Democratization and Social Movements in South Korea: Defiant Institutionalization by Sun-Chul Kim

Abstract

Reviewed by: Democratization and Social Movements in South Korea: Defiant Institutionalization by Sun-Chul Kim Cheehyung Harrison Kim Democratization and Social Movements in South Korea: Defiant Institutionalization by Sun-Chul Kim. London: Routledge, 2016. 182pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $155.00 (hardback) Even those who are familiar with the analysis of or have experience in protests are awed each time Seoul’s wide Sejong Avenue, from Kyŏngbok Palace to City Hall plaza, fills up with demonstrators. As I write this book review, in November 2016, some of the largest demonstrations in South Korea’s history are taking place across the country. The protesters demanding the president’s resignation are remarkably diverse. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and the Korean Peasants’ League, the two consistently important political challengers in the past two decades, are of course there, but so are artists, celebrities, middle-school students, part-time workers, and both underrepresented and privileged groups who at [End Page 260] other times have few common interests. The fast organizing of large-scale events and the immediate sharing of slogans, banners, candles, and other resources, all witnessed in the November demonstrations, are what the sociologist Sun-Chul Kim would still recognize as the cohesive and autonomous character of South Korea’s social-movement sector. In fact, cohesiveness and autonomy are parts of Kim’s original concept of “defiant institutionalization,” the defining quality of South Korea’s social-movement sector since the 1987 June Uprising. The concept describes the social movements’ institutionalization as a “routine part of everyday politics” but “not entirely assimilated into the norms and practices of the political establishment, thereby allowing political challengers to be more contentious and less compliant” (p. 8). While internal cohesion enables diverse social-movement groups to connect and act in unison, their autonomy allows them to “formulate agendas and carry out campaigns relatively free from the constraints of powerful political actors” (p. 8). In recognizing social movements as important political challengers, Kim’s study provides a balanced critique of South Korea’s party politics and procedural democracy in the past three decades. Defiant institutionalization (and its components of cohesion and autonomy) is, hence, the outcome of a political system that largely excluded the movement sector from parliamentary politics, an exclusion that forced social movements to rely on each other for resources and to become a party-like entity providing a voice for marginalized people. Included here is the incisive critique of minjung, however crucial they were in igniting various social movements. On the one hand, Kim is cautious about attributing South Korea’s 1987 democratic transition to the mass power of minjung because the organizational capacity of underrepresented groups like the workers prior to 1987 was actually low and because the high economic growth rate had shifted the focus of protests to antiauthoritarianism, not improving labor rights or working conditions. On the other hand, minjung groups were misused by individuals and political parties to gain popular support and attain political power, a repeated process that often left minjung groups out of elite politics. Kim Young Sam’s and Kim Dae Jung’s political ascensions serve as bitter lessons here. Sun-Chul Kim’s assessment of 1980s social movement is therefore one of hard truth: “South Korea’s democratic transition in 1987 was a conservative one, mainly because critical decisions were made by political elites from the top-down without incorporating voices from the bottom-up. . . . Lacking proper mechanisms of interest mediation, the only option they had was to take their issues to the streets” (p. 43). What happens in the streets is the most captivating part of this concise and well-written book. Sun-Chul Kim’s narrative is supported by detailed examinations of protests from 1984 to 2002 (through government documents, police reports, activist groups’ documents, and newspapers). The changing patterns are illuminating: the decline and rise in violent protests in the 1990s (p. 5), the conceptual space of institutionalization showing the relationship between autonomy and cohesion (p. 9), major shifts in protests from struggles for political and labor rights to struggles [End Page 261] against neoliberal reforms (p. 60), and the growing importance of formal coalitions since the 1990s (p. 62). From...