This chapter analyzes “the slow death of democracy under neoliberalism” in the South Korean context. The author shows that neoliberalism and its economic and social catastrophes had paradoxical democratization effects in 1979 and 1997. In the late 1970s, the global oil shock dealt a critical blow to the South Korean economy which had at the time been financially strained due to the costly heavy industrialization drive of the Park Chung-Hee government. The Park government had to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for rescue, which would be offered under the condition of an unsually severe austerity program that caused society-wide distress and revolt. Park Chung-Hee’s harsh suppression of such social resistance only led to his political fall. About two decades later, the Asian financial crisis in 1997 instantaneously enveloped the South Korean economy in spite of its “strong fundamentals” in macroeconomic parameters and industrial competitiveness. This was due to the Kim Young-Sam government’s developmental mimicry of the Park Chung-Hee era through arbitrary financial and regulatory measures that would encourage private industries’ overexpansion, often based upon short-term foreign loans. The South Korean government had to turn to the IMF, openly representing global finance, once again. Its citizens and enterprises had to confront another, much more severe round of austerity and structural adjustment. In this process, the ruling conservative party had to give up its power to Kim Dae-Jung, self-proclaimed as a “prepared president”, whose supposedly progressive, or at least less conservative, government paradoxically became a highly praised instrument of IMF-encouraged neoliberalization. His successor from the largely same political bloc, Roh Moo-Hyun, only contributed to structurally hardening the neoliberal socio-economic transformation of South Korea and thus virtually helped the conservative party to return to power under the showily developmentalist slogans reminiscent of the Park Chung-Hee era—however, without being able to recover the popular basis of the national economy in the end. South Korea’s democratization, to the extent that it reflects the formation of state leadership from less authoritarian and socially responsive political forces, somehow coincided with its radical neoliberalization, under which socio-economic displacement and bipolarization have gradually destabilized the popular basis of democratic participation.

Neoliberalism and Democracy in South Korea

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发表日期：

2025年

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Hochul Sonn

摘要

This chapter analyzes “the slow death of democracy under neoliberalism” in the South Korean context. The author shows that neoliberalism and its economic and social catastrophes had paradoxical democratization effects in 1979 and 1997. In the late 1970s, the global oil shock dealt a critical blow to the South Korean economy which had at the time been financially strained due to the costly heavy industrialization drive of the Park Chung-Hee government. The Park government had to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for rescue, which would be offered under the condition of an unsually severe austerity program that caused society-wide distress and revolt. Park Chung-Hee’s harsh suppression of such social resistance only led to his political fall. About two decades later, the Asian financial crisis in 1997 instantaneously enveloped the South Korean economy in spite of its “strong fundamentals” in macroeconomic parameters and industrial competitiveness. This was due to the Kim Young-Sam government’s developmental mimicry of the Park Chung-Hee era through arbitrary financial and regulatory measures that would encourage private industries’ overexpansion, often based upon short-term foreign loans. The South Korean government had to turn to the IMF, openly representing global finance, once again. Its citizens and enterprises had to confront another, much more severe round of austerity and structural adjustment. In this process, the ruling conservative party had to give up its power to Kim Dae-Jung, self-proclaimed as a “prepared president”, whose supposedly progressive, or at least less conservative, government paradoxically became a highly praised instrument of IMF-encouraged neoliberalization. His successor from the largely same political bloc, Roh Moo-Hyun, only contributed to structurally hardening the neoliberal socio-economic transformation of South Korea and thus virtually helped the conservative party to return to power under the showily developmentalist slogans reminiscent of the Park Chung-Hee era—however, without being able to recover the popular basis of the national economy in the end. South Korea’s democratization, to the extent that it reflects the formation of state leadership from less authoritarian and socially responsive political forces, somehow coincided with its radical neoliberalization, under which socio-economic displacement and bipolarization have gradually destabilized the popular basis of democratic participation.