hankyoreh

Chang Seok-june

By Chang Seok-june, planning committee member at Wisdom Shelter

There’s a trend these days of tacking the letter “K” onto things that Koreans want to brag about. One of those is “K-democracy.”

At first blush, it doesn’t seem over the top, as far as bragging goes. After all, how many Asian countries have seen power change hands in as many elections as South Korea has?

The conventional definition for the kind of democracy that originated in England is “decapitating the king without spilling blood.” I suppose no system meets that standard quite so well as South Korea’s Sixth Republic. I can understand why people would talk about “K-democracy.”

But things look different when you get under the hood — and you find yourself wondering whether there’s really so much to brag about after all.

To understand the true nature of Korean democracy, we must look at the politics of other countries that serve as a good comparison. In Germany, it took two months after the general election for a new government to be formed on Nov. 24. The Social Democratic Party, the Greens, and the Free Democratic Party formed a coalition that’s being called a “traffic-light” coalition after their traditional colors (red, green and yellow).

The remarkable thing is the policy covenant the three parties released when they decided to form a coalition government. The Social Democratic Party was behind the pledge to raise the minimum wage to 12 euros an hour, while the Greens backed a commitment to shut down coal plants by 2030, which is eight years earlier than planned. The covenant also includes lowering the voting age to 16 and making it easier for immigrants to gain German citizenship.

The coalition said these policies will be pursued by a Social Democrat as chancellor, a Green as minister for the climate crisis, and a Free Democrat as finance minister.

When I bring this up, I typically get some pushback. Every country has its own unique circumstances, I’m told, so there’s little point in discussing the relative superiority of politics or culture. Also, other countries shouldn’t be viewed as textbooks for us to study from.

That’s all true — but we need to take another look at Korean democracy in comparison with other examples of democracy. Introspection is impossible without comparison. The adamant refusal to make such a comparison is what doomed the Joseon Dynasty, which ruled Korea until its annexation by Japan in the early 20th century.

Let’s use the German example as a mirror for examining the naked truth of Korean democracy. The 25.7% of the German populace who voted for the Social Democrats, the 14.8% who voted for the Greens and the 11.5% who voted for the Free Democrats can be seen as having successfully performed their electoral duty as holders of political power. A total of 52% of voters found a way to ensure that political pledges they supported were upheld by the next government.

In Korea, in contrast, there’s no way to know who really wins after elections. Obviously, all of those who voted for parties other than the one whose candidate is elected are losers. But even those who voted for the winning party aren’t actually winners.

In the 2017 election, 41.1% of Korean voters supported Moon Jae-in, who became president. But Moon hasn’t been able to follow through on most of his election promises despite his party controlling nearly two-thirds of the National Assembly.

That’s not a consequence of dedicated resistance by the opposition parties. The ruling party has voluntarily shelved those plans for a range of political rationales. In Korean democracy, nearly everyone actually loses except for the political elite in the two major parties.

What’s the reason for this severe divide? This isn’t merely a question of whether Korea has a presidential government or a parliamentary government. There are also issues with the electoral system and the terrain of party politics (the conduit by which civic society is reflected in institutional politics), and there are differences in our understanding and consensus about what the central role of representative politics ought to be in society today.

Regardless, German democracy differs from Korean democracy in these significant respects; it is German politicians who are vigorously taking the lead in responding to the climate crisis and other issues while Korean politicians are only making their social crises worse.

What’s needed at the moment is a recognition that “K-democracy” — that is, democracy in the Sixth Republic — has thoroughly failed to deal with the crises and fluctuations of contemporary society. Because we studiously ignore this fact while dwelling on the vague memory of “decapitating the king” (which is, in reality, a fake memory), that failure is becoming harder and harder to reverse.

Unless we want to wait around for our own ruin, what we desperately need is an alternative brand of democracy to replace "K-democracy."

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]