▶  Despite the sordid Park presidency, South Korea displayed signs of a mature democracy, going through enormous political stress with no violence and no illegitimate seizure of power. This was rule of law in action.

▶  Most of the above political behavior by Moon and Yoon is de jure legal, albeit political hardball. So why worry? The risk is that major problems await South Korean liberal democracy if it continues on the apparent path normalizing presidents driving polarization, vilifying opposition, sidelining the legislative branch, embracing “imperial presidency,” and intimidating media.

▶  As South Korea—like all countries—moves into a world of “deepfakes,” disinformation, and artificial intelligence manipulation of online and social media, trust in democratic politics will be more crucial and more threatened, as even reaching consensus on basic facts becomes more challenging. Entering this political environment with ruined democratic norms and rock-bottom popular trust in government and politicians is potentially disastrous.

There is a good argument that the high-water mark for South Korea’s democracy was the 2016-2017 Candlelight Vigils and the follow-on impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. A corrupt and out-of-touch president faced the ultima ratio of a united population expressing discontent peacefully. The government allowed the protests, rather than repressing them, and the constitutional process was engaged to legally remove the president from office. Subsequently Park was prosecuted and imprisoned for corruption and abuse of power.

Despite the sordid Park presidency, South Korea displayed signs of a mature democracy, going through enormous political stress with no violence and no illegitimate seizure of power. This was rule of law in action. Instead of manipulating elections or gaming the political system, Park’s conservative party let the democratic process play out, taking its expected beating in the 2017 presidential and 2020 National Assembly elections. But it lived to fight another day, and, after five years of progressive president Moon Jae-in, conservative Yoon Suk-yeol captured the presidency for the conservatives again in 2022.

This is the way democratic politics should work. Nonetheless, the scandals underlying the Park impeachment, and the aftermath of addressing it, revealed troubling weaknesses in South Korean democracy: government-business corruption, political polarization, government use of “lawfare” for political gain, leaders’ tendencies to undermine press freedom, and excessive executive power. Despite assuming the office of president while espousing rhetoric aimed at strengthening South Korea’s liberal democratic bona fides, both Moon Jae-in and Yoon Suk-yeol have failed to match deeds to words.

Moon and Yoon: Exceptio Probat Regulam

President Park’s impeachable offenses were bad enough, but her political norm breaking—ignoring the National Assembly, acting unilaterally on cabinet appointments, failing to generate consensus for divisive executive decisions—provided added toxicity that Moon and Yoon have exacerbated. Given the need for national political healing following Park’s impeachment, Moon had a special responsibility to govern respecting norms of inclusiveness and moderate use of power—he did not do this. He fanned the flames of polarization with rhetoric demonizing conservatives for “deep rooted evils,” promising a retributive campaign to “eradicate” them. Moon activated ethnic nationalism for political gain, referring to conservatives as “pro-Japanese forces.” His administration integrated the National Assembly into a fused party-executive, thus weakening the legislature in favor of an already “imperial presidency.” Culminating a series of unilateral justice system reforms, as his last legislative signature in May 2022 Moon and the majority Democratic Party in the National Assembly rammed through highly controversial reforms to the role of the prosecutor’s office.

Moon also broke democratic norms in other ways. He made late-term personnel appointments to important government entities, such as the Board of Audit and Inspection, and embarked on a divisive “peace offensive” toward North Korea with little effort to generate national consensus. He surrounded himself with scandal-ridden politicians: former Justice Minister Cho Kuk (document forgery on behalf of his daughter’s university application), Busan mayor Yoo Jae-soo (bribery), Presidential Secretary for Civil Affairs Baek Won-woo (abuse of power on behalf of Yoo), and several politicians involved in a property speculation scandal (including lawmaker and 2027 presidential hopeful Lee Jae-myung). Moon and his Democratic Party were also implicated in an online opinion rigging scandal, and were forced to withdraw a dubious “fake news” law seemingly intended to have a chilling effect on freedom of the press.

Following Moon, President Yoon Suk-yeol campaigned on a “freedom agenda” that has become a rhetorical centerpiece of his presidential mandate. Yoon’s inaugural speech focused on his understanding of South Korean democratic crisis, and how freedom and rational debate were the solution. His 2022 and 2023 United Nations General Assembly addresses were focused on protecting and advancing freedom and liberal democracy. Yoon’s 2023 Liberation Day speech featured the same main theme. With Yoon as chair, South Korea hosted the 2024 Summit for Democracy.

Yet, like Moon, Yoon’s actions as president have contradicted his rhetorical commitments. Also like Moon, who failed to realize his special responsibility to govern inclusively and moderately following Park’s impeachment, Yoon has failed to govern inclusively and moderately in light of his weak mandate. Yoon won the presidency by a razor-thin margin (.73 percentage points), and has been faced with an opposition-led National Assembly. The norm for such a fraught political situation would be attempts at bi-partisanship and focus on areas of compromise. This has not been Yoon’s approach.

Yoon has instead castigated the opposition (and by extension, its voters) as “communist totalitarian and anti-state forces,” thus exacerbating polarization and partisanship. The contempt Yoon and his conservative People Power Party (PPP) have for the Democratic Party has meant that there has been little effort to cooperate legislatively with the opposition. Yoon (in)famously refused to meet with opposition leader Lee Jae-myung until after the PPP was so badly spanked in the 2024 mid-term National Assembly election that he had no choice but to sit down with Lee and at least pretend to be interested in bi-partisanship. Like Moon, Yoon has also pressed forward on controversial domestic and foreign policy issues without attempting to generate political or popular consensus. Two primary examples are the conservative effort to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and Yoon’s decision to achieve rapprochement with Japan. The latter is laudable and courageous—and has come at great political risk to Yoon—but nonetheless has not been sold sufficiently to Koreans.

Scandal—and the perception of breach of the rule-of-law—has also plagued those in Yoon’s circle. Allegations of cover-up in the case of a Marine killed during a search-and-rescue operation have accompanied speculation of high-level political interference in the investigation, including by then Minister of National Defense Lee Jong-sup. The situation was aggravated by Yoon’s decision to nominate Lee for the ambassadorship to Australia, provoking suspicion that Yoon hoped to place Lee out of reach of judicial investigation. The move backfired and Yoon was pressured into recalling Lee to Korea. Yoon has also blocked the establishment of special independent investigations into his wife’s alleged stock manipulation and inappropriate acceptance of a luxury handbag, as well as a 2022 Halloween crowd crush tragedy killing 159 people, for which senior administration officials have faced little scrutiny.

Finally, Yoon and his administration have been consistently combative with the media, resulting in accusations of violating freedom of the press. The presidential office has supposedly retaliated against media outlets with unfavorable coverage, including reducing or denying access. Hwang Sang-moo, a senior presidential secretary for social affairs, resigned in March 2024 after making intimidating remarks to reporters, notably hinting that anti-government stories could lead to retribution by referring to a 1988 military intelligence stabbing of a reporter. “Lawfare” has seemingly also been a tool for countering unfavorable media coverage. Through the end of 2023, Yoon’s government or political allies filed eleven defamation cases—including criminal charges—against media, and carried out numerous raids of reporters’ offices.

Abnormal Norms

Most of the above political behavior by Moon and Yoon is de jure legal, albeit political hardball. So why worry? The risk is that major problems await South Korean liberal democracy if it continues on the apparent path normalizing presidents driving polarization, vilifying opposition, sidelining the legislative branch, embracing “imperial presidency,” and intimidating media. Indeed this is already happening. South Korea’s V-dem index dropped from 13th to 34th between 2019 and 2024, with the decline starting under Moon and continuing under Yoon. South Korea was the only liberal democracy displaying a “bell curve” of autocratization. Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders downgraded South Korea from 47th (2023) to 62nd (2024) in press freedom among 180 surveyed countries.

Democracy is a set of institutions—some formal (legal rules, procedures, agents), some informal (norms). Both are essential, and while South Korea’s formal democratic institutions are intact, its norms are deteriorating. This has the effect of eroding popular trust in government and political actors; once gone, this trust is hard to restore. As South Korea—like all countries—moves into a world of “deepfakes,” disinformation, and artificial intelligence manipulation of online and social media, trust in democratic politics will be more crucial and more threatened, as even reaching consensus on basic facts becomes more challenging. Entering this political environment with ruined democratic norms and rock-bottom popular trust in government and politicians is potentially disastrous.