Electoral politics in South Korea

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Paths to Democracy, the Post-Cold War and 21st Century New Standard of Civilization, the New Wave Expansion of International Society: China, South Korea and Iraq

Although policy priority has always been on economic management in East Asian countries, those countries also developed some notable social policies. However, explanations for the development of social policies in those countries have been relatively underdeveloped compared to those of their economic management policies. This study adds to our understanding of the social policy development in East Asia by examining two cases of social policy adoption in South Korea – the Medical Insurance Law and the Minimum Wage Law. This Korean case study shows a pattern of policy development primarily driven by particular ‘interests’ (state elites' perceived political survival needs and their reputation in international society), with ‘environmental’ factors and ‘policy legacies’ playing a supplementary role. In particular, these policies are interpreted as anticipatory concessions to moderate members of Korean society by the state elites who aimed to stabilise their regimes by separating radicals from moderates. In addition, the medical insurance scheme is understood as a by-product of the competition between the South and North Korean regimes. This study also draws our attention to such issues as the similarities and differences between the East Asian welfare regimes and the change and continuity in the development of social policies in East Asia.

Explaining Social Policy Adoption in South Korea: the Cases of the Medical Insurance Law and the Minimum Wage Law

This dissertation explains why Taiwan and South Korea experienced democratic breakthrough in the late 1980s, when Singapore failed to do so. It explains this variation in democratic outcomes by specifying the causal mechanisms underpinning the internationaldomestic political interface of democratic development in these cases. New empirical evidence discovered in the course of this research has confirmed that transnational networks of nonstate and substate actors were an indisputable source of external pressures on the authoritarian governments of Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore during the late 1970s and early 80s. Foreign human rights activists, Christian missionaries and ecumenical workers, members of overseas diaspora communities, journalists, academics and students, along with legislators in key democratic countries allied to the target governments, were found to have raised the international profile of political repression by flagging them as reprehensible human rights abuses. Within the context of an international normative environment where human rights was increasingly considered a legitimate international concern, these transnational actors generated a negative international opinion of the target governments. Such grassroots pressures had the potential to raise the cost of political repression for these target governments with the effect of curbing

The Transnational Protection Regime and Democratic Breakthrough: A Comparative Study of Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore

Asia has two \"third-wave\" democracies, Taiwan and South Korea. Historically and in their democratizations both countries share several features. Both had a Japanese colonial experience. The economies of both grew rapidly under authoritarian governments and both democratized at similar times. Both democratic regimes have faced issues of legitimacy, media that derive from the old authoritarian regimes, and judicial authorities that have been slow to democratize. However, Taiwan and South Korea also differ in several important respects. For example, Taiwan has some continuity of political parties, while in South Korea parties have become the electoral machines of leading politicians. Taiwan and South Korea today both have divided polities, but democratization has achieved widespread acceptance in both countries and very few people wish to return to an authoritarian past.

C. I. Eugene Kim

Papers

South Korea in 1985: An Eventful Year Amidst Uncertainty