Impeachment by candlelight in South Korea: How to build a federated anti-corruption social movement
Country: South Korea
The protests that led to the eventual impeachment of South Korean President Park Geun-hye on corruption charges in 2016 were driven by a sophisticated and coordinated alliance of diverse civil society organizations. Yet the real lesson may be in the country’s underlying politics of corruption.
Lessons:
The South Korean anti-corruption movement succeeded because of collaboration between diverse civil society, labor, and political organizations working together in a federated structure.
South Korean protests were able to draw on broad and sophisticated awareness and concern about corruption and its link to everyday problems among the general electorate.
The anti-Park movement in South Korea was nonpartisan but, at the same time, corruption in South Korea has a clear partisan divide, with one party clearly more trusted on matters of accountability and transparency.This affords South Korean voters a starker choice on the issue in comparison to the United States.
The downfall of now-imprisoned former South Korean President Park Geun-hye and her close friend and adviser, Choi Soon-sil, has all the makings of an overwrought novel. Park is the daughter of military dictator Park Chung-hee, who was assassinated in 1979, and Choi is the daughter of Choi Tae-min, a “shaman fortuneteller” and cult leader, a confidante of the Park family once dubbed “the Korean Rasputin.”[1]
Their relationship—and the enormous, almost mystic influence the Choi family supposedly had over Park—had long been criticized in South Korea, especially after Park was elected as president in 2012.[2] In 2016, revelations emerged of systematic graft and corruption on the part of Choi, all of which should sound familiar in the United States. Choi, who had no formal role in government, used her influence to secure her daughter’s admission to a prestigious university and pressured prominent corporations into making sizeable donations to charitable foundations under her control in exchange for influence.[3] The most explosive revelation came when news channel JTBC acquired Choi’s “discarded” tablet computer showing she had significant access to drafts of presidential speeches and other confidential documents.[4]
As the details of the friendship and Choi’s corruption came to light, they led to a cascade of investigations, prosecutions, and eventually Park’s impeachment. Park has since been sentenced to 24 years in prison and ordered to pay $17 million in fines.[5] Choi was also jailed, as were several aides and government officials, as well as multiple business tycoons, including the de facto leaders of Samsung and Lotte, respectively the first and fifth largest corporations in South Korea.[6] (Most of the accusations involve peddling of influence and access—both of which are common in the United States, but are generally considered legal.)
The Park impeachment and related convictions were a much-needed victory for the rule of law in South Korea, which has a long history of corruption stemming from its rapid economic development under a de facto military dictatorship.[7] Yet the victory cannot be attributed to institutions of justice alone—they are the product of one of the largest and most coordinated anti-corruption protest movements in history: the Candlelight Revolution.
Starting in October 2016, citizens began to gather for nighttime candlelight vigils for democracy, calling for Park’s resignation or impeachment. Within a month, the groups of protestors holding candles swelled to a national movement. One rally in Seoul boasted a purported 1.7 million people, almost one-fifth of the city.[8] The protests drove Park’s approval rating as low as 4 percent and put so much pressure on political and judicial institutions that investigations, arrests, and impeachment became near certainties.[9]
Sarah Chayes, an expert on anti-corruption movements around the world, argues that what made the difference “was the ability of a great many of the experienced and well established civil society groups to federate, instead of competing .”[10] South Korea has a strong tradition of pro-democracy protests and a rich civil society specializing in anti-corruption and pro-democracy issues. Yet their real strength, to Chayes, was “frequent planning and coordination meetings attended by representatives from different organizations, in which the decision-making process was democratic and transparent.”[11]
What made the difference “was the ability of a great many of the experienced and well established civil society groups to federate, instead of competing .”
Additionally, Shaazka Beyerle, a senior research advisor at the United States Institute of Peace, argues that four lessons emerge from South Korea (and other successful anti-corruption movements):
taking corruption out of the abstract and linking it to real world problems;
employing creative, fun, and humorous nonviolent tactics;
balancing negative framing of corruption’s ills with positive messages of empowerment and hope; and
ensuring the movement is led by credible and widely respected organizers.[12]
But, in order to have an anti-corruption movement in the first place, the issue must be on the agenda politically. Says Beyerle, "Grievances, objectives and demands [of protest movements] need to resonate with people and reflect their concerns and problems."[13]
This is a persistent challenge in the United States, where corruption often is displaced by seemingly more urgent, partisan debates over healthcare, the economy, national security, etc. (This is a puzzle, as American voters historically view corruption as a major concern—they just don’t vote based on it.[14])
According to Sun-Chul Kim, a professor of Korean society and culture at Emory University, a history of authoritarian rule and collusion between the government and South Korea’s corporate conglomerates known as chaebol has led to “greater awareness and sensitivity over corruption issues.”[15] More than voters in other modern democracies, South Korean voters tend to see anti-corruption and democracy issues as closely linked and of immediate concern to their daily lives. The result, says Kim, is that “the bar is set much higher and laws are much stricter when it comes to corruption,”[16] especially compared to the United States, where many of South Korea’s scandals would not necessarily be considered illegal.
Perhaps the real lesson is about the intersection of anti-corruption and partisanship. According to Chayes, “Opposition to Park truly represented a broad, cross-cutting coalition of Koreans, not a partisan faction.”[17] At the same time, says Kim, South Korea’s “anti-corruption campaigns do lay within the context of partisan divide.”[18]
True, both liberal and conservative parties have strong links to the chaebol. (President Moon Jae-in, Park’s left-wing successor, promised reforms that have so far been more rhetoric than reality.[19]) However, the conservative parties, which descend directly from the authoritarian rulers who forged close ties with the chaebol between the 60s and 80s, are seen as more implicated in corruption. Historically, this has given South Korean voters a clear choice on the issue and set up partisan stakes for corruption at the ballot box.
As a result, the anti-Park protests were a nonpartisan movement but channeled through an ideological landscape with a clear, less-corrupt alternative.
This stands in clear contrast to the United States, where anger about corruption is surprisingly bipartisan and, therefore, not particularly ideological.[20] To replicate South Korea’s recent anti-corruption zeal, perhaps what American voters need is leaders willing to differentiate themselves on the issue in practice, not just rhetoric.
Recommended Reading:
https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2017/02/07/south-koreas-candlelight-protests/
https://carnegieendowment.org/2017/03/24/democratic-breakthrough-in-south-korea-pub-68394
