymous potential in
the legitimate political space by securing an astounding 2.16
million votes. However, this success alarmed the established
conservative political forces, which eventually initiated a police
round-up of all Progressive Party cadres, the cancellation of the
party registration and, finally, the indictment of its leader, Jo
Bong-am, on a charge of espionage on behalf of North Korea.
At his trial, Jo was sentenced to death, and was thus effectively
removed from the political scene. This incident clearly
demonstrated and reaffirmed, by dint of the tacit approval of
the opposition party and the silent majority, the potency of the
anti-communist ethic and the extent to which it could instil fear
in the minds of political opponents and the wider population and,
in so doing, gain their acquiescence. It is a salutary reflection of
the entire political landscape of the time.
Repercussions from the political backwardness prevalent
during the Rhee Syng-man regime’
s First Republic burst to the
surface in the general election on March 15, 1960. An

Korea Democracy Foundation

unprecedented plethora of corruption scandals and election
frauds provided the trigger for what became known as‘the April
Revolution’the following month. Rhee and his ruling party
staged massive operations in a concerted effort to fabricate
convincingly an election victory, mobilizing all possible means,
including administrative intimidation, bribery, and direct violence
against the opposition. Witnessing at first hand the blatant 57
contradiction between their‘ideal’of American liberal
democracy and the Korean reality of Rhee’
s dictatorship, so
plainly manifested in the widespread electoral corruption,
university students took to the streets in force, demanding the
abolition of the dictatorship and the achievement of democracy.
In the April Revolution sustained protests by students and
citizens finally brought down the Rhee Syng-man administration.
After suffering 186 deaths and 6,026 injured protesters across
the country, the Korean people succeeded in deposing a despotic
power for the first time in history.
 B. Park Chung-hee : Developmental Dictatorship and a
Dark Age for Democracy

(i) From military coup to October Yushin

The Jang Myeon government,

established in the socio-political space
created by the April Revolution, was
overthrown by military coup on May 16,
1961, after a year of drifting in confusion.
The coup was led by General Park Chung-
hee and marked the end of Korea’
s very
first experiment with parliamentary
democracy. For the next 18 years Park
would rule the country with an iron hand,
and establish himself as a seminal figure in
the shaping of modern Korea. His protracted stewardship would
be brought to a premature end by his assassination at the hands
of one of his closest colleagues, Kim Jae-gyu, on October 26,
1979.
The military regime that was put in place by the May

58
coup was characterised, on the one hand, by features of a
security-oriented dictatorial rule inherited from the Rhee Syng-
man era and translated into a‘military dictatorship’ . On the
other hand, it was a regime which revised the old, negative,
anti-communist objectives of the state, and combined them with
a more positive imperative for‘modernization’through state-led
economic development plans. In effect, this approach opened up
a‘developmental era’in which a new national mobilization was
possible; and which led to the defining of the regime as a
‘developmental dictatorship.’It was in this period that the
tension between dictatorship and democracy burgeoned, as
diverse conflicts and confrontations were created by the rapid
 Park Chung-hee and coup d'etat ′ leading figures watching a street parade by the Military Academy cadets
supporting the military coup. (1960, ⓒ Kim Chun-kil)

Korea Democracy Foundation

growth of a state-led capitalist economy. Political changes prior
to this period were the outcomes of political conflict between the
actual authoritarian rule and the ideal of liberal democracy,
whereas political changes from this point began to assume a
much more complex and violent nature because of new tensions
created by capitalist industrialization.
Park Chung-hee tried to transform latent national energy 59
into a positive and determined drive for economic development
by means of a new state hegemony project under the general
banner of‘modernization’and the more specific rallying cry
‘escape from absolute poverty’
. In this way he hoped to
consolidate his regime’
s highly tenuous political legitimacy and
thereby sustain its authority to govern. Park exerted maximum
control over the labor sector and managed the wider Korean
society in a regimental way in order to ensure minimal
obstruction in the regime’
s path toward the achievement of its
main goal of rapid economic growth. He also strove for a total
mobilization of the nation towards this objective by suppressing
 any divisions within the
ruling power bloc, and
scorning the demands
for democracy
emanating from the
populace. This dynamic
was conducted under
The opening ceremony of a National Athletic Meeting
displaying Park Chung-hee's name in a card section. banners such as
(1960, ⓒ Kim Chun-kil)
‘modernization of the
fatherland’and‘total
unity’
. The so-called
‘miracle of the Han
River’was done by a combination of modernization from above
and a significant level of popular support, one outcome of which
was a sort of exchange relation between economic interest and
political interest; that is, economic compensation being gained in
exchange for the deferral of political freedom. The fact that the
18 years of Park’
s rule represented a‘golden age of
imprisonment’
, during which Korean criminal institutions were
filled with unfortunate individuals against whom the state
fabricated charges involving contraventions of national security

60
laws, has its roots in the same background of public acceptance
and silence.
The climax of Park Chung-hee’
s dictatorial rule was the
declaration of the Yushin (revitalizing reform) Constitution and
the imposition of the Yushin regime in October 1972. The Yushin
regime can only be described as a historical crime committed by
Park and his acolytes, and was a manifestation of their greed
for power. In fact, it was the third coup engineered by Park in
his efforts to suffocate democracy; following the May military
coup of 1961, and the Constitutional‘coup in office’of 1969
which enabled him to serve for a previously prohibited third
term.
 In terms of power structure, the main feature of the
Yushin regime was the overt concentration of all power in the
President’
s hands and the concomitant dismantling of all
institutional arrangements that were designed to prevent such a
circumstance. The process was presented to the populace as
‘democracy the Korean way’
. Under the provisions of the Yushin
regime, South Korea was a republic in name only. In reality, the
extent of the power wielded by the President alone, with virtually
no conventional checks and balances in place, was comparable
to that of an absolute monarch. Although the Yushin
Constitution ostensibly prescribed democratic parliamentary
procedures, which in normal circumstances would serve the
principles of division, the mutual constraint of power, and the
politics of dialogue and compromise, any attempts by the
populace to express political freedoms and the rights of

Korea Democracy Foundation

citizenship were instantly repressed and labelled an‘excess of
politics’
. The extreme concentration of power during this period
resulted in a marked diminution of social integrity; a
phenomenon which was clearly reflected in a dysfunctional
parliament, the subjugation of the judicial system (epitomized by
‘show’trials and a rigidity of sentencing2), and the severe
limitation of numerous basic freedoms including those of 61
expression, assembly, the media, and association, as well as a
serious reduction of basic labor rights. Intelligence agencies
routinely monitored the day-to-day lives of ordinary citizens
and, together with police and military security forces, carried out
widespread and arbitrary arrests, torture, and kidnapping of
anyone regarded as a political or social threat. Despite the
blatant illegality of the majority of these repressive activities
conducted by agents of the state, they were overtly used as

2 The practice of courts routinely to award the sentence demanded by the state
prosecutors in the initial indictment rather than use judicial discretion.
 mechanisms to justify the role of the regime in maintaining
national security. In the Park Chung-hee system of governance,
development goals such as the Saemaul (new village) Movement3,
the 10 billion dollar export plan, the Great Leap of the 1970s,
and the Great Ambition of the 1980s4 were symbols of
hegemonic domination, while Presidential Emergency Decrees,
Garrison Decrees, and the imposition of Martial Law were
symbols of the state oppression that ran in parallel.
During the Park era, a state of martial law was declared
on three occasions, covering 31 months in all. In addition,
Garrison Decrees were imposed three times, lasting for five
months altogether, and Emergency Decrees nine times, for a
total of 69 months. It can only be assumed that it did not
appear abnormal to Park and his followers that for almost half
of the 18 years in which he was in power the Korean people
were subjected to the imposition of harsh and repressive
‘emergency’legislation.
Among the legislative instruments, Emergency Decree No.
9, issued on May 13, 1975, was the severest, and effectively
placed the entire nation in a wartime state of alert. In order to
avoid violation of any of the provisions in this decree, citizens

62
had to conduct themselves almost like imbeciles, pretending not
to hear anything of a
‘sensitive’
nature, or say anything that
could possibly be construed as seditious or inflammatory. In the
‘age of repression,terror, and death’that Park Chung-hee had
created, virtually anything could be interpreted as‘sensitive’
,
‘seditious’
, or‘inflammatory’
.

3 The rural community development campaign initiated and led by Park Chung-hee in
the 1970s. In rural areas it was aimed mainly at the modernization of rural life and
economy, with programmes ranging from cultural reform to income enhancement
guidance. In the cities it was more akin to a government-led mobilization, often
accompanied by state indoctrination.
4 Themes of Park Chung-hee’ s speeches.
(ii) Movement politics and the end of Park’
s rule

Throughout the Park

Chung-hee era, and especially
during the Yushin period (post-
1972), the state’
s routine
invocation of the threat of
communism effectively blocked
Figures involved in the People Revolutionary
Party Incident.(1975)
any popular demand for
democratic participation in the
political process. At the same
time, the appeals for equal
opportunity of‘growth’and
‘national security’exercised a
similar restriction on the citizens’legitimate ambitions for the

Korea Democracy Foundation

restoration of their rights. The Yushin regime functioned in a
manner that extended beyond the routine infliction of violence
by the state on its citizens, into a realm where the state
authority infiltrated every corner of civil society to both control
it, and stifle its potential. Lacking the pluralistic political
representation of diverse social interests and, therefore,
deficient of a self-rectifying mechanism to resolve social 63
conflict, it assumed the characteristics of an inflexible polity. By
the same token, it was a highly vulnerable system, sustainable
only for as long as it could maintain a level of economic growth
sufficient to meet the demands of the imagined new society of
the‘affluent 1980s’
, and continue to suppress even the smallest
internal disagreement or external instability. It was in a social,
economic, and political milieu like this that extraordinary
incidents could occur, such as the kidnap and attempted murder
of Kim Dae-jung (1973), the mysterious death of dissident leader
Jang Jun-ha (1975), the purge of the Democratic Youth and
Students Alliance (1974), and the fabricated case of attempted
 YH Trading Co. girl workers who have transferred their sit-in protest location to
the New Democratic Party building. (1979)

re-establishment of the People’s Revolutionary Party (1974) and

the execution of its members. As these and other events
gradually deepened the crisis of political legitimacy, the Park
regime was left with only two options, both extreme: to continue
the all-out drive for economic growth, or face a catastrophic
end.
But the regime also faced the need to employ a
‘democratic discourse’that would differentiate it from the Rhee
Syng-man administration, justify the execution of the 1961
64 military coup and the rule of the military junta, and Park’
s
eventual dictatorship. It was referred to as‘administrative
democracy’
,‘national democracy’or‘Korean democracy’
;
whereas in fact it was a statist mobilization of the people in the
name of democracy. In essence, however, it was a discourse
centred upon the‘sacrifice of democracy’or the‘inevitability of
dictatorship’
, and used‘democracy’merely as a name and a
cover. Park’
s distortion of nationalism and democracy was not
without resistance, however, for it gained critical civil responses
such as the surge of demonstrations against the Korea-Japan
5
Meeting, that included a‘funeral march of national democracy’,
 and the June 3
Struggle6, of 1964,
and popular
demonstrations
against the
Constitutional
amendment in 1969.
Nation-wide
opposition was
The martial law soldiers who have occupied downtown Busan
streets by mobilzing tanks and armored cars on the proclamation expressed against
of martial law. (1979)
the Korea-Japan
Meeting because of
the humiliating
diplomacy of the Park government; and against the
Constitutional amendment of 1969 because of the regime’
s

Korea Democracy Foundation

disregard of democratic procedures.
One oppositional action inspired others. After the Yushin
reforms were declared, various social groups and sectors began
to express their antagonism and resistance to the regime.
Examples such as the students’opposition to military training as
part of the curriculum, the movement to uphold university
campus autonomy, various pro-democracy protests, and 65
combined efforts to protect the right to livelihood, are cases in
point. The more the state attempted to repress these
developments, the more resolute the resistance became. As an
explicit dictatorship, the Yushin regime dealt with internal
contradictions in such a way as to promote a counterforce,
thereby sowing the seed of its eventual collapse. Such internal

5 The most symbolic demonstration led by university students during the June 3 Struggle.
6 A series of demonstrations from March to June 1964 protesting against the first ROK-
Japan treaty meeting. By signing an agreement of war reparation with Japan, the Park
regime sought a diplomatic breakthrough accompanied by a substantial aid package;
resources essential for continued economic growth in Korea. The regime brought the
public protest to an end on 3 June 1964 by declaring a state of martial law and
arresting 348 protest leaders.
 tensions multiplied and, when young woman workers at the YH
company Trade Union went on strike in 1979 demanding basic
rights7, and anti-government riots broke out in the cities of
Busan and Masan8, the ruling bloc split over how to handle the
crisis. This triggered the assassination of Park Chung-hee on 26
October 1979 and, in turn, the collapse of the Yushin regime.
With respect to the democratization movement of this
period, two features stand out. First, until the time of the
Gwangju Democratic Uprising in May 1980 (see below) the
movement had unfolded with a fundamental adherence to
liberalism, and had striven towards the common goals of
toppling the military dictatorship and restoring political
democracy. As a consequence, it was frequently presented in
terms designed for a broad and diverse appeal; for example, the
‘One Million Appeal for Constitutional Revision’(1973) and the
‘March 1st Declaration for Democracy and National Salvation’
(1976). This characteristic is related to the leading actors in the
movement, who could not be regarded as‘social forces’rooted
in the working class, but who were, in the main, liberal-minded
‘dissident’intellectuals and students, who usually organised
themselves within universities and religious institutions. It is

66
uncommon, and certainly unprecedented in other parts of the
world, for a strong collective resistance to be formed from
scattered and sporadic actions occurring mostly in universities
and religious institutions.
Second, concurrently there was an active pro-democracy
movement consisting of workers, farmers, and the urban poor;
all of whom were striving for freedom from want and other

7 A sit-in strike in August 1979 staged by trade union members of the YH Trading
Company, a wig manufacturer. The strike was held inside the headquarters of the main
opposition party. Workers demanded guarantees of basic rights after the company
decided to close down the business.
8 Wide-spread protests in the cities of Pusan and Masan in October 1979 against the
Park regime.
 objectives encapsulated in
social and economic
democracy. This element
found expression in the
Gwangju Housing Complex
Riot9 in 1971, which was the
largest collective action by
the urban poor since
Yi So-sun sobbing in sorrow with her son's
portrait at the funeral ceremony of worker Chun liberation, and
Tae-il. (1970)
demonstrations by farmers,
such as the Ham-pyong
Protest for Compensation
for Sweet Potatoes10 in 1976,
and the farmers’
cooperatives democratization movement11. The self-immolation of

Korea Democracy Foundation

the young garment industry worker, Chun Tae-il, in 1970
graphically and tragically drew attention to the dire situation of
thousands of young female workers in the industry, and sparked
wider criticism of the government-sponsored Federation of
Korean Trade Unions (FKTU). Chun Tae-il’
s sacrifice also
galvanised workers in Seoul’
s sweat-shop clothing factories to
action, and presaged the birth of independent, democratic trade 67
unionism in Korea.
The stage for democratic trade unionism was set by such
actions as the formation of the Chonggye Garment Union (1970),
the Dong-il Textiles Union struggle to uphold its independence,

9 Riot staged by the urban poor who had been forcibly evicted from various squatter
areas in Seoul by the city authority and relocated in sub-human living conditions in
the Gwangju area.
10 Wide-spread protest by farmers against the government’ s agricultural policies in 1976,
triggered by the government’ s failure to purchase the promised amount of sweet
potatoes from the growers.
11 Most farmers’cooperatives were ineffective until voluntary farmers’groups staged this
campaign in the 1980s. It began with the demand to introduce direct elections for
cooperative leadership.
 the worker’
s rights struggle at the Han-gook Textiles Company,
and the activities of the YH Union (see above). Chun Tae-il’
s
action not only signalled the start of the democratic labor
movement, but also resulted in a far deeper awareness of social
reality on the parts of leading figures in the pro-democracy and
other progressive social movements.
His death forced liberal movement forces to reflect upon
their existing minimalist democratic agendas, and incorporate
more concrete issues such as the right to livelihood of workers,
the urban poor, and other grassroots disadvantaged. Chun’
s
action also became the seed for a new social alliance, between
workers and students, as well as a pivotal moment after which
intellectuals became engaged in the industrial sectors, and
religious groups expanded into industrial mission work.

4 The Second Period of Democratization

68
A. Multiple Coup d’′ and the May 18
etat
Gwangju People’
s Struggle

The assassination of Park Chung-

hee on October 26, 1979, a manifestation of
the crisis of developmental dictatorship,
created a power vacuum and a position of
stalemate between contending forces which
is often called the‘Spring in Seoul’
. It was
a‘new military’faction, consisting of members of a group
within the Korean army which went under the title of the
‘Society of One’
, that took power by a series of coup d’′ (the
etat
 the worker’
s rights struggle at the Han-gook Textiles Company,
and the activities of the YH Union (see above). Chun Tae-il’
s
action not only signalled the start of the democratic labor
movement, but also resulted in a far deeper awareness of social
reality on the parts of leading figures in the pro-democracy and
other progressive social movements.
His death forced liberal movement forces to reflect upon
their existing minimalist democratic agendas, and incorporate
more concrete issues such as the right to livelihood of workers,
the urban poor, and other grassroots disadvantaged. Chun’
s
action also became the seed for a new social alliance, between
workers and students, as well as a pivotal moment after which
intellectuals became engaged in the industrial sectors, and
religious groups expanded into industrial mission work.

4 The Second Period of Democratization

68
A. Multiple Coup d’′ and the May 18
etat
Gwangju People’
s Struggle

The assassination of Park Chung-

hee on October 26, 1979, a manifestation of
the crisis of developmental dictatorship,
created a power vacuum and a position of
stalemate between contending forces which
is often called the‘Spring in Seoul’
. It was
a‘new military’faction, consisting of members of a group
within the Korean army which went under the title of the
‘Society of One’
, that took power by a series of coup d’′ (the
etat
 The martial law soldiers pointing rifles at young high school student. (1980)

longest recorded coup in the world) and filled the void left by the
late Park Chung-hee. The group was led by Generals Chun

Korea Democracy Foundation

Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo. For the‘new military’ , the last
obstacle in its path to power consisted of the popular forces
opposing it. The bloody confrontation in Gwangju which began
on May 18, 1980 was part of the process of the subjugation of
those popular forces by the‘new military’
. The regime, now
with Chun Doo-hwan at its head, emerged victorious, and the
developmental, dictatorial state constructed by Park Chung-hee 69
was restored and temporarily fortified,
‘Gwangju of May 1980’
, being the final chapter of the
‘Spring in Seoul,’did not merely end in tragedy; it destroyed the
new military’
s ambition to seize power without resistance, and
forced the military to pay a huge cost for its successes. Gwangju
triggered both the state and the pro-democracy movements to
intensify their antagonism against each other: state repression
heightened to an unprecedented level, and popular resistance
intensified to a similar degree. From that time onwards, the
dynamics of these two changes would become decisive in
defining political change in Korea.
 The June Struggle in 1980 was a flood in a vast expanse which had shown that the people's aspirations lied
in democratization. (1987, ⓒ Kim Chun-kil)

B. Movement Politics and the Pro-democracy Struggle

While it was national division and capitalist

industrialization that together conditioned the democratization
movement in the 1980s on a macro level, it was the particularly
repressive system of domination in Chun Doo-hwan’
s Fifth

70
Republic that actually produced it and, from the perspective of
the movement agency, the central motive force came from the
collective memory of the Gwangju massacre in May 1980 and the
deep rage it generated.
The Gwangju carnage was a critical moment for self-
reflection on the parts of all those involved in the
democratization movement. First and foremost it generated an
awareness that the movement thus far had not developed into a
force sufficient to transform either the state or the power
system within it. In other words, the realization dawned that
while the movement had expressed conscientious and moral
criticism of oppressive political power and economic inequality, it
had lacked both the intent and a fully coherent formula for
changing the social structure and creating an alternative system.
Those involved then came to reflect upon the movement’
s lack
of leadership of the calibre necessary to convert the energy and
dynamics manifested in spontaneous activities at the grassroots
into a system-transforming movement. The people’
s struggle in
Gwangju was the epitome of revolutionary upheaval, and had
demonstrated the potential of the Korean populace to
fundamentally transform the state. What was lacking was the
quality of leadership to provide a central focus for mass struggle
as well as bring unity and direction to the spontaneous,
dispersed, and sporadic protests of diverse groups. Such change
in perception was accompanied by a spread of distrust and
withdrawal of confidence in regard to the actual leaders of the
democratization movement in the 1970s.

Korea Democracy Foundation

There was, naturally, a continuation of the pro-
democracy movement from the first period focusing on changing
the fascist, military dictatorship into a democratic polity. At the
same time, however, this period also witnessed various other
radical democratization movements being set in motion and
pursuing a more fundamental and comprehensive transformation
of the state and society. These movements emerged as a direct 71
result of the radicalism produced by the Gwangju massacre in
1980. On the one hand, progressive, democratic, transformative
movements came into being and pursued socio-economic
democracy and producer-based democracy from a class
perspective; while on the other, new national liberation
movements emerged that stressed national reunification and
independence from foreign influence. The movement in the
1980s differed from that of the first period in that it expanded
its popular base, showed more militancy in its methods, and
became more radical in its ideological orientation.
Similar to the previous period, the movement was led by
 Citizens crying for democracy, gathered together at the Square in front of Seoul City Hall. (1987)

students and supported by intellectuals and religious groups.

However, the core of the leadership was no longer composed of
the liberal elements of the previous period but was now
dominated by new, radical, democratic figures who led the
struggle against dictatorship in an uncompromising way. The
most efficiently organized force was made up of student groups
who, from the outset, defined the Chun Doo-hwan regime as

72
anti-reunification and anti-democracy. Almost all student-led
demonstrations prior to 1987 echoed with the battle-cry
‘Remember Gwangju’
; and the memory of Gwangju also served
as a backdrop to the emergence of a distinct atmosphere of
overt anti-Americanism. There was no room for moderation in
the minds of students integral to these movements; as far as
they were concerned the Chun regime was devoid of legitimacy,
and its collapse was a primary objective. As a social group
effectively free from existential conditions, students formed their
resistance to the status quo from their sense of debt to
‘Gwangju’and their discontent at the gulf between the reality of
life and their ethical ideals and standards. When a campus
 autonomy measure was introduced, student movements gained a
wider mass base on the campuses and challenged the stability of
the Fifth Republic by carrying out large-scale mobilization,
taking a determined lead in political struggles, and systematically
supporting all spontaneous popular protests.
Together with the growth of the student movement,
various dissident groups such as religious associations,
academics, writers, and ex-journalists began to set up pro-
democracy organizations. The‘Youth Alliance for
Democratization Movement’was established in 1983, and the
‘Alliance of People’
s Movements for Democracy and
Reunification’was set up in 1985 as an umbrella organization for
a number of separate movements. Identifying democracy and
reunification as its two main objectives, the latter organization
provided a central leadership for many of the grassroots, pro-

Korea Democracy Foundation

democracy and reunification movements which had emerged
12
since the‘appeasement period’ of 1984. From 1986, this
grouping set constitutional reform for a direct presidential
election as the main item on the agenda for democratization,
and played a pivotal role in leading the June Democratic Struggle
in 1987. This period also saw a wide expansion of educational,
cultural, and print media movements focused upon democratic 73
values.
One notable phenomenon concerning popular movements
in the 1980s was that students and intellectuals began
deliberately to ally with workers and other grassroots elements,
and in large numbers shifted their spheres of activities to
factories and farms, etc. in the name of‘existential relocation’
.
Such a large number of university students abandoning their
upward trajectory on the social and professional ladder in order

12 This refers to the period when the regime relaxed somewhat its persecution of alleged
dissidents.
 A large-scale struggle by workers who have mobilized heavy machinery. (1987)

to become factory workers or agricultural laborers was a

manifestation with few equivalents outside Korea.
The labor movement in the 1980s began with the
establishment of the Korea Workers Welfare Council in 1984,
following the degrading revisions of labor legislation and the
forced dissolution of democratic trade unions by the Chun
regime. In the first period, the labor movement was led by

74
workers at their places of work, and focused more on the
provision of worker’
s citizenship and improvements to working
conditions rather than on realizing workers’class interests.
From 1985 the mass-based trade union movement gained
considerable momentum, and in that year staged the first
solidarity strike since 1960, in the Guro industrial area of Seoul.
The strike resulted in the formation of the Seoul Labor
Movement Alliance; an organization that became a model of
‘mass political organization’
.
Serious confrontations between Korean farmers and
governmental authorities began in April 1985, when farmers
launched nation-wide protests against US pressure to open up
 the Korean agricultural market. Meanwhile, the urban poor
movement evolved predominantly in Seoul, the capital city, and
focused initially on protests against the city administration’
s
unilateral and violent drive to redevelop poor districts. Clashes
between protesters and municipal authorities sometimes resulted
in the deaths of local residents.
Waves of protests and resistance involving various
sectors culminated in June 1987 with a nation-wide uprising
against the Chun Doo-hwan regime. It was, in a sense, a
‘nationaliszation of Gwangju’
, as Korean people rose up for one
cause, democracy, in a broadly based movement that
transcended regional, factional, and class boundaries. The mass
mobilization, under the leadership of the‘National Movement
Headquarters for Attaining a Democratic Constitution’
,
created the biggest oppositional alliance that the regime had

Korea Democracy Foundation

faced, and exerted huge pressure for radical change on the
military rule. The June Democratic Struggle gave voice to
millions of people and constituted the first definitive step
towards democratization. Although it did not result in the actual
establishment of a democratic government, and despite leaving
many issues unresolved, it undoubtedly heralded the advent of a
new age in Korea. The incoming tide of democratization was now 75
unstoppable.
As soon as the June 29 Declaration13 was broadcast,
industrial workers submitted their demands in the newly
opened political space in what came to be known as the‘July-
September Great Workers’Struggle’
; the largest mass action in
the history of the Korean labor movement. For a period of three
months, more than a million workers participated in a total of
3,311 labor disputes, averaging 30 per day, and encompassing

13 This was Chun Doo-hwan’ s response to the nation-wide protests, and included the
re-establishment of direct presidential elections as its main concession.
 A national workers convention for inheriting martyr Chun Tae-il's spirit and amending evil labor acts. (1988)

76

every industrial sector. This resulted in revisions to labor laws

and the formation of some 1,200 new trade unions, increasing
markedly both the unionisation rate and the number of trade
unionists. An even more important outcome of this experience
was that those in the labor movement realized the importance of
a central body to organize democratic trade unions, and for
which solidarity among democratic trade unions would remain a
primary goal.
 5 The Third Period of Democratization

A. Features of Democratic Transition

The political change in 1987 occurred in

an environment where contradictions and
tensions, stemming from both a repressive
political system and the ramifications of
capitalist development, had accumulated. Also,
from a wider perspective, it was a time when
socialist states were collapsing and the tide of
neo-liberal globalization was rising. The
events in 1987 were the precursors for
changes in the modes of Korean politics and
the regulation of social conflicts, as well as in

Korea Democracy Foundation

the strategies of popular resistance. As the military retreated
from power, the key concern of society shifted away from
‘restoration of democracy’to‘democratic reform’
.
There were several key features manifest in this period.
First, Korea was transformed from an‘exceptional’
developmental, dictatorial state into a‘normal’capitalist state,
mediated by social and class struggles. As the space within 77

which institutional politics and civil society functioned became

more open and accessible, various forms of previously
suppressed social antagonism concerning issues such as
regionalism, the environment, the gender gap, and discrimination
against minorities, began to emerge. Korean society became less
inclined to give credence to cold war anti-communism; a fact
evidenced by the inter-Korean summit in 2000 and the
commencement of Geumgang Mountain tourism. Furthermore,
the transition to democracy was placed in jeopardy, if not in
actual retreat, as the logic of neo-liberal globalization was
 uncritically introduced; causing some observers to describe the
resultant clash as‘economic liberalization promoted, social
democratization delayed’
.
On the other hand, the transition to democracy in Korea
can also be characterized as a‘reproduction of the ruling power
through transformative reconfiguration of the ruling bloc’in a
process of‘conservative democratization from the top’
. The
situation precluded existing institutional politics controlled by an
authoritarian state from continuing. Therefore, the conservative
ruling system had to undergo a transformative rearrangement in
order to gain new political legitimacy and stability. In other
words, on the one hand the democratic transition that had
commenced in 1987 facilitated a dynamic burgeoning of
movement politics, involving a broad social spectrum; while on
the other, it sparked an institutional rationalization process in
which the state attempted to restrain the radical or
revolutionary components of the movement politics and
selectively incorporate popular protests and radical movements
into institutional politics. This socio-political process was one
facet of the transformative rearrangement of the ruling system.
It is true that since the democratic transition began, the

78
intensity of state repression decreased and the basic rights of
citizens, in a liberal democratic sense, were expanded by
ideologically liberal governments, each of which identified itself
in terms such as‘civilian government’
,‘government of the
nation’
, and‘participatory government’
. However, reforms
undertaken up by these liberal-oriented governments lacked
thoroughness, largely because they were promoted from top
down, and were limited by macro conditions of a transitional era.
The central problem was that the requisite scope of the
rearrangement of existing power was not matched by the
degrees of support and motivational impetus emanating from the
predominantly conservative political representation; on the
contrary, the governments who proclaimed democratic
credentials were, in practice, too generous in the compromises
they struck with‘status quo-oriented’elements. The
normalization of politics and the accommodation of pluralistic
competition was repeatedly delayed, and the extant conservative
political representation thrived in the resultant vacuum, fuelling
region-based factionalism and socio-cultural regionalism in the
process. In effect, the growth of democracy in Korea was
suspended, and the establishment of a vicious cycle of crises of
participation and crises of representation became inevitable. As
long as the conservative-dominated party system remained
intact, it manifested its discrepancies in proportion to the
acceleration of class differentiation, restoration of progressive
political forces, and rapid growth of civil society, including
intensified social conflict. The political representation neither

Korea Democracy Foundation

reflected adequately the new economic realities nor the new
social and class divisions in society and, therefore, failed to
mediate in the clash of competing interests or demands. In other
words, it became obvious that political conservatism, sustained
and fostered by the transformative rearrangement of state
power, was causing‘political lag’
, and constituted a bottle-neck
in the general developmental path of Korean society. The 79
political system was increasingly seen as a cartel which excluded
elements deserving of inclusion, and one that was patently
incapable of effectively representing civil society.

B. Differentiation and Development of the Democratization

Movement

In the third, previously suppressed, period of

democratization various aspects of social activism increased as
the‘legal space’expanded as a result of changes brought about
by the June Struggle; at the same time, movements for political
contrary, the governments who proclaimed democratic
credentials were, in practice, too generous in the compromises
they struck with‘status quo-oriented’elements. The
normalization of politics and the accommodation of pluralistic
competition was repeatedly delayed, and the extant conservative
political representation thrived in the resultant vacuum, fuelling
region-based factionalism and socio-cultural regionalism in the
process. In effect, the growth of democracy in Korea was
suspended, and the establishment of a vicious cycle of crises of
participation and crises of representation became inevitable. As
long as the conservative-dominated party system remained
intact, it manifested its discrepancies in proportion to the
acceleration of class differentiation, restoration of progressive
political forces, and rapid growth of civil society, including
intensified social conflict. The political representation neither

Korea Democracy Foundation

reflected adequately the new economic realities nor the new
social and class divisions in society and, therefore, failed to
mediate in the clash of competing interests or demands. In other
words, it became obvious that political conservatism, sustained
and fostered by the transformative rearrangement of state
power, was causing‘political lag’
, and constituted a bottle-neck
in the general developmental path of Korean society. The 79
political system was increasingly seen as a cartel which excluded
elements deserving of inclusion, and one that was patently
incapable of effectively representing civil society.

B. Differentiation and Development of the Democratization

Movement

In the third, previously suppressed, period of

democratization various aspects of social activism increased as
the‘legal space’expanded as a result of changes brought about
by the June Struggle; at the same time, movements for political
 democratization
continued. The third
period is divided into two
sub-periods in the early
1990s; until which time
the radical pro-
A press conference by the People's Solidarity for
Participatory Democracy. democracy movement
continued to play a
central role in movement
politics. Composed mainly
of workers, farmers,
students, and radical intellectuals and a newly reactivated
reunification movement promoting information sharing on North
Korea, civic exchanges, joint inter-Korean gatherings, etc. A
new social movement emerged in this period in the form of a
‘civil’movement’
, but it did not have a great impact in the early
stages.
Two salient features characterized the first part of the
third period of democratization. Firstly, the pro-democracy
movements, which had thus far converged into one in the fight
against dictatorship, divided into two. On the one side there

80
were liberal forces whose main interest was to democratize
political institutions, while on the other there were radical
elements promoting socio-economic democratization, producer
democracy, and democratization of international relations.
Secondly, the social movements consisting of grassroots people
such as workers and farmers became central to the radical
movement politics, reinforcing the more traditional student and
intellectual groups.
In the second sub-period, from the early 1990s to the
present time, several changes have taken place within the
democratization movement. As political democratization
progressed over time, pro-democracy activism focussing on
anti-dictatorship became weaker, as did the so-called‘all-out
people’s resistance’line. Other efforts to democratize the
economic base also underwent significant changes. In one
regard, the collapse of European socialist states and the global
rise of neo-liberal capitalism so had a wider effect on Korean
society that it became more conservative, and, in the process,
put the radical intellectual movement in crisis and disarray. In
another regard, the class-based mass movement progressed
rapidly; most notably with the formation of the Korean
Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), a labor organization that
was to become a leading actor in the democratization
movement.
A key feature of this period is that the post-democracy
agenda, previously ignored and marginalized, assumed greater
prominence, triggering various post-democracy social

Korea Democracy Foundation

movements. Wider socio-political discourses waned due to the
effects of the progress of democratization in state power as well
as that of the collapse of the socialist bloc. Diverse citizens’
movements emerged in the space created and took up issues
such as environmental degradation, gender discrimination,
homosexuality, and minority interests, etc.
There was also an important shift in the cast of main 81
actors in the democratization movement, with the most notable
changes being the decline of the student movement and its
replacement by the civil’
movement and class-based mass
movement. The civil’
movement played a leading role in the
areas of political and post-democratization issues, while the
class-based movement or people’ s movement was most
influential in issues surrounding socio-economic and producer-
oriented democracy and the democratization of foreign policy.
Through continuing struggle and political awareness, the labor
movement in particular became the base for the establishment
of independent, progressive political parties, the People’
s Victory
 21 Party and the Democratic Labor Party.
The‘May Struggle of 1991’was a 60-day, nation-wide,
popular protest against the Roh Tae-woo government which
began on April 26 when a demonstrating university student,
Gang Gyeong-dae was beaten to death by riot police. It ended
on June 29 when the protest headquarters personnel retreated
from their operations base, Myong-dong Catholic Cathedral, in
downtown Seoul. The demonstrations involved more than a
million people and included 2,361 protest rallies around the
country; all beneath the slogan‘Dissolve Minja Dang14, Dismiss
Roh Tae-woo’
. The lives of 13 young protesters were lost, 11 of
whom burned themselves to death. In all, it was the most
serious popular protest to occur during the period of the Sixth
Republic, and it drove the Roh government into great crisis.
The May Struggle was an inevitable consequence of Roh
Tae-woo’ s so-called‘security rule’, which was enforced as a
set of highly repressive measures involving the mobilization of
terror against those who were deemed a threat to public order,
and the purpose of which was to sustain Roh’
s grip on power. In
addition, public reaction to various irregular activities of the
government converged in the May Struggle; activities such as

82
the merging of three political parties15, an attempted
constitutional revision towards a parliamentary cabinet system,
an increase in staple commodity prices, housing shortages, the
threat to the livelihoods of ordinary people brought about by
comprehensive import-liberalization, and a series of political
corruption scandals.
However, the anticipated‘June Struggle’did not occur, in
spite of several deaths and the fact that the democratization
movement had made plans for it. This constituted a success for

14 Roh Tae-woo’ s Democratic Liberal Party, the party in power at the time.
15 The minority ruling party recreated itself as a majority party by merging with two of the
three opposition parties in a secret deal which isolated Kim Dae-jung’ s party.
 the ruling elite’
s efforts
to minimize or reverse
the‘revolutionary’
trend towards
democratization, and
was the first setback to
the popular, all-out,
Environmental organizations denouncing the Government
for its anti-environmental policies. struggle against the
government. It left a
painful legacy and a
sense of defeat in the
collective memory of all
those who had taken to
the streets in May 1991.
It was also a disaster from the democratization movement

Korea Democracy Foundation

perspective because the dominant discourse of the movement
was one of death and violence, especially in relation to those
who had perished in the struggles against military rule. The
discourse was both a source both of upheaval and the cause of
a reduction in the effectiveness of the protest. During the short
period of 60 days other voices were raised, stressing the basic
rights to livelihood of the grassroots populace and attempting to 83
generate discussion of an alternative system. These other
elements could not replace the main discourse ingredients of
death and violence, however. In sum, while the importance of
the deaths of protestors, and the huge public sympathy they
generated, could never be denied, concentration upon them
precluded positive progress being achieved by those who
continued to fight against the authority. Their efforts eventually
exhausted the public as well as the activists themselves.
 (i) Growth of the citizens’and class-based mass movements

Since the beginning of the transition to democracy in

1987, Korean society saw the previously singular dichotomy of
democracy versus non-democracy gradually becoming blurred,
and being replaced by new conflicts and divisions that were
more diverse, multi-layered, and multi-polar in nature. This led
inevitably to a diversification of the democratization movement.
Most notably, two distinct camps, usually identified as‘citizens’
movement’and‘the people’
s movement’
, emerged from what
had been a unified entity. The rise of these two competing
camps within the democratic cause constituted a new trend,
where‘centrifugal differentiation’coexisted with the former
‘centripetal deepening’
. It also presented a new phenomenon of
‘hegemonic competition’between social movements which had,
until then, coexisted in a single frame of solidarity. Both camps
shared much in their prospectuses for the actual reform of state
power, but differed in the direction of the final reform, opting
for either liberalist normalization or a progressive
transformation. They differed particularly sharply on the agenda
of economic liberalization, the impact of globalization, and the

84
independent political formation of popular forces.
A civil’movement, or the movement politics of
citizenship, had hardly existed before 1987, but expanded its
scope enormously in the early years of the 1990s. The reason
for this is to be located in the nature of the liberal social
movement within the old pro-democracy movement, that
developed into diverse forms of civil’movement in the space
created by the events of 1987. According to the Civic
Organizations Almanac 2000, Korea had 4,023 non-
governmental organizations (NGO’
s), or more than 20,000 if
branch organizations are included. In the process of accelerating
growth, the initial groups showed conservative characteristics;
 epitomized by the Citizens’
Coalition for Economic
Justice established in 1989.
Later in the 1990s,
however, civil society grew
with the expansion of

Organizing the National Trade Unions Conference. (1990)

human rights NGOs and
the formation of
progressive civic groups
such as the People’
s
Solidarity for Participatory
Democracy (1994) and the
Korea Federation of Environmental Movements (1993).
The civil’movement often assumed the role of‘watch-
dog’over the institutional reform of politics, as the phenomenon

Korea Democracy Foundation

of the political lag mentioned earlier persisted. This created a
new phenomenon of‘proxy representation’
. Civic power-
monitoring ranged from election-monitoring to parliamentary
scrutiny activities, and from legislative appeal campaigns to
‘blacklist’campaigns in general elections. The successful
blacklist campaign in 2000, when various NGOs formed a
national coalition and produced a list of‘unfit’candidates to put 85
pressure on political parties and convince the electorate of the
validity of the election, became a model of civic-initiated political
reform and was later referred to favourably in Japan and other
countries.
The peoples’movement representing the progressive
section of the pro-democracy movement also advanced in terms
of organizational strength and political influence, taking
advantage of the more democratic social conditions created
since 1987. Many organizations moved their activities from what
had been an illegal or semi-legal arena into the newly expanded
legal space. The most conspicuous progress appeared in the
 labor movement. As anticipated by the July-September
Workers’Struggle, the labor movement saw a huge growth in
mass-based trade unionism and succeeded in establishing
national trade union centres such as Jeon-no-hyeop16(January
1990) and Minjoo-Nochong17(November 1995). The general strikes
of 1996~1997, which lasted more than a month and in which
several million unionists participated, were possible because of
the magnitude of the popular base of democratic trade unionism
and the strength of support of civic groups. This historic
industrial action, as was noted by democratic and progressive
forces around the world, was not only the workers defending
their basic rights against the surprise passage through the
National Assembly of a revision of labor laws in 1996, but also
an expression of their resolve to fight the dehumanizing impact
of neo-liberal globalization. It also happened in the context of a
labor movement which was becoming more central in a wider
popular movement in Korea.
In addition, farmers’
, teachers’
, the urban poor and other
movements were also making significant organizational and
political progress. Front organizations, such as the National
Association for National and Democratic Movements (January

86
1989), the National Association for Democracy and National
Reunification (December 1991), and the National Alliance of
People (March 2001) were formed to set and promote national
agendas and raise issues concerning democratic reforms.
These developments also led a change in the internal
composition of the people’
s movement itself. For example,
organizational and mass-movement aspects have increased
since 1987 whereas intelligentsia and individual aspects, which
predominated before 1987, have decreased. Diminished also is

16 Korean Council of Trade Unions (KCTU).

17 Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, restructured and expanded from the former
KCTU by the addition of newly formed industrial unions.
the significance of the student movement and other intellectual
movements in front or alliance organizations, their places having
been yielded to labor and other class-based mass movements.
At the same time, this period saw an increase in pro-
democracy activism among members of the law, media, and
medical professions and academics, as well as an increase of
small, local, grassroots groups in new issue areas. In particular,
a nation-wide popular protest was recently launched as both an
anti-US, independence movement and an anti-war movement. It
was initially triggered by an incident in which a US military
vehicle crushed two young Korean girls to death, and later
reinforced by the contentious issue of the dispatch of Korean
troops to Iraq.

(ii) Advance of independent, progressive political formations

Korea Democracy Foundation

The main outcomes of the conservatives’rearrangement
of the system of ruling during the transitional period were
lagging reforms and crippled management of state affairs in
institutional politics. The political exclusion of workers and the
general population continued in a party system dominated by
elite cartels and conservative monopolies. In addition, the 87
experience of the 1987 presidential election and 1988 general
election gave substantial legitimacy to the practice of public
elections as a general principle of political competition,
effectively sidelining or even excluding other forms of political
representation. In other words, a
‘reduction of politics’took
place as the value that had previously been accorded to‘street
politics’was reoriented toward electoral institutions.
It was in this context that worker and other popular
movements advanced legal, progressive political parties in an
attempt to establish an independent, progressive political
formation. However, such efforts were doomed to failure from
 the outset, mainly due to
marginal participation and
support from mass
movements, especially in
the cases of the People’
s
Party (1988) and the
Unified People’
s Party
The Democratic Labor Party members commemorating
the results of the 17th general election. (1992). A new impetus was
created by the workers
general strikes of 1996~97,
when participating groups
came to a firm consensus
on the urgent need for a political organization representing the
working class and its activism. This common awareness led to
the formation of the People’
s Victory Party 21 (1997) and the
Democratic Labor Party (2000) which, in turn, opened a new era
of‘one million votes for progressive politics’in the 2002
presidential election. This constituted the first recognition of
political citizenship of progressive forces. Later, in the general
election in 2004, the Democratic Labor Party succeeded in
getting ten candidates elected to the National Assembly.

88

Workers requesting the elimination of discrimination

against.