The Socioeconomic Foundations of South Korea’s Democracy Movement

Cho, Joan E.; Chang, Paul Y.

doi:10.4324/9781315660486-4

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“…They also became the foundations for a nascent civil society, which was manifest in various social movements that were part of the larger democracy movement in the 1970s and 1980s (J. Cho and Chang 2017).…”

Section: Education and Authoritarian Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

Seeds of Mobilization

Cho¹

2024

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South Korea is sometimes held as a dream case of modernization theory, a testament to how economic development leads to democracy. Seeds of Mobilization takes a closer look at the history of South Korea to show that Korea’s advance to democracy was not linear. Instead, while Korea’s national economy grew dramatically under the regimes of Park Chung Hee (1961–79) and Chun Doo Hwan (1980–88), the political system first became increasingly authoritarian. Because modernization was founded on industrial complexes and tertiary education, these structures initially helped bolster the authoritarian regimes. In the long run, however, these structures later facilitated the anti-regime protests by various social movement groups—most importantly, workers and students—that ultimately brought democracy to the country. By using original subnational protest event datasets, government publications, oral interviews, and publications from labor and student movement organizations, Joan E. Cho takes a long view of democratization that incorporates the decades before and after South Korea’s democratic transition. She demonstrates that Korea’s democratization resulted from a combination of factors from below and from above, and that authoritarian development itself was a hidden root cause of democratic development in South Korea. Seeds of Mobilization shows how socioeconomic development did not create a steady pressure toward democracy but acted as a “double-edged sword” that initially stabilized autocratic regimes before destabilizing them over time.

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Section: Education and Authoritarian Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

Seeds of Mobilization

Cho¹

2024

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

The Socioeconomic Foundations of South Korea’s Democracy Movement

Cited by 1 publication

References 1 publication

Seeds of Mobilization

Seeds of Mobilization

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