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Chapter 6

Democracy: Beyond Asian Values

The phrase “miracle on the Han River” describes the feverish economic development that took place in South Korea from the 1960s onwards, yet this country has achieved two miracles. The second is the political transformation that occurred in the past quarter-century. In a very short time, South Korea has graduated from military dictatorship to the twentieth most democratic country in the world, and the most democratic in Asia, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Overshadowed by the North Korean problem, Chinese growth, and Japan’s cultural power, South Korea never gets the credit it deserves. However, in a political sense, this country is becoming a model for Asia. Around the region, there are countries with successful economies but authoritarian politics, such as Singapore and China. Only Japan presents a serious challenge to South Korea in terms of democratic development, but Japan’s free and fair elections belie a rigid, bureaucratic system in which genuine change is very difficult to achieve.

During the 1990s, a debate took place over so-called Asian values, in which Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew argued that democracy is a Western concept not suited to Asian people, who have grown up in Confucian-influenced, authoritarian cultures. The idea of Asian values has its origin in Lee’s Singapore and Mahatir Mohamad’s Malaysia, where it was seen as an approach that could unite the ethnic Chinese and the Muslim Malays as well as justify continued one-party rule. One of their opponents in the debate was Kim Dae-jung, the long-time democratization campaigner and eventual president of South Korea, who lost no time in replying that “culture is not our destiny. Democracy is.”

Given the general lack of democracy in Asia, it is appropriate to ask why South Korea has embraced democracy so strongly. A number of factors in the Korean character and Korean history may provide the explanation. Among them are Koreans’ desire for education; the creation of the Korean Hangul alphabet, which dramatically improved literacy, giving ordinary people the opportunity to express themselves; and the country’s deep tradition of revolt and protest.

Education and Literacy

Following the creation of South Korea, there was a great push towards expanding education for all. In 1945, only 5 percent of people had graduated with secondary school or higher-level qualifications; by the early 1990s, this figure stood at above 90 percent. Successive governments saw education as key to national development and pursued a policy of educational egalitarianism, dramatically increasing the number of schools throughout the country. Parents were only too happy to sign on. Korean society is in some ways very elitist, with well-established “old-boy” networks that run business and politics. However, it also despises ignorance and prizes literacy and basic knowledge among the general population.

Respect for learning goes back to Confucianism, of course, but literacy in Korea has a founding hero. In the early Joseon period, King Sejong the Great (r. 1418–1450) mandated the creation of Hangul, the Korean alphabet, thereby committing one of the most empowering acts of egalitarianism in Korean history. Sejong is considered the greatest Korean ruler and was a man of many achievements, but none was more significant than this.

Foreign visitors are always surprised by how easy it is to learn to read Korean words. The reason for this is that Sejong deliberately made it so. Prior to Hangul, Koreans used Chinese characters (hanja), which were so complex and numerous that only the yangban, who lived a “gentleman-scholar” existence on the back of peasant labor, had the opportunity to properly learn them. Sejong, against the wishes of many of the elite, wanted to create a writing system that enabled ordinary people to become literate. The characters his scholars came up with were so straightforward that it was said at the time, “A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days.”

Hangul was such a powerful tool that a subsequent king, Yeonsangun, tried to ban its use when propaganda posters against his rule began to appear in the invented script. Crucially, he couldn’t; the cat was already out of the bag. Later on, the use of Hangul to produce religious texts helped spread Christianity, which proclaimed that all were equal in the eyes of God—unlike Confucianism, which required everyone to know their rightful place. Nowadays, the level of illiteracy in Korea is virtually zero. Unlike many other places in the world, all people with an interest in politics have the ability to communicate their views. They also benefit from access to an open educational system that can provide them with knowledge of the fundamentals of civics as well as political theory, political history, and public administration, for instance.

Culture of Protest

Korea has a vibrant tradition of protest. Sometimes this can go too far, as when farmers in the town of Icheon, protesting against the location of a military base in their area, ripped the limbs off a live pig and beheaded it outside the Ministry of Defense in May 2007. Such excesses aside, it remains true that people in Korea express their views more openly, more noisily, and in greater number, than in most other Asian countries. Park Won-soon, the mayor of Seoul, a former human rights lawyer, and the founder of Beautiful Store (Areumdaun Gagye), Korea’s first chain of charity thrift shops, proudly points out that, in years gone by, scholars angry with the king would throw caution to the wind and engage in “ax protests,” so named because taking part in one was a guaranteed way to have one’s head removed with said implement. “And if you look at Chinese protestors after Tiananmen Square,” he notes, “they just gave up... Korean democracy campaigners kept on going” until the military government threw in the towel.

The American writer P. J. O’Rourke visited Korea in 1987 to report on the democratization movement. After witnessing various protests first hand, he expressed shock at the sheer persistence and resilience of Korean protestors. In his essay, “Seoul Brothers,” he writes that during the Guro-gu district office building riot, police “were firing salvos of gas grenades, twenty at a time, into the fifth floor windows... That the students could even stand in this maelstrom was a testament of Korean-ness. But they were not only standing; they were fighting like sons of bitches.”

Even today, this tradition is as strong as ever. Though South Koreans have relatively much less to complain about, you can go to Gwanghwamun or Yeouido (the center of government and the parliament, respectively) now and see people protesting against or advocating for just about anything. From trade unionists to anti–North Korea army veterans, they will be out in force, holding banners, shouting, and singing oddly cheerful songs. Though many people complain about this culture of protest, South Korea’s young democracy benefits from having citizens who make whoever is in government realize that they cannot act with impunity.

The Rebels of Later Joseon