It took over 50 years, but Newsweek reports that the Republic of Korea has arrived as a mature democracy. The bottom line:
[V]oters in the next election won’t face a choice just between personalities but also between platforms. That seems to be exactly what they want: asked about his preference in the upcoming presidential contest, 42-year-old Yum Jong Suk, a school director from Busan, responds, “I’ll look at personalities, but I’ll look at the people around them as well. That’s why the party’s important—because one person can’t do everything.”
I would also add that I expect Korea’s much-talked-about regionalism to mature as well, especially if Lee Myung-bak gets the GNP nomination. I think most of Sudogwon will vote its interest and back the conservative candidate(s) along with the southeast while the southwest and the Chungcheong provinces will support the progressive candidate(s)
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Newsweek’s subhead is good: “President Roh Moo Hyun seems hapless. But he’s helped kill South Korea’s imperial presidency, once and for all.” Hell, he almost killed the presidency, period.
Interesting article, thanks.
Why is this number ONLY 67% ?
It’s very weird. But explains the trend.
Indeed an unusually good article for a pablum publication like Newsweek. 10 years in-country and I have pretty much ignored local politics just because there were no platforms to analyze or debate.
If indeed the era of a 2-party, platform-based democratic system is upon us, Mr. Jackson, perhaps you could be so kind as to direct those of us with some catching up to do to a link or two of background info on what these platforms now are? I really haven’t been able to follow much of what you, baduk and the other politicos around here have been dicussing lately.
Uri has been torn to pieces, GNP is on the brink of breaking-up (though Lee’s “concession” of the primary rules kind of prevented it for now), Sohn is about to form a new party, and LDP, like a cockroach, is resilient as ever.
I really don’t see the dawning of “two-party era” in Korea, nor do I think having two major left/right parties would be particularly beneficial to Korean politics.
^ By LDP I meant DLP. Gah.
I swear I just saw the words “mature” and “Korea” in the same sentence. Must’ve wandered into Bizarro World.
Korean democracy hasn’t matured yet. But, judging from Lee Myung-bak’s recent concession on how the primaries should be carried out, we’re getting there.
I too have some qualms about these glib statements:
“Commentators now say that the country is well on its way to becoming one of Asia’s most mature liberal democracies, with one of the few fairly stable two-party systems in the region (even Japan is effectively a one-party state).”
Not sure who these unnamed “commentators” are, but in any case, to follow-up this logic later in the article, they assert:
“Opinion polls show fairly consistent and broad support for a left-of-center coalition to oppose the GNP, meaning that even if the Uri Party collapses, a similar organization would soon take its place.”
Because opinion polls suggest one thing, a natural, spontaneous political re-ordering will soon emerge to conform to it? Here? In Korea? In a presidential election year?
And were on the cusp of a stable two-party system wherein the politics of dominant personas is, or soon will be, just a faded memory of the 3 Kims era? Yeah, right, pass the crack pipe, dudes…
These authors make a number of good points, not least of which is Roh’s inadvertant contrbution to a less authoritative presidency, and they’re essentially correct about the continual maturing of Korea’s democracy.
But I think they’re a little naively premature if they think we’ve “arrived,” or thereabouts.
Maybe there’s a reason why the by-line doesn’t indicate they’re in Seoul.
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“Sudogwon” is not a proper noun. I propose it be translated as the “greater Seoul region” or “(greater) capital region.”
“88 percent of South Koreans disagreed with the statement “No opposition party should be allowed to compete for power,” compared with 67 percent in Japan, and 73 percent in Taiwan and Thailand.
Why is this number ONLY 67% ?
It’s very weird. But explains the trend.”
It’s the wording that’s weird, at least in English. Negatively worded statements like that one can confuse respondents and yield misleading results.
sonagi, highly unlikely. Polls were probably done in native tongue.
If the wording had been positive in Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, then that same wording would probably have been kept in English. There would have been no reason to change it. Unless we see the original wording, we can only speculate.
Orankay, thanks for the information, although I wish I could use it as a proper noun. The “greater capital region” is almost as ungainly as “Seoul-Incheon-Gyeonggido.”
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