The Historical Origins of Frail Party Politics in South Korea

Abstract

This article explores sources of party underdevelopment in South Korea by examining the historical origins of weak parties since the 1960s. To unravel the historical origins of weak political parties, this article focuses on the rise of and fall of Democratic Republican Party, the governing party during the authoritarian era in South Korea. It argues that the strong state and patron-client structure worked against DRP’s experiment for strong party. Lacking stable social roots and extensive party organizations across the country, DRP had to rely upon the traditional patron-client structure of society and state administration organizations for electoral mobilization. Yet the U. S. pressure, domestic demand and factional strife within the regime served to mitigate those constraints. The gradual decline of DRP and electoral politics from the mid-1960s resulted not solely from the influence of the environmental factors such as the weakening of U.S. influence and factional conflict which were powerful and intense until the mid-1960s, but also from Park’s own effort to build up authoritarian regime. The implication of the fall of the DRP has to do with its lasting legacy on party politics in Korea. Initially, the DRP represented a new experiment in Korean party politics that had long been plagued by the lack of programmatic coherence, organizational stability and linkage to the civil society. Eventually, DRP turned out to be not an exception to traditional Korean political parties. Highly centralized power structure around personal network, subsequent organizational frailty and incompetence on policy matters characterized the DRP.