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A person at a rally for the impeachment of President Yoon Suk-yeol on Dec. 7, 2024, holds up a sign reading “Defending Democracy with our lives!” (Yonhap)

By Shin Jin-wook, professor of sociology at Chung-Ang University

According to the 2025 report published by the Varieties of Democracy Institute, of V-Dem, an authoritative democracy watchdog at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, Korea is no longer classified as a liberal democracy, but as an electoral democracy.

In the context of the report, an electoral democracy is a system with fair elections and basic freedoms of the press, expression, assembly and association, whereas a liberal democracy is one that furthermore guarantees individual freedoms, curtails abuse of power by the executive branch, and maintains the rule of law. In the opinion of the V-Dem Institute, Korea no longer meets the criteria for being a liberal democracy.

Since democratization in 1987, Korea steadily elevated its democracy through the presidencies of Roh Tae-woo, Kim Young-sam, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. It long maintained its status as a liberal democracy in the V-Dem Institute’s report and just a few years ago was ranked 17th or 18th in the world, above the likes of France, Canada, Japan and Taiwan. But according to this year’s report, Korea’s democracy is now on a level with that of Suriname, Malta, and Trinidad and Tobago.

In the past, Korea’s democracy has scored fairly high in the Economist’s Democracy Index. But this year’s report no longer categorizes Korea as a full democracy, but as a flawed democracy with elections and only basic liberties. The Economist’s report mentioned Korea and Pakistan as being on a list of 10 countries that exhibited the most democratic backsliding last year. That’s a dizzying fall considering that Western countries had been seeking to learn from Korean democracy only a few years ago.

We need to assess the global circumstances under which Korea’s democratic backsliding has taken place and, in that context, the implications of recent developments in Korea. As it happens, Korea is not the only country where democracy is in retreat.

Autocratization and democratic backsliding have been becoming more common around the world — and proceeding more rapidly — over the past decade. It is necessary, therefore, that we understand the causes and characteristics of that change.

A notable feature of the global trend of democratic backsliding is that it is shifting from gradual or partial decay inside democratic systems to overt attacks on the democratic and constitutional system itself, and attempts to overthrow that system. Furthermore, that very atmosphere in geopolitics as a whole tends to facilitate the push for autocratization in each country.

There was a global wave of democratization in the 1980s, when Korea itself democratized. Numerous countries transitioned from autocratic to democratic political systems, and the values of freedom, tolerance and diversity were also prioritized on a cultural level.

But since the mid- to late 1990s, that trend has faltered under a rising tide of autocratization. Until the 2000s, democratic backsliding generally retained the basic trappings of democracy, including elections, multiple parties and basic political rights, even as democratic principles were quietly being undermined.

But in the 2010s, democracy began to retreat on a greater scale than before in areas around the world. There was an increase in state violence, political oppression, and autocratic override of the constraints of democratic institutions.

According to an assessment by Freedom House, the percentage of countries that are “not free” steadily decreased from 1988 to 2010 but has been on the rise ever since. According to the V-Dem Institute’s report, 49% of the world population was living under autocratic regimes in 2004, a percentage that rose to 72% in 2024.

Democracy has also retreated considerably in the West, even as parties of the far right have enjoyed mounting success. Eastern Europe has seen autocratization in such countries as Hungary and Poland since the 2010s, and parties of the far right have been coming in first or second in several countries in Western Europe over the past few years, including Italy, Austria, France and Germany.

To be sure, the United States is the country where the most political backsliding has occurred. In his second term, President Donald Trump has been overtly attacking the campaign for “diversity, equity and inclusion” and has been employing a politics of racial animus and exclusion.

There has been considerable academic research and discussion about the structural reasons for the global retreat of democracy.

First is the weakening of economic conditions. Against the long-term backdrop of growing inequality caused by neoliberal globalization, public anxiety has been exacerbated by a series of shocks including the global financial crisis in 2009, the Euro area crisis and, more recently, COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine.

Second, the multiethnic societies formed by the movement of migrant workers and refugees across national borders are grist for the mill of radical politics.

Third, international conflict and potential threats have a major impact on domestic politics. International conflicts such as the 9/11 terror attacks and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza tend to sharpen discord in the countries involved.

But in the end, the biggest factor is human agency.

When establishment parties and stakeholders in society do not heed economic hardship, anxiety about public safety, the sense of culture in crisis, and fears of war or seek to resolve them, but instead disregard, dismiss or even mock those issues, extremists gain public support, endangering democracy. But countries in which elite groups and stakeholders proactively respond to those issues avoid the threat of constitutional collapse, even if they cannot totally evade democratic backsliding.

From that perspective, it’s hard not to think that considering Korea has seen the unparalleled rise of the structural conditions, rancor and latent violence that jeopardize its democracy, the country has been woefully inept when it comes to responding to these issues. 

The upshot of this is that Korea has now illustrated to the world that when problems are allowed to fester behind the pretty façade of a developed democracy, a country can become a backward democracy at a moment’s notice, and even descend into a tyrannical dictatorship, for that matter. The much-lauded “K-democracy” was nothing more than an illusion, an empty husk. 

There’s no one single cause of this. Inequality and discrimination, social isolation, the rise of everyday hate, political polarization, rising extremism, anomie and loss of shared values, undemocratic and unaccountable power elites — all these factors and more have coalesced into a social catastrophe. 

Korean society today is in ruins, revealing the black residue of all these issues swept under the rug and allowed to fester and accumulate. We are wandering through the wreckage, grasping at our chests bereft and appalled, uncertain of what to do. Now is when we must ask ourselves how we will rebuild the home we saw destroyed. 

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]