Do Springs of Democracy lead to Falls of Justice? State–Civil Contests for Political Accountability in South Korea

Abstract

In the “third wave of democratization,” postauthoritarian states have addressed human rights injustices and civil strife through a process of political accountability. These practices in accountability (public trials, reparations, memorials), however, have not achieved their stated goals of social justice and national reconciliation. I argue postauthoritarian administrations privatize state violence and thereby diffuse public mobilizations for social justice while effacing the legacy of human rights struggles by reframing public narratives in mnemonic sites. This paper provides two South Korean case studies of state violence and political accountability: the April 19 Student Revolution of 1960 and the May 18 Kwangju Massacre of 1980. In both cases, the state used its military force to impose public order, resulting in civilian deaths. In postauthoritarian periods (1960–1961, 1994–1995), civilian administrations revisited these injustices to exemplify political accountability and the reconstitution of human rights. However, I argue that without popular mobilization to pressure the new state, postauthoritarian regimes would not have risked destabilizing the conditions of new governance.