Korean Democracy in Transition: A Rational Blueprint for Developing Societies

4 A Theory of Government-Driven Democratization

4 A Theory of Government-Driven Democratization The Kim Young-sam Years The thirteenth National Assembly election in Korea in 1988, a democratic one, created a four-party system. Within two years, in January 1990, the Democratic Liberal Party was formed as a grand conservative coalition through a merger of three existing parties: the governing Democratic Justice Party (DJP) with military connections; the New Democratic Republican Party (NDRP) led by Kim Jong-pil, an ex-prime minister under the Park Chung-hee regime; and the Reunification Democratic Party (RDP) led by a long-time member of the opposition, Kim Young-sam. The birth of the Democratic Liberal Party put an end to the four-party system and effectively replaced it with a two-party system. Excluded from the coalition was the Party for Peace and Democracy (PPD), led by another longtime opposition leader, Kim Dae-jung. The coalition of the DJP, NDRP, and RDP is puzzling since these parties do not seem to have much in common. The NDRP was the successor party to the Democratic Republican Party, the authoritarian governing party under Park Chung-hee (1961–1979). The RDP was the successor party to the New Democratic Party, the opposition party to Park’s rule. The governing DJP was founded by Chun Doo-hwan after his successful military coup in 1980. When he took power, Chun disbanded all of the political parties of the previous regime and banned the political activities of all the major political figures, including Kim Jong-pil, Kim Young-sam, and Kim Dae-jung, with charges against them ranging from financial wrongdoings to inciting riots. It was not until 1987 that all three Kims were allowed to resume their political activities. In short, all three Kims 42 KOREAN DEMOCRACY IN TRANSITION suffered from Chun’s rule. The leaders of the RDP had said all along that the DJP should not have been born in the first place. The study of the party merger is interesting, given the rush to democratization occurring throughout the world. Born out of the collapse of the old system, most of these new would-be democracies in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia are under pressure to rebuild their economies while maintaining stable political systems. These tasks require strong government. The Korean example is interesting in that at the time the party merger occurred: (1) the country’s democratization program had continued since 1987; (2) the country’s once miraculous economy had slowed down after democratization began (although the causes of the slowdown may not have been entirely political); and (3) the legislative processes were deadlocked due to the weak presidency and the minority governing party. What emerged out of the merger in 1990 was a seemingly stable and strong supermajority governing party. I have shown in the previous chapter that the coalition of DJP, NDRP, and RDP was driven mainly by the political interests of the actors and parties involved rather than an attempt to break the legislative deadlock. Nevertheless , the Korean public did not punish the parties for the merger in the national assembly and presidential elections in 1992. In this chapter, I will discuss the implications of the merger and the two elections of 1992 for the democratization process in Korea. Mainly, I argue that in a country like Korea, the democratization process, once started, is likely to be driven by the government due to the country’s unusual past economic development. The 1990 Conservative Coalition After months of behind-closed-doors negotiations, on January 22, 1990, Roh Tae-woo, Kim Jong-pil, and Kim Young-sam proclaimed the merger of the DJP, NDRP, and RDP and the birth of the new Democratic Liberal Party (DLP). It controlled over two-thirds of the seats in the national assembly. The DLP contained the RDP (Kim Young-sam’s party) but not the PPD (Kim Dae-jung’s party), and thus was compatible leadershipwise . It was also ideologically connected (Axelrod 1970), and more coherent in terms of the regional origins of the member parties, although I do not believe regionalism was a serious factor in the coalition bargaining. The DJP seemed to have the best possible outcome, namely the DJPNDRP -RDP merger, where the new party now controlled 215 seats, A Theory of Government-Driven Democratization 43 fifteen more than the two-thirds majority necessary to change the constitution so that a parliamentary system could become the new...