Military Rule in South Korea Revisited: Different Survival Strategies and Different Pathways

Abstract

This paper revisits the military rule in Korea by paying attention, like Korean specialists, to the disconnection in dictatorship but like comparativists, using the tools in comparative studies of modern authoritarian regimes. This paper argues that the differences in the military leaders’ orientations (personalist vs. party-based type) and survival strategies to deal with potential threat sources (key insiders, political opponents, and economic elites) entailed different regime pathways. Examining (a) how to form a ruling group in terms of unity (competing factions vs. a single dominant faction), (b) how to control the legislative branch (directly controlled organization vs. opposition parties indirectly supported by the government), and (c) how to manage capital owners (tight constraints vs. financial liberalization with occasional punishments), this paper provides an explanation as to why only the second military regime was able to open the door to democratization instead of giving way to authoritarian replacement in Korea.

Keywords

Military regime survival strategy democratization personalist type party-based type

Introduction

Military rule in South Korea (hereafter Korea) has attracted interests from political scientists including proponents of the modernization hypothesis (Huntington, 1991; Lipset, 1994). A group of political economists has examined the role of bureaucratic government and its intervention in the market system under a military regime (Amsden, 1989; Wade, 1990). However, the government change in 1979 has not been considered significant by these international scholars.

Interestingly, this phenomenon can also be observed in recent comparative studies of authoritarian regimes. The three Korean republics led by two military leaders are regarded as a single dictatorial regime (1961–1987) in most of the renowned cross-national datasets of autocracies (Cheibub et al., 2010; Geddes et al., 2014a; Magaloni et al., 2013; Wahman et al., 2013). The comparative studies have advantages to theorize the general characteristics of military regimes and to empirically test them (Wright, 2008a, 2008b). However, the qualitative differences between the two military leaderships that Korean specialists (Heo et al., 2008; Lee, 2014; Moon, 1990) stress are overlooked in the datasets.

This paper attempts to bridge the gap between comparativists and specialists in regards to exploring decades of military rule in Korea. It concentrates on the two military leaders’ strategic choices instead of the personality-based analysis that many specialists have conducted. It argues that the military leaders had different orientations regarding the ideal types of authoritarian regime, and, as a result, implemented different survival strategies against potential threats. This approach helps us explain why only the second military government opened the door to democratization instead of giving way to authoritarian replacement in Korea.

Some may be wary of the possibility of generalizing the Korean case. This may be due to the fact that in particular, Korea serves as a rare successful case in terms of democratization and development. However, the military leaders’ survival strategies and the regime pathways can provide profound implications for recent cases such as Myanmar in which the modernization hypothesis seems to prevail. The Korean case also sheds light on understanding the evolving autocracies that seek performance-based and procedure-based legitimation (von Soest and Grauvogel, 2017).

This paper proceeds as follows. It briefly reviews the durability of military regimes in Korea from the main existing perspectives. Then, it newly applies the authoritarian regime typology suggested by Geddes et al. (2014b, hereafter GWF) to the two military leaderships, which helps show that the two military leaders chose different survival strategies to manage main threat sources (ruling group members, political opponents, and economic elites), and thus took different pathways. The last section draws a conclusion and provides some implications for contemporary military regimes including the variants.

Explanations of military rule in Korea

Collapses of authoritarian regimes often lead to democratization. The modernization hypothesis, which states the causal link between economic development and democratization, has been popular in academia (Huntington, 1991; Lipset 1959, 1994). Despite the straightforward logic and manifest examples, cross-national tests of the hypothetical link have provided mixed evidence, and there is still controversy over this issue (Boix and Stokes, 2003; Epstein et al., 2006; Przeworski and Limongi, 1997; Przeworski et al., 2000).

Przeworski et al. (2000) refute the modernization hypothesis. Employing the postwar data, they demonstrate that democratization occurs randomly after making corrections for selection bias. They also show that fast-growing economies are least likely to collapse regardless of political regime types. However, when an authoritarian regime cannot sustain a certain level of economic growth, dissatisfied people may express their grievances to the regime (Przeworski et al., 2000). Furthermore, O’Donnell (1973) claims that industrialization may stop democratization and instead bring a new form of authoritarianism, bureaucratic authoritarianism, which is based on modern technocrats and a professionalized military organization. That is, there exists a level (i.e., the easy stage of import substitution) beyond which further development reduces the chance of democratic survival. According to these revisionists, economic development does not necessarily lead to democratization.

Despite these distinctions in explaining democratization, both the modernization hypothesis and the revisionist view focus on the satisfactory conditions that have to be met for democratization. Thus, these structural deterministic views may disregard the role that authoritarian leaders play in the durability of authoritarian regimes. In particular, they do not pay attention to the short regime disconnection that entailed a completely new military rule in Korea.

It is debatable whether the emergence of a new military government in 1980 can be seen as a regime change. However, it is certain that Chun Doo-hwan, the new military leader, completely denied the previous regime and attempted to differentiate his rule from his predecessor’s rule. This can be observed in many aspects. First, Chun eliminated the potential opponents and officials of the previous government. He accused many influential politicians, including Kim Jong-pil, the second-in-command during Park’s regime, of corruption, and implemented a law prohibiting political activities of corrupt politicians. Then, he dissolved existing parties, including the ruling party (the Democratic Republican Party, hereafter DRP) and the pseudo-party called Yushin Jeong-woo-hoe (Yushin Political Comrades Association) established by Park Chung-hee. Second, three months later, Chun himself established a new party (the Democratic Justice Party, hereafter DJP). He amended the constitution again in January 1981 and removed the issues related to the so-called “May 16th Revolution” (the military coup staged by Park Chung-hee and his colleagues) from the new constitution. Third, Chun implemented “neoconservative reforms,” which was distinctive from his predecessor’s state-driven measures (Moon, 1990).

Now let us turn to the recent cross-national quantitative datasets on political regimes. No regime change occurred in Korea from 1961 to 1987 (Cheibub et al., 2010; GWF, 2014b; Magaloni et al., 2013; Wahman et al., 2013) as shown in Table 1. Since the global datasets tend to be constructed mainly based on the institution-centered coding rules, the qualitative differences between the two military regimes were overlooked.¹ This may dismiss substantive differences which military rulers’ survival strategies can bring about.

Table 1.

Disconnection between the two military dictatorships in typology datasets.

Dataset	Regime type	Disconnection
Cheibub et al. (2010)	Military (1972–1987)	No
GWF (2014b)	Military (1972–1987)	No
Kailitz (2013)	Military autocracy (1972–1979), Transition (1980), Electoral autocracy (1981–1986), Transition (1987)	Yes
Magaloni et al. (2013)	Military (1972–1987)	No
Wahman et al. (2013)	Military (military multiparty) (1972–1987)	No

Authoritarian regime typology and regime pathways

Following the pioneering research conducted by Geddes (1999), some comparativists developed their own typologies of modern autocracies (Cheibub et al., 2010; Hadenius and Teorell, 2005; Magaloni et al., 2013; Wahman et al., 2013). This paper employs the updated version of nominal typology provided by GWF (2014b). It consists of four pure types (military, personalist, monarchy, and party-based types) and the hybrids. This typology is constructed mainly on a set of formal and informal rules for choosing key offices and deciding policies within a government.

Although this classification fails to capture the dynamics of long-surviving dictatorships (Wright, 2014), it helps explain the different survival strategies of the Korean military leaders. According to Geddes (1999) and GWF (2014b), military regimes constrained by military junta are most vulnerable to economic crises and domestic instability. Geddes argues that regime collapses often occur in military regimes “because most (professionalized) officers value the unity and capacity of the military institution more than they value holding office, they cling less tightly to power than do office holders in other forms of authoritarianism” (Geddes, 2003: 26). This is empirically demonstrated by the shortest average duration of military regimes.

In contrast, the party-based type is the most durable because it has an institution that can formally arrange the relatively diverse requests from the ruled (Geddes, 1999: 129). Parties are the most effective tool to co-opt opponents (Magaloni and Kricheli, 2010). Multiple factions may exist within the ruling party, but all the factions have incentives to cooperate in order to remain in office. Party organizations provide party members with a sustainable framework wherein to resolve differences, bargain over interests, and advance their influences. As a result, party-based systems generate a cohesive leadership cadre (Brownlee, 2007; Smith, 2005).

Parties can be also an efficient tool to organize civilian support bases (Magaloni and Kricheli, 2010). As Clapham and Philip (1985) argue, military regime stability can be influenced by its capacity to acquire civilian support. Empirically, military leaders who organize civilian support bases according to a party last on average three times longer than those in which military regimes do not have a civilian party (Geddes, 2011).

In personalist regimes, rival factions will remain loyal to the ruler only if the payoff from supporting him is greater than the expected utility from a coup trial because “in contrast to single-party regimes, the leader’s faction in a personalist regime may actually increase benefits to itself by excluding the rival faction from participation” (Geddes, 2003: 61). Therefore, rival factions within the regime are willing to attempt to displace the personalist ruler when the payoff from supporting him is less than that from a risky plot, which results in an average regime duration that is shorter than that of party-based types.

The ways of an authoritarian regime exit vary across different types. Regular exits are often observed in military and party-based types of authoritarianism. Military leaders or single-party leaders who judge that they cannot use further repression are willing to transfer political power to an elected government or play a role in the negotiation process for democratization (Geddes et al., 2014a, hereafter GFW). Competitive elections are often allowed in military and party-based regimes. In particular, dominant parties often remain in power by utilizing the party organizations even after democratization. This is mainly found in Eastern European countries where communist (or socialist) parties persist as strong communist successor parties even after the end of the Cold War. In contrast, personalist authoritarian regimes tend to exit through irregular ways such as a coup or a revolution. Personalist rulers are less willing to negotiate the possibility of leaving office because they face a greater likelihood of violent exit than do the leaders of other types of authoritarian regime. Thus, compared to other types, personalist regimes are more likely to be replaced by a new dictatorship than a democracy (Hadenius and Teorell, 2005).

These variations in longevity and chance of democratization by authoritarian regime type can be summarized as in Table 2. According to Geddes (2003), military regimes are the most fragile, whereas party-based regimes are the most robust. The shortest durability of military regimes can be demonstrated even in recent studies that use different typologies (Kailitz, 2013). In contrast, personalist regime duration tends to differ across regimes.

Table 2.

Regime durability and chance of democratization by type.

Type	Longevity	Chance of democratization
Military	Short	High
Personalist	Long, if consolidated	Low
Party-based	Longer	High

An application of the regime typology to the two military leaderships

Theoretical framework

Authoritarian regimes can change over time without regime replacement. Figure 1 illustrates the potential dynamics of military regimes. Military leaders have an incentive to hold office without leadership change – there are two more durable paths that are given to them.

Figure 1.

Potential dynamics of military regimes.

Now two expectations about military leaders’ choices can be made. First, assuming that military leaders always want to monopolize power, we expect that they will be more likely to choose the path towards a personalist regime. However, it turns out that this is not always a viable option. In particular, authoritarian leaders need to bear an extremely high cost (e.g., execution or exile) of democratization even if democratization is highly unlikely. Second, suppose there are military leaders who are concerned about the lack of legitimacy and resources to consolidate their regimes. To avoid an early exit, military leaders are willing to accept a certain level of constraints placed on them. They also attempt to lower the cost of democratization, which is sufficiently likely to happen. For them, the path towards party-based autocracy will be more preferable. In sum, regime durability and the chance of democratization depend on the ideal type of authoritarian regime that each military leader seeks.

These expectations were fulfilled in Korea. To demonstrate that the military leaders’ ideal types of autocracy lead to the divergence of a regime’s pathway, it is necessary to check that the initial conditions faced were similar. One method to demonstrate this is to estimate regime stability. In order to estimate the regime stability under each dictatorship, I employed the concept of time horizons. Time horizons that authoritarian rulers are assumed to possess can be often used to calculate the probabilities of the regime failure (Dionne, 2011; Wright, 2008a, 2008b). If a dictator has a longer time horizon, then he/she would be less concerned about regime survival, and thus his/her perceived probability of regime collapse would be low. Here I utilized the statistical model suggested by Wright (2008b), which considers political, economic, social, and regional variables, and time factors.² As illustrated in Figure 2, the perceived probabilities of regime failure seem to be very similar (≈ 0.047) in the first years of the two regimes shown as red circles, which is an indication that the two military leaders ruled under highly comparable conditions.

Figure 2.

Probability of regime failure, 1961–1987.

However, the ideal types that they sought were different. Since his seizure of power in 1961, Park Chung-hee experienced several crises as displayed in the fluctuations in the chance of regime collapse before 1972. He consecutively won competitive elections, which is a highly uncommon case in modern authoritarian regimes. Empirically, few modern autocracies survive beyond the first three election cycles (Bernhard et al., 2016). The experience of overcoming many crises would give greater confidence to him and strongly drive him to monopolize power. In contrast, Chun Doo-hwan, who newly came to power through a coup, and violent suppressions of popular uprisings, lacked the legitimacy and resources. He needed to reduce the chance of early exit and show strong economic performance as well. Thus, the party-based authoritarian regime might have been a more rational choice for him.

Simply put, while Park aimed towards a personalist regime during 1972 to 1979, Chun sought for a party-based authoritarian regime in the initial stages of his administration. This is reflected in the ranges of consultation indicator provided by the Varieties of Democracy Project (V-Dem Project).³ Assuming that there is a shrinkage of the range of elite actors involved during important policy changes as a regime becomes personalized, the second half of the Park regime is expected to show a score lower in the range of the consultation indicator than the Chun regime. Table 3 supports this interpretaton.

Table 3.

Range of consultation indicator, Korea (1954–1988).

1954–1959	1960	1961	1962–1971	1972–1979	1980	1981–1986	1987	1988
−1.04	0.32	−0.35	−0.50	−1.14	−0.47	−0.52	−0.20	1.71

Source: V-Dem Data-Version 8 (https://www.v-dem.net/en/data/data-version-8/).

As soon as he overcame the initial instability of the regime, however, Chun attempted to retain power through the consolidated ruling party. The secret document, “Research for Peaceful Power Transfer in 1988, which was written by two scholars and news reporters in 1984, was reported to Chun directly” (The Hangyoreh, 1988). The main purpose of the document was to establish political grounds for Chun’s leadership for the periods after 1988 and thus extend Chun’s rule to at least 2000. It contained several plans on upbringing a successor and on strengthening Chun’s leadership and the power of the ruling party (Ko, 2013: 24).

I claim that the ideal types of autocracy that the two military leaders sought induced different survival strategies, which in turn led to different chances of democratization. In sum, we can expect that a democratic transition is less likely to succeed in the former than in the latter military leadership.

This expectation was realized. The sudden power vacuum that resulted from the assassination of Park was shortly filled by a new military regime (i.e., authoritarian replacement), and a democratic transition was stunted. In contrast, the military regime led by Chun opened the door to democratization. The ruling party (DJP) that Chun strengthened survived, and won the subsequent presidential election of 1992.

This difference in military leaders’ orientations created the survival strategies that were different in some aspects. Taking into consideration the perceived threats of authoritarian leaders, this paper particularly will focus on three threat sources (key insiders, political opponents, and economic elites). These differences in survival strategies against the three threat sources will be examined in sequence.

Although this paper focuses on the three threat sources, there are other factors to consider in order to explain Korea’s democratization. Firstly, we can consider international actors including subnational and transnational organizations. While Levitsky and Way (2006: 380) claim that the “international dimension of democratization” was less significant in East Asia, there is no doubt that, other than the US government (McKoy and Miller, 2012; Stueck 1998), international actors affected the democratization of South Korea. As Ooi (2014) maintains, for instance, the networks of transnational actors including human rights activists, Christian churches, members of the Korean diaspora communities, and members of the US Congress contributed to democratic movements in Korea.

Nevertheless, such international actors do not seem to be perceived as a primary threat to the authoritarian leaders for several reasons. First, the US government tacitly recognized violations of human rights taking place in America’s anti-communist allies including South Korea. In particular, the Reagan administration was more permissive of anti-communist repression. For instance, President-elect Reagan asserted to outgoing President Carter, who had a strong aversion to the Korean dictators, “Mr. President, I’d like to have the power that Korean presidents have to draft dissenters” (Oberdorfer, 2014: 138). Then Reagan invited Chun for a state visit in February 1981, which implied that the US government would no longer question South Korean military rule, and that included their violations of human rights. The US support for the Chun regime ended in 1987. As McKoy and Miller (2012) claim, the switch in US support was not caused by the US preference for democracy but by the change in the information environment triggered by a series of unexpected events (e.g., the election defeat and, the torture and death of a university student). Second, although transnational networks that protected political opponents played a significant role in the democratization of Korea, the military leaders seemed to have perceived them as a nuisance rather than a major threat to their political survival. Both Park and Chun were upset about the transnational actors’ activities outside Korea, but did not actively respond to them. They were convinced that they could prevent such activities from agitating public sentiment through repressive measures. Thus, this paper concentrates on authoritarian leaders’ perceptions, orientations, and choices rather than such international actors’ activities.

Secondly, the role of growing civil society cannot be ignored when explaining the democratization of Korea. We observed the rapid growth of civil society in both scale and scope in the mid-1980s. Chang (2015) demonstrates that seeds of civil society were embodied even under Park’s violent rule. Growing civil society was also linked to the transnational protection regime (Ooi, 2014).

However, this paper, which is built on the ruler-centered approach, does not deal with civil society for certain reasons. Most of all, we can hardly observe meaningful variations in dealing with the civil society that were existent until 1984. Both military regimes consistently carried out a repressive policy. Chun relaxed his repressive policy against the civil society in 1984 as part of his liberalization policy. For instance, the government allowed anti-government university professors and students to return to their schools and lifted the ban on political activities of political opponents (Kim, 2007). This did not happen because Chun perceived the civil society as a major threat to his regime survival, but because he was confident of his capability to control the civil society (Lee, 2014). As Kim (2007: 54) mentions, Chun intended to make the ruling party (DJP) popular and competitive in the upcoming election through liberalization measures.

Unity of the ruling group: Competing factions versus one dominant faction

Military regimes are divided into two subtypes by GFW (2014a): one in which the leader is constrained by other officers and the other under a one-man rule. According to GFW (2014a: 13), military regimes that fit the former usage of a military regime are more likely to democratize when there exists a divided ruling group that is able to constrain the authoritarian leaders.

The two military rules in Korea can be classified into the same military type, but not as the same subtype. The Park Chung-hee regime is closer to the strongmen-led type. In contrast, the Chun Doo-hwan regime satisfies the traditional definition of a military regime: the leader is a member of the military, and other high-ranking military personnel comprise the top tier of government officials (GFW, 2014a). This distinction is shown in their survival strategies in managing potential threats from insiders.

In the former military regime (the Fourth Republic) the ruling group was dominated by one branch (the army). Because multiple factions may create concerns about factionalization that may, in turn, hinder the unification of the military, the establishment of any faction within the military in Korea was not allowed. However, there may have been several factions created by military schools that produced generals and army commanders: Korea Military Academy (KMA); Officer Candidate School; Reserved Officer Training Corps; and Third Military Academy (TMA).

Park was highly adroit in handling factions within the military. He shielded the Hana faction (one mind in Korean) whose members were selected from KMA. The Hana faction was established in 1964 by the two KMA graduates of the same class, Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, who would later become presidents, and the faction grew into a strong group within the KMA by the early 1970s. It increased its membership and influence and later staged a military coup right after Park’s assassination. Since the members were recruited from a group of military officials who had the same regional background (Southeastern region, Gyeongsang), Park employed this faction to control certain military officials of different regional backgrounds, and to fuel competition among members in showing loyalty to him.

Park, however, was strong enough to emasculate the influence of any faction and thus made an effort to prevent serious splits among KMA graduates, who made up the main pool of talents. For instance, Yoon pil-yong, was the commander of the Capital Defense Command, which along with the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), the Presidential Security Service, and the Defense Security Command, was one of the most powerful institutions in Korea. Yoon told Lee Hu-rak, former director of the KCIA, at a drinking party in 1973 that “President Park is old and feeble, so we should make him step down and should have you be his successor” (Korea Joongang Daily, 2015). This short statement was taken as a conspiracy to stage a coup (Hwang, 2012). It is notable that Yoon was a main patron of the Hana faction, and ten Hana faction members were sentenced to imprisonment, and another thirty-one members were discharged from the military (Kim, 2012: 705).

Yet the tactic employed to draw loyalty from several factions through competition may carry the risk of there being a coup by dissatisfied faction members. Given that there are no formal or informal rules to ease excessive competition and grievances, competition among factions will intensify as power is deeply concentrated. Compared to Park, who had sufficient resources to rule the military, Chun lacked such capability and was most afraid of regime failure caused by the betrayal of ruling group members. That is, he perceived the threat from insiders to be the greatest. Thus, the main objective was to minimize the chance of early exit by rebellion. He maximized the unity level by forming his ruling group as a single faction (the Hana faction) within a single branch (the army), which is considered extremely rare from the comparative perspective (Frantz and Stein, 2012). The senior faction members had key posts within the government as well as the army under Chun’s regime. For instance, the Head of the Agency for National Security Planning (the antecedent of the KCIA), the Army Chief of the General Staff, the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Minister of National Defense were fully recruited from Hana faction members. This high unity level enabled Chun to successfully implement strong stabilization policies.

Paradoxically, the fact that there was no other faction within the ruling group implied that the faction dominated the whole military, and, moreover, some senior members of the faction had strong enough power to influence even the president. That is, the extreme level of unity inevitably created a much higher level of constraints on the executive branch than that during Park’s regime. This can be demonstrated by an example. Chun had a civilian as his successor in mind. Noh Shin-yeong, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, was chosen as the Director of the Agency for National Security Planning, one of the most powerful agencies, in 1982 and was later appointed as Prime Minister in 1985. However, the ruling group members strongly opposed Chun’s attempt to appoint the civilian as his successor (Park, 2004), and Chun reluctantly appointed the former general Roh Tae-woo as his successor. Roh was Chun’s longtime companion and the second-most powerful man under Chun’s rule. This example shows that Chun had political power that was less personalized than his predecessor, who completely controlled the key members of his ruling group.

Chun’s strategy to minimize the chance of rebellion, which is the most common way of ousting authoritarian leaders, was successful in achieving the main goal (prevention of an early exit). However, the strategy undermined military cohesiveness as a whole (Kim, 2012) and nullified the chance of choosing a civilian successor who might have extended the civilian support base.

This paper shares the underlying assumption with Greitens’ recent theory in which the perceived threats of leaders affect the characteristics of the country’s coercive apparatus, which in turn determines the level of violence against the citizens. Despite some similarities, her theory does not consider the potential inconsistency in survival strategies of military leaders who are oriented to the party-based type. According to Greitens (2016: 16), Chun perceived popular revolts as a major threat, and thus he organized unitary, socially inclusive coercive institutions. Looking into who held the key positions in the government, however, shows that regional favoritism in fact worsened during Chun’s rule. In particular, the degree of regional exclusivity heightened within the coercive state apparatus. Officials from Chun’s supporting region (Gyeongsang province) made up 62.8% of the internal security department, which is distinctively higher than that under Park (see Table 4). Even Greitens acknowledges the mixed outcomes in terms of internal inclusivity under Chun’s regime, saying “Chun’s coercive apparatus is puzzlingly mixed” (Greitens, 2016: 167).

Table 4.

Unity and social inclusivity, 1972–1987.

Province		% population	% high officials	% internal security officials
Opposition (Southwestern, Jeolla)	1972–1979 (Park)	23.8	13.2	4.0
Opposition (Southwestern, Jeolla)	1980–1987 (Chun)	16.2	14.1	9.3
Supporter (Southeastern, Gyeongsang)	1972–1979 (Park)	32.1	30.1	44.0
Supporter (Southeastern, Gyeongsang)	1980–1987 (Chun)	30.5	33.0	62.8

Source: Joo (2003: 47).

However, this mixed outcome can be explained with consistency by using the perspective of military leaders pursuing the party-based authoritarian regime. Compared to other types of authoritarian regimes, the party-based type tends to extend their civil support base, which necessarily allows factional competitions within the ruling party. It also increases social inclusivity, which is consistent with Greitens’ (2016) explanation. However, military regimes are more likely to break down than other types (e.g., personalist) of autocracy due to the underlying sensitivity to internal splits (Geddes, 1999, 2003). In particular, when officers perceive their regimes’ initial performance as unsuccessful, the military regime will last less longer. Some members of the ruling coalition would return to the barrack for fear of military splits. Chun as a military leader who feared such an early exit intensified the unity level of the ruling coalition.

Power succession: no constraint versus self-constraint

In most authoritarian regimes, succession disputes are one of the main factors that cause instability. The two military leaders used different strategies to deal with power succession. The Yushin constitution designed by Park removed the presidential term limit, and allowed Park to remain in office permanently. However, as power becomes deeply concentrated in one actor, formal rules and organizations are weakened. Moreover, the regime may become unstable when succession issues emerge as the main problem as uncertainty about power transfer rapidly amplifies. Thus, Park’s discretion-maximization through the constitution was inherently vulnerable to unexpected events (e.g., health problem) related to power succession.

In contrast, Chun himself constrained his tenure through the constitution, which helped to reduce uncertainty in power succession. The 7-year-single-term presidential tenure was set to prevent the long-term seizure of power by one leader. Such a strict constraint on power transfer is a rare case except for some countries in Latin America. Although this self-constraint may cut Chun’s tenure, he could still secure his future once out of office (Frantz and Stein, 2012). Compared to coups that are chosen as the most common alternative for power transfer in authoritarian regimes, constitution-mandated leadership turnovers reduce the probability of being punished after authoritarian leaders leave office (Debs and Goemans, 2010).

Once there existed little danger of early regime collapse, Chun began strengthening his party. As mentioned above, he was not only constrained by the ruling group members when trying to maximize the internal unity level, but was also constrained by the constitution in terms of his tenure. As a countermeasure against these constraints on him, Chun strengthened the party organizations and allocated more resources to them, which was effective in checking ruling group members.

Controlling the legislative branch: directly controlled organizations versus opposition parties indirectly supported by the government

Many comparative studies have demonstrated that democratic institutions (e.g., parties) enhance the survival of dictatorships by providing a variety of mechanisms for credible power-sharing agreements between rulers and elites, managing the distribution of spoils, and co-opting potential opponents (Ezrow and Frantz, 2011; GWF, 2014b; Magaloni, 2008). Apparently, this was true for the two military leaders in Korea.

There were differences, however, in the way the two military leaders operated their democratic institutions. Park established a new National Assembly through a seemingly free legislative election only four months after the Yushin constitution was formed in 1972. He invented a new pseudo party, Yushin Jeong-woo-hoe, and its members were interchangeable. It did not have concrete party platforms. The actual purpose of it was to secure the Yushin constitution and support Park’s dictatorial rule. Park could assign one-third of the members of the National Assembly with Yushin Jeong-woo-hoe members, which guaranteed the president’s control over the legislature.

This was very effective in terms of deriving loyalty from the legislators appointed by the president. In particular, the Yushin Jeong-woo-hoe members had a short tenure (three-year term), compared to the six-year term for regular legislators. To serve as legislators for two or more consecutive terms, the members needed to show their loyalty. Thus, some of the members were called “president’s commandos.”

During the 1978 legislative election, the political environment was harsh against the president. Due to continuous inflation without an increase in real wages, the government had lost popular support. The government party earned only 31.7% of the popular vote. The opposition party, the New Democratic Party won 32.8%, and the independent candidates obtained 20.8%. Despite their unpopularity, the government party won 68 seats out of 154 seats, and 77 seats were filled by the Yushin Jeong-woo-hoe. In sum, despite the loss in popular vote the president controlled 145 seats (= 63%) out of the total 231 seats, and could avoid additional uncertainty in the legislature.

Instead of using the indirect measure, Chun chose a different tactic to control the legislative branch: utilizing government-controlled parties. Spending a huge amount of money, he formed the ruling party (DJP) in January 1981 and supported government-controlled opposition parties. In the election, DJP won 151 seats (55%) out of 276 seats and the Democratic Korea Party (DKP), a government-controlled party, earned 81 seats (29.3%). The third party, the Korean People’s Party which obtained 25 seats (9%) was under government control. Chun practically controlled almost all of the legislature (93.3%), and thus Chun was convinced that he could control the legislature more effectively than did his predecessor. This is confirmed by the fact that Chun never exercised the presidential veto power. In contrast to Chun, Park Chung-hee had vetoed the bill (“Bill on Testimony and Judgment in the National Assembly”) even under the Yushin constitution. The constitutional right to nominate one-third of the legislative seats (Yushin Jeong-woo-hoe) allowed him to readily frustrate the National Assembly’s attempt to override it.

However, the indirect way to control the legislative branch revealed fragility in the legislative election of 1985. It was the first legislative election after lifting the ban on potential challengers’ political activities. To secure the victory in the election the government attempted to maneuver the election. The government moved the election day to February from April in order to prevent the advent of organized opposition parties. The regime also continued to utilize government-controlled opposition parties as window-dressing organizations.

Nevertheless, the ruling party received only 35.2% of the popular vote. It retained its control of the National Assembly by earning 148 (54%) out of 276, due to the peculiar system of proportional representation that grants two-thirds of the seats elected from the national constituency to the largest party. In contrast, the main opposition party, the New Korean Democratic Party (NKDP), founded only one month before the election day, earned 29.3% of the popular vote, and obtained 67 seats.

Using government-controlled opposition parties is usually effective, and seemingly more democratic than constructing a pseudo party organization. However, it is highly vulnerable to unexpected election outcomes, subsequent defection, and realignment. In fact, after the election, legislators who defected from the second largest but government-controlled opposition party (DKP) joined the NKDP. As a result, the NKDP became a stronger opposition party with 104 seats (37.7%). Other members of the government-controlled opposition parties had an incentive to deviate, which raised political instability.

Controlling capital owners: tight constraints versus financial liberalization with occasional punishments

Political economists who pay attention to differences in economic areas between the two military regimes in Korea tend to analyze the different economic policies and their political consequences (Moon, 1990). In contrast, this paper aims to approach the economic and financial issues from the military leaders’ political considerations.

Some comparativists pay attention to legitimation as one pillar of autocratic stability, pointing out that legitimation has been neglected in comparative studies of modern authoritarian regimes (Gerschewski, 2013). This urges us to examine the military leaders’ strategies against the economic elite as well as the political elite.

The two military leaders of Korea were similar in terms of seeking performance-based legitimation. Economic development and sustainable growth were crucial to maintaining both military regimes. The Korean economy was export-oriented, and the leading companies and capital owners played a significant role in economic growth. Massive capital outflows caused by the movement of mobile assets abroad may threaten the dictators who pursued the performance-based legitimation. In this sense, the selectorate theory (Bueno et al., 2003, 2011) can be applied to the relationship between the military leaders and influential capital owners. The limited number of capital owners that led the country’s export were not interchangeables (i.e., the nominal selectorate) but part of the influentials (i.e., winning coalitions) according to the selectorate theoretical framework. Indeed, the first capital flight was detected right after the assassination of Park due to capital owners’ uncertainty about a new regime (Henry, 2012). Thus, the military leaders needed proper strategies to manage capital owners.

Capital owners can help the regime survive when they share common interests with dictators. For instance, capital owners are willing to collaborate with dictators as they are economic elites who fear excessive redistribution implemented by a democratic government. However, the cooperative relationship is fragile. As Rogowski (1998) points out, when capital is mobile, capital owners can move their assets abroad in response to high taxes. Capital owners do not need to fear democracy because democratic governments are expected to refrain from taxing heavily (Geddes, 2009: 321). Thus, it is possible that dictators are challenged by capital owners who have grown up through politics–business collusion. Once capital owners form a sufficient amount of capital, their massive capital outflows can seriously hurt the national economy (Escribà-Folch, 2003). In particular, capital owners have a strong leverage to bargain with authoritarian leaders who seek to show strong economic performance.

Changing conditions also intensified the bargaining power of capital owners. Overall transaction costs of moving mobile assets abroad have gradually declined with globalization over the last thirty years. It allowed them to implement their exit option (i.e., moving their mobile assets abroad). In particular, the fraction of mobile assets has increased as the industry structure rapidly shifted from primary to a tertiary industry in Korea, which increased the chance of capital outflows. Once an exit option became available, the reversal of balance of power between the government and capital owners took place, which undermined the military regime.

Now let us examine this issue from the perspective of military leaders. The military leaders’ orientations (personalist vs. party-based) created different strategies against capital owners. In particular, they differed on how they limited the number of conglomerates within the ruling coalition and on how they prevented them from using the exit. Park who was oriented to the personal type personally selected a few industries (the heavy and chemical industries) and imposed low taxation (low effective corporate income tax) on them, which in turn benefited a few large companies in selected industries. For instance, before the dissolution of the National Assembly, Park issued an emergency order for economic stability and growth in August, 1972. It allowed temporary tax breaks for investment using domestic equipment by 10%. Special depreciation (40% to 80%) was applied to fixed investment for key industries such as basic metal, chemical and electrical, and electronics industries (Kim, 1991; Pyo, 1990; Yoo, 1994).

As the left panel in Figure 3 shows, the effective corporate income tax rates for those key industries were negative in the initiation of the Fourth Republic (1972–1979). The right panel shows that there existed huge differences in the effective corporate income tax rates among industries, which reflects Park’s focus on the heavy and chemical industries since the late 1960s. He introduced a new tax policy that drastically reduced tax breaks for companies in 1975, but the favored corporate income tax rates were still offered to a few conglomerates that dominated heavy chemical, basic metal and electric, and electronics industries.

Figure 3.

Corporate income tax rates, 1961–1987.

In contrast with Park, Chun, who leaned towards a party-based type, did not choose the beneficiaries personally. The number of beneficiaries has increased while the size of preferential treatments provided to each beneficiary has been reduced. For instance, in 1981 the top corporation income tax rate on listed companies stayed the same at 33%, but the rate dropped from 25% to 22% for companies making a profit of KRW 50 million or more. When comparing to the previous military regime, such changes in corporate income tax rates practically provided the tax incentives to the increasing number of capital owners.

Besides the number of conglomerates in the ruling coalition, the military leaders’ orientations led to different strategies in preventing capital flight. Unlike other threat sources such as a ruling group and legislative branch, capital owners cannot directly replace the leaders in that their most powerful measure against authoritarian leaders is the exit option. However, as long as they do not move their mobile assets abroad, they cannot affect regime pathways. As mentioned in the theory section, personalist rulers are less willing to negotiate the possibility of leaving office because they face a greater likelihood of violent exit than do the leaders of other types of authoritarian regime. Therefore, personalist regimes are more likely to be replaced by a new dictatorship than a democracy (Hadenius and Teorell, 2005). By this logic we can expect that military leaders who are oriented to the personalist type will more desperately keep capital owners from using the exit option.

As expected, capital owners were tightly controlled by monetary and exchange rate policies led by Park who had a personalist type orientation. Before the introduction of the multi-currency basket system in February 1980 by the interim government, the Korean government adopted the unitary floating foreign exchange system, and under the Foreign Exchange Control Law, strictly controlled all foreign currency transactions made by both Koreans and foreigners under the supervision of the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Korea.

Under such circumstances, there were only two effective measures for capital owners to choose to move their mobile assets with minimal financial loss: outward foreign direct investment (FDI) or capital outflows to offshore financial centers through misinvoicing, which are not recorded in the official data. However, Korean capital owners could not use any of the measures in the 1970s because the transaction cost of moving their mobile assets abroad was perceived substantially high during Park’s dictatorship. If the tax rates in other countries are a proxy for transaction costs, Korea shows the lowest level of corporate income tax rates (~30%) during that period (see Table 5).

Table 5.

The top corporate income tax rates of some countries, 1975–1991.

	Year
Country	1975	1978	1980	1981	1982	1983	1984	1985	1986	1987	1991
France	50.0	50.0	50.0	50.0	50.0	50.0	50.0	50.0	50.0	45.0	34.0
Germany	51.0	56.0	56.0	56.0	56.0	56.0	56.0	56.0	56.0	56.0	50.0
Hong Kong	16.5	17.0	17.0	16.5	16.5	16.5	16.5	18.5	18.5	18.5	16.5
Japan	40.0	40.0	40.0	42.0	42.0	42.0	43.3	43.3	43.3	42.0	37.5
Korea	27.0	32.0	33.0	33.0	30.0	30.0	30.0	30.0	30.0	30.0	34.0
Singapore	40.0	40.0	40.0	40.0	40.0	40.0	40.0	40.0	40.0	33.0	31.0
Taiwan	35.0	−	35.0	35.0	35.0	35.0	30.0	30.0	25.0	25.0	25.0
UK	−	52.0	52.0	52.0	52.0	50.0	45.0	40.0	35.0	35.0	33.0
US	48.0	48.0	46.0	46.0	46.0	46.0	46.0	46.0	46.0	40.0	34.0

Sources: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Tax Database (http://www.oecd.org/tax/taxpolicyanalysis/oecdtaxdatabase.htm/). The data on Asian countries (Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan) can be gathered from the Office of Tax Policy Research website (http://www.bus.umich.edu/otpr/otpr/default.asp/), and these data show the nominal top corporate income tax rates.

Indeed, the fact that Park’s regime tightly controlled foreign currency transactions and monopolized the foreign currency borrowing channels raised the transaction costs perceived by capital owners who heavily depended on external borrowing (Abiad and Mody, 2005).

To firmly control capital owners, Park also attempted to demonstrate his capability of achieving his policy preference. For instance, despite public disapproval, he introduced the value-added tax (VAT) and the individual consumption tax, which was the first in Asia (Tait, 1988: 204). A flat rate of 13% was applied to all items subject to the VAT (Ministry of Strategy and Finance, 2012: 15). The VAT did not influence capital owners, but the overall tax burden on citizens increased.

However, Park abruptly raised the nominal top corporate income tax rate from 27% to 32% in December 1978. He also imposed a new tax on investment in affiliates of chaebol by shaping a tax policy that excluded deduction of dividend incomes between affiliates and interest expenses on debt for investment in affiliates (Hwang and Kim, 1991). After observing a series of measures, the chaebols knew that the dictator was capable of arbitrarily changing the tax rates for the purpose of overcoming severe economic crises or easing citizens’ dissatisfaction (Kwack and Lee, 1992). Such sudden changes in effective corporate income tax rates were considered an actual threat to capital owners.

Besides changing tax schemes, Park did not hesitate to punish disobedient companies, if necessary. For instance, Samhak, one of the largest companies in the late 1960s, supported the opposition candidate Kim Dae-jung in the presidential election of 1971 and was found guilty of tax evasion right after the election by the court, which was controlled by the president. It ended up becoming bankrupt (Lie, 1998).

Considering the national economic situation (e.g., severe foreign debt problem and inflation) when Chun seized power, it was very difficult for him to show strong performance in a short span of time. Thus, Chun’s survival strategy to manage capital owners was highly restrained. The huge gaps between nominal and effective corporate income tax rates in a few industries declined over time. In particular, the differences were reduced to zero during his regime (1980–1987), as shown by the shaded area in Figure 3. This demonstrates that Chun’s regime pursued a more liberalized tax scheme than the previous regime.

Financial liberalization may affect the relationship between the military leader and capital owners by enhancing the autonomy of capital owners. According to the data on the Financial Liberalization Index for some countries (Abiad and Mody, 2005), the Korean economy was fully repressed during the period 1973 to 1980, which was less liberalized than even Indonesia. Under this circumstance, the transaction cost to move mobile assets abroad may have been considered to be extremely high. In contrast, the degree of financial liberalization rose during the period under Chun’s control. Compared to Park’s regime, Chun’s regime formed a good condition for moving mobile assets in that international financial transactions were more liberalized. This gave Korean capital owners the opportunity to become independent from the government.

Despite the liberalization measures, Chun’s strategy against capital owners worked well. He effectively prevented capital owners from moving their mobile assets abroad until 1985. In particular, the exit option was not attractive because the transaction costs were still high.

Chun often showed his capacity to punish capital owners if needed. The exit of Kookje is a well-known example (Park, 2007). The seventh largest chaebol was dissolved right after the legislative election of 1985. After the collapse of Kookje, the profitable affiliates were acquired by other chaebols that had a close relationship with the government. It is evident that Chun attempted to show that he could still punish any capital owners who were not obedient to his rule.

Nevertheless, domestic conditions for capital mobility gradually changed and brought about the erosion of Chun’s control over capital owners’ autonomy. First, the primary industry ratio declined steadily as displayed in Figure 4. Agriculture (value added as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP)) and exports of ores and metals (percentage of merchandise exports), respectively, can be proxies to measure the proportion of non-mobile capital (Escribà-Folch, 2003: 13). The time-series data tell us the increasing proportion of mobile assets in Korea. Second, the Korean economy was deeply integrated to the global market, which generated favorable conditions where the exit option could be attractive. Trade as a percentage of GDP is used to measure the degree of integration to the global market. This resulted in an increasing trend of outward FDI in the 1980s. If a democratic government formed after an unexpected democratic transition executes the strong progressive taxation policy, then capital owners could use the exit to avoid the effects of such policy.

Figure 4.

Time-series data on agriculture, trade, and exports of ores and metals.

However, the pattern of outward FDI was different in Korea, compared to the average of the four Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan) as shown in Figure 5. It increased suddenly in 1986, but declined in 1987 when a democratic transition was initiated. This reflects that capital owners were able to choose the exit option in practice for the first time, and the government control over capital owners could not firmly persist under dictatorship. That is, it is a clue to the changing balance of power between the authoritarian government and capital owners in Korea. Under such a circumstance, now we can expect that the damaged military leaders who leaned towards the party-based authoritarian regime are more likely to participate in the negotiation process for democratization than those who are personalist-regime-oriented. This was realized in mid-1987.

Figure 5.

Outward foreign direct investment: Korea and four Asian Tigers’ average, 1970–1990.

Conclusion

Recent researchers with a comparative orientation provide valuable theories and quantitative findings based on cross-national analyses, but most of them overlook the significant distinction between the two military leaderships in Korea. This may conflict with the theories and findings of specialists who emphasize the differences but do not use the rigorous methodologies and data. I have revisited the military rule in Korea by paying attention to the disconnection in dictatorship like Korean specialists but using the tools in comparative studies of modern authoritarian regimes like comparativists.

I argued that the differences in the military leaders’ orientations and survival strategies to deal with potential threat sources entailed different consequences that may include a democratic transition. Although both military leaders sought to consolidate their grip on power, they had different orientations (personalist type vs. party-based type), and distinctive survival strategies to manage significant threat sources: key insiders; political opponents; and economic elites. In detail, I examined: (a) how to form a ruling group in terms of unity (competing factions vs. a single dominant faction); (b) how to control the legislative branch (directly controlled organization vs. opposition parties indirectly supported by the government); and (c) how to manage capital owners (direct constraints vs. financial liberalization with occasional punishments).

Park and Chun’s distinctive survival strategies entailed different outcomes. In particular, the second military leaders’ strategy to minimize the chance of early exit was effective, but inherently vulnerable to an unexpected election outcome. Compared to his predecessor, Chun maximized the degree of unity by forming the ruling group with a single dominant faction under a single branch. Ironically, Chun was strongly constrained by the ruling group members, and failed to enlarge his civilian support base. His regime was severely damaged by deviants from the government-controlled opposition parties right after the unexpected election outcome of 1985. Subsequently, this failure in controlling the legislative branch gave a strong message to capital owners that the government could not implement financial policies favorable to them. As the Korean economy was deeply integrated and the proportion of mobile assets increased in Korea, the transaction cost to move mobile assets abroad gradually declined. When the exit option was available, capital owners had a strong leverage to bargain with the military ruler who sought performance-based legitimacy. Moreover, capital owners who obtained the exit option were no longer concerned about higher taxation policies that were induced by a democratic government, which made them less willing to collude with the government for the survival of the authoritarian regime. The balance between the government and capital owners was fundamentally upset, which in turn undermined the regime stability.

This finding provides implications for current military regimes in terms of democratization. Since the end of the Cold War, many authoritarian regimes have adopted pseudo-democratic institutions for legitimation. As shown in Chun’s regime, unexpected election results can occur even in highly unfair legislative elections, and it damages military dictators’ control over the legislative branch, which in turn increases the chance of regime change; in particular, a democratic transition rather than an authoritarian replacement.

As globalization proceeds, massive capital flows become available. As shown in the Korean case, capital owners can directly hurt the national economy by exercising the exit option, which raises the chance of democratization in military regimes that seek performance-based legitimation rather than identity-based legitimation (foundational myth, ideology, or personality). This also gives a hint as to why the pure military regime collapsed and opened the door to democracy in Myanmar, while other Asian authoritarian regimes labeled as hybrid regimes—for instance, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Singapore are labeled “competitive authoritarianism,” and Laos and Vietnam are classified as “hegemonic authoritarianism”—are still alive.

Footnotes

Author’s note

Bon Sang Koo is currently affiliated to the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Chungbuk National University, Chungdae-ro 1, Seowon-Gu, Cheongju, Chungbuk 28644, Korea.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2017S1A5B5A01026431).

Notes

ORCID iD

Bon Sang Koo

Author biography

Bon Sang Koo received his PhD in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at Chungbuk National University, Korea. His research interests are in comparative studies of modern authoritarian regimes including North Korea, legislators’ behavior, and quantitative methods. His recent articles have appeared in Pacific Focus, North Korean Review, Korea Observer, and Japanese Journal of Political Science.

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