During the early years of South Korea’s transition to democracy, expanding popular rule and deepening individual rights went hand-in-hand. But Roh Moo Hyun’s presidency has exposed rifts between majority rule and constitutionalism that the country’s judiciary is struggling to bridge.
About the Authors
Hahm Chaihark
Hahm Chaihark is assistant professor in the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University, where he also chairs the Korean Studies Program. He is coeditor (with Daniel A. Bell) of The Politics of Affective Relations: East Asia and Beyond (2004).
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China’s 1989 democracy movement was brutally suppressed, but a former student leader argues that it also planted the seeds for the growth of Chinese civil society and for future democratization.
In severely divided societies, ethnic cleavages tend to produce ethnic parties and ethnic voting. Power-sharing institutions can ameliorate this problem, but attempts to establish such institutions, whether based on a consociational or…
