The Sources of Discontent and their Impact on the Retreat of Democracy in South Korea

South Korea overcame the crisis of democracy in 2016–2017 by a heterarchy of massive candlelight demonstrations in the field of politics and the impeachment of President Park Geun Hye with due process of representative democracy, and renormalized democracy through elections. During the Moon Jae-in presidency, democratic politics had been polarized between rightist and leftist populists, judicialization of politics weakened the power of political parties and politicians, the conservative press led national political agenda setting in a conservative way, and all these discontents of democracy combined to made the third rotation of power (first in 1997, second in 2007) in the 2022 presidential election which elected a former Prosecutor General Yoon Suk Yeol. South Korean democracy is now in crisis, meaning that, something must be done to enable either the reconsolidation of democracy or continuous back-sliding of democracy. The major factors that will contribute to the (1) juristocracy and judicialization of politics; (2) mediatization of politics; (3) rightist and leftist populism; (4) polarization of politics. The strongest danger to South Korean democracy is the possibility of juristocracy and judicialization of politics in which a democratically elected president led the erosion and subversion of democracy by stealth using legal mechanisms for anti-democratic ends. The second danger to South Korean democracy is mediatization in which big capital-dominated rightist media cooperates and colludes with a prosecutor regime to deepen the erosion of democratic institutions and norms. The third danger is rightist and leftist populism that divides on and offline political spaces and generates a de-facto civil war that may call for a strongman to restore law and order. The fourth danger is that party and representative institutions are too weak to counteract the subversion of democracy and renormalize democracy. Socio-economic polarization has led political polarization and the retreat of democracy such as the weakening of traditional political parties, the rise of extreme rightists, the erosion of people’s trust in democratic government and representative institutions and political parties. Whether Korean democracy continues to back-slide or renormalize and reconsolidate will be decided by the choice of voters and politicians in the forthcoming elections.