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Defeat in Victory:
Conservatives in South Korea’s Democratic Consolidation
Byung-Kook Kim
Department of Political Science, Korea University
South Korea has been on a political roller coast ride since it made a democratic
breakthrough in June 1987. The Six Republic, inaugurated in February 1988, looked like
ushering in a controlled path of democratization through a “pact,” with its authoritarian
Fifth Republic’s ruling political party still in control of presidential power after a
competitive four-way race. The semblance of continuity lasted only two months. The
opposition took over its constitutionally reinvigorated legislature in a general election and
irreparably scarred Roh Tae-woo’s newly won electoral legitimacy by holding a series of
nationally televised assembly hearings on human rights violations and corruption
committed by Roh Tae-woo’s political party before 1988. The chaeya of dissident activists
and militant labor leaders, too, undermined his authority by orchestrating from below
massive political protests. Thoroughly demoralized, Roh Tae-woo opted for establishing a
majority party through a merger of forces with two opposition leaders, Kim Young-sam
and Kim Jong-pil, in January 1990. The Democratic Liberal Party brought back stability,
but under a vastly altered political condition. The authoritarian Fifth Republic ruling elite
split, with Roh Tae-woo leading what remained of it as a dominant faction within a new
ruling party, and Chun Doo-hwan leading a life of outcast after publicly assuming
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