[Asia Democracy Issue Briefing] The Implications of Korea’s Experience Supporting Democracy as a Global Narrative
Commentary·Issue Briefing | 2021-10-14
Taekyoon Kim
[Editor's Note]
With many developing countries in need of help in settling democratization processes and systems, Korea is in a position to act as a bridge between developed and developing countries by sharing its knowledge and experience in democracy and political reform. Taekyoon Kim, a professor at Seoul National University, describes the main contents of Korea’s democratic aid, how to share the Korean democracy experience and the challenges and strategies for Korean democracy in the future. Through this, the author states that the direction of Korea’s democracy should move forward based on its experience and that Korea should use its democratic aid as an asset so that Korea can be recognized as a symbol of peace and democracy in East Asia.
I. The Position of South Korean Democracy in the International Community
South Korea became a part of the club of developed donor countries when it joined as a member of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in 2010. In 2021, Korea was removed from the list of developing countries and added to the list of developed countries during the 68th UN Trade Development Conference (UNCTAD). Korea's improvement in status in the international community is often explained by focusing on the country’s rapid economic growth, with Korea’s GDP ranking in the top ten countries globally in 2021. However, efforts to shed new light on Korea's role in the international community by focusing on the country’s history and experience of democratization and political development that accompanied economic development are still in need of supplementation. The international community is just as interested in Korea’s democratization as it is in Korea’s economic miracle. Many developing countries hope to receive guidance in their own democratization and improvement in institutions through the sharing of Korea’s experience in the democratization process and implementation of democratic systems.
In many respects, Korea is in a position to share its knowledge and experience in democracy and political reform with developing countries and to provide a bridge between developed and developing countries. To start, like most developing countries in the Global South, Korea has endured colonialism, become independent, and undertaken the project of nation-building. When World War II ended in 1945, Korea became independent and established the First Republic in 1948, at which time the country was divided and embarked on nation-building. These experiences are likely to be the same as those of many developing countries. Second, Korea endured a three-year-long civil war beginning in 1950 and can share its experience of peacebuilding and development with developing countries that have endured similar civil conflicts or clashes. Third, Korea experienced military coups in 1961 and 1979, respectively, as well as a military dictatorship, and the consolidation of democracy after the 1987 democratization. Telling the story of how Korea’s civil society grew and the country’s democratic consolidation will provide important perspectives on potential solutions to problems such as the recent military coup in Myanmar and subsequent democratic crisis, and the military dictatorships and government corruption easily found in Africa. Finally, Korea's historical path, which is compressed into the division of the two Koreas and the efforts to build peace on the Korean Peninsula, has the potential to offer its experiences to countries that are faced with ideological conflict.
As such, the narrative of Korea’s compressed modern and contemporary history spanning colonialism and independence, war and restoration, military dictatorship and democratization, and division and peacebuilding will offer attractive experience and knowledge to partner countries in the Global South. Korea is the only country in the world that has transformed from a developing to a developed country in a relatively short period of time in terms of political development and democracy. This is why there is a growing number of requests for Korea to mediate between the groups of developed and developing countries, and growing interest from developing countries to learn from Korea’s know-how to drive the reform of political systems.
Telling the stories of Korea's experiences in political development and democracy and telling stories that reflect Korea’s political development and democratic experience to support developing countries are rather different in nature. As the former case is Korea’s internal political and historical narrative, it is not necessary to consider the relationship with a third partner developing country, while in the latter case, Korea’s position as a donor country and the third partner developing country’s position as a recipient country should be considered. Since the sharing of Korea’s democratic experiences has not been centered in overseas aid as a key issue like economic and social development, it has yet to occupy a mainstream position in Korea's official development assistance (ODA) and other international cooperation projects. The reason why experience sharing of democracy has not been a key agenda for Korea’s ODA is because political agendas such as democratization, peace, and human rights have not been recognized for their importance compared to economic development/ social development sectors. Additionally, the fact that the term “democracy aid” is itself politically sensitive is another reason. The possibility of donor countries demanding democratization as aid conditionality before providing aid or democracy aid being used as political intervention to instill the donor country’s democratic values cannot be ruled out. In fact, there are many instances of uncomfortable truth in which powerful countries like the US have a history of unilaterally supporting democracy aid with the aim of democratizing authoritarian developing countries. In other words, democracy and political institutionalization are cultural products and political processes that occur naturally depending on the local conditions of the recipient country, not projects that can be imported and transplanted from abroad. Thus, it can be said that the sharing of Korea’s democratic experiences has not received systematic attention from Korean international development cooperation agencies and academia due to having been treated as relatively insignificant in comparison to economic/social development and due to the political sensitivity of democracy aid itself.
Nevertheless, although Korea does not conceptually distinguish democracy aid, it has been implementing development cooperation projects to cultivate values related to democracy and improve institutions, such as strengthening the governance capabilities of governments in developing countries and the capacity of civil society. Although Korea is not yet operating an integrated system for democracy aid, as each development cooperation agency has contributed to improving the democratic system in developing countries in different ways, there will be an important significance in organizing the contents of democratic aid and sharing method at the current stage and the limitations and future improvements to share Korea’s democracy aid experience as a single narrative.
II. The Main Contents of Korean Democracy Aid and Implementing Agencies
Following the end of World War II, democracy aid established itself as a foreign aid policy to transform the political systems of US-centered allies and friends into democracies. As shown in Table 1 below, various conceptual analyses and theoretical and empirical studies share an approach that divides the components of democracy aid into election processes, state agencies and institutions, and civil society areas. This approach focuses more on content related to the establishment, reconstruction, and solidification of the democratic system in recipient countries than on donor countries providing democratic values and political ideologies to recipient countries. Having itself transformed from a recipient to a donor country, from a developing to a developed country, and from a military dictatorship to a democracy within a brief period of time, Korea has shown the strength of its development cooperation regarding knowledge sharing and training projects related to institutional maintenance. In fact, Korea has thus far focused the content of its democracy aid within this scope, strengthening the capacity for management and sustainability as well as the improvement and maintenance of instrumental systems. In other words, development cooperation projects have been planned to support democratic institutions by improving public administration and election systems. In the civil society sector, support for civil society organizations (CSOs) in recipient countries strengthened the advocacy role and service delivery functions of these organizations. With the declaration of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) began to promote stronger cooperation on its multi-layered SDG16 programming strategy based on its link with the components of democracy aid (law, institution building, peace, accountability, etc.) with a particular focus on implementation.
Template for Democracy [1]
Sector |
Sector Goals |
Method of Aid |
Korean Aid Organizations |
Election Process |
ㆍFree and fair elections |
ㆍElection support |
ㆍNational Election Commission (A-WEB) |
State Institution |
ㆍDemocratic constitution and rule of law |
ㆍSupport the building of a constitutional system |
ㆍKorea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) |
Civil Society |
ㆍStrengthen the advocacy of NGOs |
ㆍSupport for citizenship education |
ㆍKOICA |
In Korea, democracy aid has not yet been discussed within the domain of ODA. In addition, planned democracy aid projects within Korea have not yet been organized under a unified conceptual framework or system. Accordingly, each institution selects the content and scale of its budget for such projects very differently, making the dispersal of democracy aid appear quite segmented. Despite this segmentation, the donor targets and the methods through which Korea’s democracy aid is implemented can be categorized into three groups as shown in Table 1.
The National Election Commission (NEC) has become a key player and has shared Korea's experience and knowledge with election agencies in developing countries in an effort to improve their local election management capabilities. The NEC has also shared content supporting the improvement of election management systems and the establishment and development of democracy with countries that are undergoing democratic transitions. The NEC began its work supporting developing countries in 2006 with KOICA's consignment. In 2013, the NEC began to operate an invitational training program at the Korean Civic Education Institute for Democracy organized using the ODA budget. In 2014, the Association of World Election Bodies (A-WEB) was established in Incheon Metropolitan City, and A-WEB provided assistance to the invitational training program before taking it over completely in 2016. The training program primarily focuses on sharing the current status of election management and major issues in developing countries, sharing best practices for election management, inviting experts from international organizations to provide case analysis, and preparing an action plan to address the electoral management situation of each country. As shown in Table 2 below, the budget allotted to the NEC and A-WEB for the training program has been reduced by more than half since 2019, which is one factor reducing the sustainability of Korea’s democracy aid.
Budget Progression for Provision of Capacity-building Training in Developing Countries
Year |
Budget (million KRW) |
2014 |
250 |
2015 |
734 |
2016 |
837 |
2017 |
628 |
2018 |
933 |
2019 |
360 |
2020 |
360 |
2021 |
444 |
Second, regarding state institutions, Korea’s example can be summed up as grant-type ODA support for the public administration field and the judicial system of governments in developing countries. The main institution in Korea that plans and delivers democracy aid in the public administration field is KOICA. Since 2010, KOICA has strategized public administration as one of the key sectors of foreign assistance, but since 2021, public administration has been restructured into the field of "peace and governance" and detailed goals established for mid-term strategies. Currently, these detailed strategic goals consist of (1) the prevention of armed conflict and the creation of a peaceful foundation for living (peace), (2) the expansion of participatory and inclusive democracy (governance), (3) the building of a safe and just judicial and security system (governance), and (4) the building of an accountable and effective administrative system (governance). If the existing projects planned in the public administration sector focused on building administrative systems by improving the education and training system for public officials, modernizing administrative systems through e-government, and modernizing tax administration, the trend emerging in 2021 is the expansion of democracy aid to democracy promotion, peace, and other such areas. In this context, major programs are being planned to strengthen political accountability for the public by building a fair election and voting system, improving transparency by strengthening audit capabilities to prevent corruption, and enhancing the accessibility of administrative services for local residents by strengthening local administrative capacity. In addition, in order to improve the inclusivity of laws and institutions, key programs are being shared that promote the rule of law by strengthening the personnel and institutional capacity of the judicial sector, protect the human rights of women and vulnerable groups, strengthen security capacity to promote peace and create a safe society and ensure citizenship and social rights. As mentioned earlier, KOICA is planning content and implementation methods for its major programs in the field of peace and governance based on Korea's know-how in improving public administrative institutions, the core values of SDG16, implementation programming strategies, and the phased introduction of a human rights-based approach.
Center for Democracy Cooperation
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