This study explores how authoritarian distributive policies may not only generate political support for the autocrat but may also help sustain powerful and lasting authoritarian legacies. We use microlevel data from South Korea's New Village Movement, a 1970s rural development program implemented under dictator Park Chung‐hee and widely touted as contributing to the country's rapid economic development. Our analysis shows that townships in receipt of larger cash transfers cast more votes for Park's incumbent party in the subsequent election. More importantly, we show that the effects of the subsidies still appeared almost four decades later in 2012, when the dictator's daughter was democratically elected as the president of South Korea. We show that these effects were not driven by villagers’ long‐term income gains or enhanced social capital due to the program but by the unwavering support of the beneficiary villagers for the dictator, whose legacy remained strong long after democratization.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the paradoxical pattern in which South Korean presidents enjoy imperial power early in their term, but became fragile and impotent as their term comes to an end. Design/methodology/approach Based on the previous literature on Korean presidentialism, this paper introduces and critically compares several competing theories on the Korean presidency and its defects. Findings This paper finds that for Korean presidents, imperial governance and fragility represent two sides of the same coin, like a Janus face. These two seemingly competing descriptions of the Korean presidency are not actually contradictory. Originality/value This paper investigates how Korean presidents are imperial with regard to constitutional design as well as political behavior, and presents a logic of transformation from an imperial president to a fragile one, focusing on party politics and election cycles.