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ABSTRACT
Between 2016 and 2019, South Korean conservatives organized a movement called the T’aegŭkki Rallies to oppose the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye and to protest against President Moon Jae-in’s administration. This movement is puzzling for its timing, demographic composition, and rhetorical choices. Through in-depth interviews with rally participants and non-participants, I illustrate that a collective identity, shaped by authoritarian socialization, strengthened with positive memories about an authoritarian past, combined to mobilize rally participants. Curiously, rally participants saw themselves as defenders of liberal democracy, protecting South Korea against progressive forces seeking to turn the country into a communist state. However, my interviews revealed that they were, in fact, trying to protect the authoritarian past. In this manner, South Korea’s authoritarian legacy entrenches ideological polarization and hampers common understandings of democratic citizenship.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 “10·3 kwangwamunjiphoee nuga nawanna poni⋯50tae ŏmma, 20tae adŭl, kangnam3ku chumin “choguk sat’oe” oech’yŏtta” [Who Participated in the 10·3 Gwanghwamun Rally: Moms in their 50s, Sons in their 20s, and Gangnam Residents Gathered and Shouted “Cho Kuk, Resign!”], Chosunilbo, October 13, 2019, https://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2019/10/13/2019101300010.html.
2 Lee, “Authoritarian Successor Parties, Supporters, and Protest: Lessons from Asian Democracies.”
3 Yang, “Defending “Liberal Democracy”? Why Older South Koreans Took to the Streets Against the 2016–2017 Candlelight Protests”; Han and Hundt, “Nostalgic nationalists in South Korea: the flag-carriers’ struggles.”
4 Stent, “A Century of Contention in South Korea: The Evolution of Contentious Politics against Political Elites”; Heo and Yun, “South Korea in 2017: Presidential Impeachment and Security Volatility.”
5 Lee, “Authoritarian Successor Parties, Supporters, and Protest: Lessons from Asian Democracies”; Lee, Between the Streets and the Assembly: Social Movements, Political Parties, and Democracy in Korea.
6 Lee, “Authoritarian Successor Parties, Supporters, and Protest: Lessons from Asian Democracies.”
7 “10·3 kwangwamunjiphoee nuga nawanna poni⋯50tae ŏmma, 20tae adŭl, kangnam3ku chumin “choguk sat’oe” oech’yŏtta” [Who Participated in the 10·3 Gwanghwamun Rally: Moms in their 50s, Sons in their 20s, and Gangnam Residents Gathered and Shouted “Cho Kuk, Resign!”], Chosunilbo, October 13, 2019, https://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2019/10/13/2019101300010.html.
8 Kim, Youth for Nation: Culture and Protest in Cold War South Korea.
9 Mobrand, Top-Down Democracy in South Korea; Kim, “Cultivating Freedom in South Korea: Media Discourse on Chayu during the Early Park Chung-hee Period.”
10 Loxton, “Authoritarian Successor Parties”; Lee, “Authoritarian Successor Parties, Supporters, and Protest: Lessons from Asian Democracies.”
11 For the importance of framing in movements’ success, see Snow and Benford (1988) and Snow et al. (1986).
12 Schedler, “Anti-Political-Establishment Parties.”
13 Barr, “Populists, Outsiders and Anti-Establishment Politics”; Uscinski, Enders, Seelig, Klofstad, Funchion, Everett, Wuchty, Premaratne, and Murthi, “American Politics in Two Dimensions: Partisan and Ideological Identities versus Anti-Establishment Orientations.”
14 Barr, “Populists, Outsiders and Anti-Establishment Politics,” p. 32.
15 Barr, “Populists, Outsiders and Anti-Establishment Politics,” p. 31.
16 Yang, “Defending “Liberal Democracy”? Why Older South Koreans Took to the Streets Against the 2016–2017 Candlelight Protests.”
17 Han and Hundt, “Nostalgic Nationalists in South Korea: the Flag-Carriers’ Struggles.”
18 It is often misguided that anti-establishment and populism are interchangeable. Barr (2009) disagrees with the view. Often times, the central message of populism is that “Politics has Escaped Popular Control.” Such Rhetoric, however, is “One Aspect of the Populist Phenomenon,” but is “Not the Exclusive Domain of Populist Leaders” (Barr 2009, p. 31).
19 Crane, “Collective Identity, Symbolic Mobilization, and Student Protest in Nanjing, China, 1988–1989,” p. 395–396.
20 Crane, p. 395
21 Smith, “National Identity and the Idea of European Unity”; Jo, “Memory, Institutions, and the Domestic Politics of South Korean–Japanese Relations.”
22 Crane, “Collective Identity, Symbolic Mobilization, and Student Protest in Nanjing, China, 1988–1989”; Jo, “Memory, Institutions, and the Domestic Politics of South Korean–Japanese Relations.”
23 Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience.
24 Snow, Rochford Jr, Worden, and Benford, “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation”; Crane, “Collective Identity, Symbolic Mobilization, and Student Protest in Nanjing, China, 1988–1989.”
25 Snow, Rochford Jr, Worden, and Benford, “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation.”
26 Crane, “Collective Identity, Symbolic Mobilization, and Student Protest in Nanjing, China, 1988-1989.”
27 Snow and Benford, “Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization.”
28 Polletta and Jasper, “Collective Identity and Social Movements,” p. 287.
29 Snow and Benford, “Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization.”
30 Olson, The Logic of Collective Action.
31 This research was approved from the University of Missouri IRB and the project IRB number is 259105.
32 Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan are dictators in South Korea. Both of them came to power through military coups.
33 McLeod and Shah, “Communication and Political Socialization: Challenges and Opportunities for Research.”
34 Pop-Eleches and Tucker, Communism’s Shadow: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Political Attitudes.
35 Kim and Vogel, The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea; Kwon, “Building Bombs, Building a Nation: The State, Chaebŏl, and The Militarized Industrialization of South Korea, 1973–1979.”
36 Hong, Park, and Yang, “In Strongman We Trust: The Political Legacy of the New Village Movement in South Korea.”
37 A coup plotted and implemented by Park Chung-hee on May 16, 1961.
38 A great king who created Hangeul, Korean alphabet in 1443.
39 Perry, “Higher Education and Authoritarian Resilience: The Case of China, Past and Present”; Sanborn and Thyne, “Learning Democracy: Education and the Fall of Authoritarian Regimes.”
40 Pop-Eleches and Tucker, Communism’s Shadow: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Political Attitudes.
41 Neundorf and Smets, “Political Socialization and the Making of Citizens.”
42 Greenberg, Political Socialization; Dukalskis and Gerschewski, “What Autocracies Say (and What Citizens Hear): Proposing Four Mechanisms of Autocratic Legitimation.”
43 Yang, Hwang, Kang, and Kang, “t’aegŭkki chip'oe, pakchŏnghŭiwa han'guk posujuŭi [Pro-Park Geun Hye Protesters and 'Park Chung Hee Conservatism'].”
44 Kim and Vogel, The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea; Kwon, “Building Bombs, Building a Nation: The State, Chaebŏl, and The Militarized Industrialization of South Korea, 1973–1979.”
45 In the T’aegŭkki Rallies, organizers tried to re-evaluate Syngman Rhee, the first president of South Korea. They redefined him as the founding father of South Korean liberal democracy. However, the systematic appropriation of the notion of democracy happened under the Park Chung-hee’s leadership (Mobrand 2019). Mobrand (2019) points out that the rampant voter fraud in 1960 and subsequent April protests (April Revolution) replaced the Syngman Rhee’s regime. After Park took over the power, he lauded the April Revolution and claimed that his regime succeeded the spirit of the April Revolution. He started to appropriate the notion of democracy. The rampant voter fraud was an good excuse for him to restrict democratic practices. He successfully connected democracy to stability and anti-communism. It is important to note that the term of “liberal democracy” became salient to the conservatives from the 2010s (Kim 2022). Conservative intellectuals refuse to use “democracy” to refer to the South Korean political system because, according to them, democracy can be any system, including a communist one. The “democracy vs. liberal democracy” debate became intense in the 2010s as conservative intellectuals argued that the South Korean political system is a liberal democratic system, which is different from the North Korea’s people’s democratic system.
46 Neveu, “Memory Battles over Mai 68: Interpretative Struggles as a Cultural Re-play of Social Movements”; Della Porta, Andretta, Fernandes, Romanos, and Vogiatzoglou, Legacies and Memories in Movements: Justice and Democracy in Southern Europe.
47 Moon, “The Cultural Politics of Remembering Park Chung Hee”; Yang, “The Specter of the Past: Reconstructing Conservative Historical Memory in South Korea”; Yang, “Defending “Liberal Democracy”? Why Older South Koreans Took to the Streets Against the 2016–2017 Candlelight Protests”; Yang, “An Old Right in New Bottles: State without Nation in South Korean: New Right Historiography.”
48 Yang, “Defending “Liberal Democracy”? Why Older South Koreans Took to the Streets Against the 2016–2017 Candlelight Protests.”
49 Yang, “An Old Right in New Bottles: State without Nation in South Korean: New Right Historiography.”
50 “K’ŏjyŏganŭn pakchŏnghŭi tongsang nollan … panboktoenŭn tongsangimong” [Park Chung-hee Statue Controversy … Different Dreams Regarding the Statue], The JoongAng, November 12, 2017, https://www.joongang.co.kr/article/22106709#home.
51 Chŏng, “han'guk chŏngdangŭi kongch'ŏnp'adonge ttarŭn sŏn'gŏ kyŏlgwa hamŭi: che 20 tae ch'ongsŏn'gwajŏngesŏ yŏ. ya chŏngdangŭi kongch'ŏnŭl chungshimŭro [Implication of the Election Result in line with the Nomination Conflicts of the Korean Political Parties: Based on the nomination of the ruling party and the opposition party in the 20th general election].”
52 Mobrand, “Prosecution Reform and the Politics of Faking Democracy in South Korea,” p. 260.
53 Yang, “An Old Right in New Bottles: State without Nation in South Korean: New Right Historiography.”
54 This term refers to the miraculous economic development of South Korea.
55 Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project defines liberal democracy as democracy that protects minority rights and prevents the tyranny of the government and the majority (Coppedge et al. 2019).
56 “yŏksagyogwasŏ ‘chayuminjujuŭit'yŏnminjujuŭi’ hŏnbŏp nonjaengŭro pŏnjyŏ” [History Textbook, Replacing Liberal Democracy with Democracy Leads to a Constitutional Debate], Yonhap News Agency, May 3, 2018, https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20180503165000004.
57 Yang, Hwang, Kang, and Kang, “t'aegŭkki chip'oe, pakchŏnghŭiwa han'guk posujuŭi [Pro-Park Geun Hye Protesters and 'Park Chung Hee Conservatism'].”
58 Chang, Chu, and Park, “The Democracy Barometers (Part I): Authoritarian Nostalgia in Asia.”
59 Lee, Militants or Partisans: Labor Unions and Democratic Politics in Korea and Taiwan.
60 Crane, “Collective Identity, Symbolic Mobilization, and Student Protest in Nanjing, China, 1988–1989”; Moore Jr, Injustice: the Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt: the Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt; Snow, Rochford Jr, Worden, and Benford, “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation.”
61 Crane, “Collective identity, symbolic mobilization, and student protest in Nanjing, China, 1988–1989.”
62 Noury and Roland, “Identity Politics and Populism in Europe.”
63 Yang, “Defending “Liberal Democracy”? Why Older South Koreans Took to the Streets Against the 2016–2017 Candlelight Protests.”
64 Gest, Reny, and Mayer, “Roots of the Radical Right: Nostalgic Deprivation in the United States and Britain.”
65 Jo, “Memory, Institutions, and the Domestic Politics of South Korean–Japanese Relations”; Kim-Leffingwell, “Alternative Legacies of Authoritarianism: Pro-Dictator Bias in Ideology.”
66 Horatanakun, “The Network Origin of Thailand’s Youth Movement.”
67 Fossati, “Illiberal Resistance to Democratic Backsliding: The Case of Radical Political Islam in Indonesia.”
68 Mobrand, “Prosecution Reform and the Politics of Faking Democracy in South Korea”; Han and Hundt, “Nostalgic Nationalists in South Korea: The Flag-Carriers’ Struggles.”
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Myunghee Lee
Myunghee Lee is an Assistant Professor at James Madison College at Michigan State University. Her research interests include authoritarian politics, democratization, protest, security, and foreign policy.