[EAI Diagnostic Series on Democratic Backsliding] ② Factors of Democratic Backsliding in the Korean Presidential System

I. Introduction: Did the Crisis Originate from the Power Structure?

The emergency martial law declared by President Yoon Suk-yeol in December 2024 cannot be understood as merely a failure of governance by one administration or a temporary political turmoil. This event soon escalated into a series of constitutional crises, including presidential impeachment and an early presidential election, amidst extreme partisan conflict, suggesting that the Korean political system is exposed to structural threats that undermine the foundations of democracy. If so, as the political community and media have uniformly pointed out, is the crisis of Korean democracy rooted in the power structure of the presidential system? Or is it an incident caused by the errors of a specific individual, President Yoon Suk-yeol?

This article does not view this question as a simple dichotomy. Instead, it comprehensively analyzes how the institutional design of the presidential system, the structure of party operations, the characteristics of political culture, and the governance behaviors of political actors interact to paralyze democratic functions. In particular, the persistent 'strong president-weak party' structure in Korean politics and the repetition of confrontational politics relying on populist emotional mobilization have continuously weakened the foundations of democracy when combined with the risks inherent in the presidential system.

This article aims to examine in stages: first, how the structural concentration of presidential power operates institutionally; second, why political parties and the National Assembly fail to function as independent political actors; and third, how this institutional operation manifests as patterns of democratic backsliding in actual politics.

II. Democratic Backsliding or Crisis?

As many scholars point out, democratic backsliding and democratic breakdown are distinct. Democratic backsliding is not a violent overthrow but a systemic change where democratic governance is gradually eroded from within. This is because politicians who gain power through democratic procedures with the support of citizens undermine the values and principles of democracy within the framework of legitimate institutions. In this process, executive power expands, harassment of the opposition intensifies, and interference by state power in elections begins to be suspected (Bermo 2016).

Korea has also been primarily discussed within the framework of democratic backsliding. Typical signs of democratic backsliding were detected through the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye and the governments of Moon Jae-in and Yoon Suk-yeol. While executive power grew, the responsiveness of the executive branch and the president to legislative checks decreased. Investigations targeting the opposition using the prosecution caused turmoil in the political sphere. As a result, it was inevitable for executive power to influence the democratic electoral process (Kwon Hyuk-yong 2023). What is serious is that all these processes of democratic backsliding occur in the form of partisan politics. Emotional polarization has replaced ideological confrontation between parties, and elections have degenerated into proxy battles of emotions between these camps. According to Song Ho-geun (2025), citizens in this process are reduced from active agents of politics to objects of political mobilization, and participatory democracy falls into a state of dysfunction. Furthermore, the fierce confrontation between the president and the opposition over veto power and impeachment proceedings has led to the disappearance of institutional restraint and mutual respect, which were implicit norms in Korean politics since democratization. Both sides unhesitatingly exercised their legal authority. As politicians and citizens alike are captured by ideological polarization, the confrontational, and even hostile, political environment leaves no room for cooperation and compromise.

President Yoon Suk-yeol's declaration of emergency martial law pushed the crisis of Korean democracy, previously discussed within the framework of democratic backsliding, to a new level. While previous discussions on democratic backsliding involved gradual regression through legitimate means, this incident is widely regarded as an attempted praetorian coup, characteristic of democratic breakdown. Because it was an attempt to subvert democracy using illegal and violent means, it is appropriate to consider it as having exceeded the guidelines of democratic backsliding discussions in a strict sense. Although the attempt at emergency martial law was ultimately thwarted by citizens and the National Assembly, it confirmed that even politicians elected with popular support in a democratic country might consider a praetorian coup for power expansion. The fact that Korean democracy, a model of democratization, was at risk of collapse, not through gradual backsliding but through a violent praetorian coup, even for a short period, was shocking.

The circumstances revealed during the impeachment process following the emergency martial law are further complicating Korean democracy. Emotional polarization easily crossed the boundaries of democracy and constitutional order. Although the ruling party overtly instigated it, public opinion polls indicated a trend of not accepting the president's impeachment, which clearly violated the constitution and laws, due to hatred towards opposition politicians. During the investigation and arrest process of President Yoon Suk-yeol, some emotionally charged extremist groups even stormed the court using violence. The ruling People Power Party not only became captured by extremist forces during this process but some politicians clearly incited them. The fact that extremist groups physically attacking constitutional institutions are gaining access to the center of power through the mainstream conservative party, the People Power Party, can only be interpreted as a red flag for Korean democracy in many respects.

III. Institutional Vulnerabilities of the Presidential System and Democratic Regression

Is the crisis of Korean democracy a problem of institutions or structures, or does it stem from the flaws of key political leaders? The answer to this question is clearly divided. Some attribute the problem to the general characteristics of the presidential system or the unique nature of the Korean presidential system, while others focus on the lack of governing capacity or leadership deficiencies of individual presidents.

First, there is the perspective that prioritizes structural approaches. Choi Kwang-eun (2025) identifies the structural pathologies inherent in the presidential system as the core cause threatening democracy. He argues that President Yoon Suk-yeol's attempted praetorian coup cannot be seen as the personal and aberrant behavior of a particular president. Rather, the excessive concentration of power in the president and the legislative and judicial branches' insufficient capacity to check it are pointed out as structural weaknesses of our constitution. In this process, the political community and media raised concerns about the 'imperial presidency.' Naturally, the solution was the decentralization of presidential power.

Conversely, Yoon Yeo-jun/Han Yun-hyung (2025) offer an opposing perspective. They argue that a responsible and competent leader can overcome institutional limitations. According to them, the problem lies in the structure that allows politicians lacking in governing philosophy or administrative capacity to become president. The solution, they contend, should be sought not in institutional reform but in the selection of the right leader. The repeated emergence of 'unqualified leaders' exacerbates the confusion in Korean democracy, according to their observation.

Song Ho-geun (2025) presents a third perspective that synthesizes these two viewpoints. He points out that the reformist drive of the Roh Moo-hyun administration, the authoritarianism of the Park Geun-hye administration, and the military emergency measure attempt of the Yoon Suk-yeol administration all occurred within the same presidential system, suggesting that institutional pathologies and individual problems are not separate but interact complementarily. Park Sang-hoon (2018) also emphasizes that while the behavior of individual presidents may be a problem, the structure itself that enables and perpetuates it—namely, the Blue House-centric governance structure and the subordination of political parties—must also be reformed.

The actor-centric and structural perspectives also sharply contrast in their interpretations of the declaration of emergency martial law. While their causal analyses differ, the priorities for institutional improvement and the directions for preventing recurrence also vary significantly. The actor-centric perspective would identify President Yoon's inexperience in state affairs and lack of communication skills as major causes, proposing the cultivation and discovery of political leaders with both communication skills and leadership as alternatives. Conversely, the structural approach would identify the inadequacy of constitutional provisions related to emergency situations and the Blue House-centric governance model as fundamental causes, viewing constitutional amendment focused on power decentralization and legal revisions as solutions.

The so-called 'imperial presidency' debate can also be discussed in a similar context. Those who believe presidential power is excessively strong argue that this concentrated power hinders democratic development. According to them, compared to other presidential systems, the Korean president possesses excessive constitutional powers. However, there is also the argument that the core issue is not the formidable presidential power but the weak party politics. In their observation, the constitutional powers of the Korean president are not excessively broad. Regardless of the difference in perspectives, paradoxically, Korean politics manifests as an 'imperial president' in the early part of the term and a 'fragile president' in the latter half (Bae and Park 2018).

Compared to the presidential powers in other presidential systems, are the powers of the Korean president exceptionally strong to be considered 'imperial'? The indicators by Shugart and Carey (1992) are the most widely used for comparing constitutional presidential powers. This index categorizes presidential powers into legislative and non-legislative powers and quantifies each item on a 4-point scale. The Korean president's powers, as assessed by them, score 9 points for legislative powers and 2 points for non-legislative powers, totaling 11 points. Latin American countries known for very strong presidential powers include Brazil with 19 points, Argentina with 19 points, and Chile with 14 points. The United States scored 12 points, slightly higher than Korea. Therefore, the powers of the Korean president are not constitutionally strong enough to be considered 'imperial.' There is little evidence to definitively label the Korean president's powers as 'imperial' at the constitutional level.

Nevertheless, the reason the Korean presidential system is described as 'imperial' is that its actual political influence (de facto) is far more formidable than its formally codified legal powers. The president exercises influence over politics through various informal means beyond official powers, such as intervening in candidate nominations, leading budget formulation, controlling personnel appointments, and shaping public opinion. Particularly in relations with the ruling party, the president holds substantial power beyond that of the party leader and can intervene not only in the nomination of National Assembly members but also in the entire party primary structure. Furthermore, the 'Blue House government,' where state affairs are primarily managed by Blue House advisors rather than ministers, also supports the concentration of presidential power, despite not being stipulated in the constitution. Thus, even though the president's powers are evaluated as mid-level constitutionally, the criticism of 'imperial' arises because the system allows for structurally very strong governance in practice.

Ultimately, the problem of the Korean presidential system is amplified not by the scope of constitutionally defined powers but by the way actual politics operates. Rather than attributing the cause to either the system or leadership alone, we must recognize the structural vicious cycle that operates through their combination. The sum of legal and illegal powers granted to the president, the institutions that fail to control them, and the strategies of political actors who utilize them combine to repeatedly plunge Korean democracy into crisis.

IV. The Relationship Between the Presidential System and the Ruling Party

Beyond their constitutional powers, Korean presidents have historically controlled the ruling party through various informal means. Particularly during the "Three Kims" era even after democratization in 1987, the president, as the leader of the ruling party, exerted strong influence over both the party and the government, leading to the assessment of an 'imperial president.' Although the principle of separation between party and government has been strengthened since the Roh Moo-hyun administration, the president's control over the ruling party persists structurally. In the Republic of Korea, presidential control over the ruling party is primarily exercised through three means: the power of nomination, personnel appointments, and budget formulation.

First, the power of nomination is not an official presidential power. However, in practice, it has become a powerful tool for controlling the ruling party. As regionalism has intensified in Korean politics since democratization, regional political elites have made nomination a key means of maintaining their political influence. Consequently, National Assembly candidates have placed greater importance on the intra-party nomination process than on the general election competition. This has created a structure where the president's intentions are naturally reflected in the nomination process.

Second, the president's power of personnel appointment serves as another key channel for controlling the ruling party. The Korean president has the sole authority to make a wide range of appointments, from ministerial-level officials to heads of public institutions. In particular, the institutional characteristic that allows National Assembly members to concurrently hold ministerial positions significantly undermines the original intent of the presidential system, which is to ensure checks and balances between the legislative and executive branches.

Finally, the power of budget formulation is also an important channel through which the president controls the ruling party. Unlike a pure presidential system, the Korean presidential system grants the president substantial power as the de facto entity responsible for budget proposal formulation. In this process, the president can exert influence over individual district assembly members through budget allocation. Regional budgets are a matter directly related to the re-election prospects of assembly members. The president's political influence has often been directly realized through practices like 'earmarked budgets.' This structural characteristic was clearly demonstrated through the 'party-Blue House integration' policy of the Lee Myung-bak administration and the exclusion of non-mainstream politicians from nominations during the Park Geun-hye administration (Hur 2017).

In conclusion, although party-government separation nominally and institutionally exists in Korea, in reality, a mechanism operates structurally where the president continuously controls the ruling party through the powers of nomination, personnel appointments, and budget formulation, leading to the concentration of power in the individual president.

This concentration of power abnormally amplifies the importance of elections in Korean politics and becomes a cause for heightened political tension and animosity. The structure, where the president can independently decide on personnel appointments, creates both expectations and anxieties that national resources and key personnel compositions can be completely altered depending on the election outcome. As a result, elections transform from arenas of compromise and competition into all-out wars for survival, and political parties focus on seizing power rather than cooperation. In this process, political cooperation disappears, and the logic of politics devolves into a dynamic of emotional mobilization and antagonism.

The repeated designation and investigation/punishment of former administrations' personnel as 'deep-rooted evils' during government changes also create a vicious cycle of political retaliation. This reinforces the adversarial perception of viewing opposing factions as criminal organizations and solidifies a structure where both ruling and opposition parties repeatedly engage in politics of loyalty and struggle. Indeed, according to a Pew Research Center survey, social conflict among party supporters in Korea and the United States is among the most severe globally (Silver 2022), which can be interpreted as a result of the combination of institutional design in the power structure and extreme partisan confrontation.

V. Democratic Backsliding and Recurring Leadership Crises

Korean presidents experience a significant loss of governing momentum and a decline in approval ratings in the latter half of their terms. The so-called 'lame duck' phenomenon is an unavoidable consequence stemming from institutional characteristics. Due to the single-term limit, presidents find it difficult to build a long-term political base and to maintain stable cooperative relationships with the legislature. Crucially, frequent general and local elections rapidly weaken the momentum of presidential governance. While presidential power and influence reach their peak at the beginning of their term, they inevitably wane over time. Initially, bold reform policies can be pursued, but in the latter half, presidents tend to remain in a state of political isolation and defensive governance. This imbalance stems from the structural mismatch between the presidential term and the legislative election schedule.

The Korean presidential system frequently leads to situations of divided government due to the separation of presidential and legislative elections. While this appears similar to the U.S. presidential system, political conflicts and deadlocks are more pronounced in Korea due to the weak party system and severe internal factional conflicts. The clash between the president's will to lead state affairs and the legislature's oversight function is routine, and when combined with internal party divisions or a decline in presidential approval ratings, the president's political isolation becomes even more severe.

In such political circumstances, presidents choose strategies to avoid or circumvent legislative checks. They may utilize alternative means such as executive orders and decrees or seek to secure popular support through public opinion mobilization (O’Donell 1994). In the long run, this approach undermines the fundamental democratic principles of separation of powers and the status of the legislature, reducing horizontal accountability and intensifying the concentration of power around the president. Consequently, the balanced checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches collapse, and political conflict and social polarization deepen.

The Korean presidential system, where a president directly elected by the people wields immense power, presupposes a certain level of accountability. However, this accountability is primarily concentrated in the vertical relationship between the president and the electorate, while the effective control by horizontal oversight bodies such as the legislature, judiciary, and media is limited. In particular, when the president, based on high public support, pushes for unilateral and arbitrary policy decisions, the legislature and political parties are unable to effectively control them. Ultimately, the core democratic principle of the presidential system, separation of powers, is weakened, and democracy faces a crisis (Park Sang-hoon 2018).

Modern democracies emphasize rational and public deliberation in policy-making processes, beyond mere electoral participation. However, in Korean politics, rational and deliberative discourse is being replaced by emotional and adversarial political confrontation. When the president uses public opinion to pressure opposing forces or nullify the powers of the National Assembly, political discourse devolves into emotional confrontation rather than rationality. Song Ho-geun (2025) refers to this phenomenon as 'politics of emotional mobilization,' warning that the foundation of deliberative democracy is crumbling and the crisis of democracy is accelerating.

VI. Institutional Reform and the Task of Restoring Democracy

The crisis of Korean democracy is highly complex, with various factors intertwined across actor, institutional, structural, and cultural dimensions. When approaching institutional reform, simplistic perspectives must be guarded against. Therefore, it is crucial to make a concerted effort to clearly distinguish between areas that can be resolved without constitutional amendment, those that can only be resolved through constitutional amendment, and those that cannot be resolved even with constitutional amendment in improving the problems of Korean democracy.

There are clearly areas of political reform that can be resolved through the enactment or amendment of existing laws, without touching the power structure of the current constitution. Electoral system reform is a prime example. Electoral system reform is a key area that can promote stability in the party system and mitigate the winner-take-all structure by increasing proportionality between vote share and seat share and strengthening the accountability of elected officials.

Amending the Political Parties Act is also important. The excessive regulations in the current Political Parties Act restrict the activities of political associations representing diverse interests in various regions. A regional party system, in addition to national parties, aimed solely at participating in local elections, is expected to contribute significantly to the decentralization of the Korean political system. By amending the Public Official Election Act and internal party regulations to democratize the nomination process, we can also expect a mitigation of the vertical dependency structure between the president and the ruling party.

There are also structural problems that cannot be resolved without constitutional amendment. The allocation of powers among political actors, connecting the president, prime minister, and legislature, inevitably relies on the constitution, which stipulates the power structure. Furthermore, modifications to fundamental powers stipulated in the constitution, such as emergency response powers, military command authority, and budget formulation powers, can only be made through constitutional amendment. The problematic issue of the mismatch between the presidential and legislative terms can also only be resolved through constitutional amendment. Decisions on whether to hold presidential and National Assembly elections simultaneously, or to establish legislative elections as a mid-term evaluation, are critical factors that will influence the distribution of power within the president's affiliated party in the legislature. Simultaneous elections would move in a direction that strengthens presidential power but has the effect of clarifying the accountability in the president-legislature relationship. Conversely, mid-term elections would act as a constraint on presidential power, offering the potential for power decentralization, but they cannot avoid the difficulty of prolonged deadlock due to unclear accountability in a divided government. If the power structure is significantly revised to a parliamentary system, a dual executive system, or a four-year term presidential system, the restoration of political trust and social consensus will be essential.

Ultimately, institutional reforms aimed at restoring democracy cannot be linear. Efforts to amend at the constitutional level and efforts to amend at the legislative level must proceed simultaneously across different dimensions.

VII. Conclusion: A Comprehensive Diagnosis of the Democratic Crisis and Response Strategies

The crisis facing Korean democracy is so complex, with various factors intertwined, that it cannot be reduced to a single cause. Therefore, individual, person-centered analyses, such as the lack of morality or leadership deficiencies of a particular president, are insufficient to fully explain this crisis. The current situation is the result of a complex interplay between the inherent problems of the presidential system, the unique cultural characteristics of Korean politics, and the personal capabilities of political leaders.

The question posed at the beginning of this article was, 'Is the essence of the crisis facing Korean democracy in its power structure, or is it due to the incompetence of its leaders?' In conclusion, it has been confirmed that a mutually exclusive approach cannot provide a sufficient answer. The Korean presidential system theoretically pursues separation of powers, but in practice, power is excessively concentrated in the president. This concentrated power structure nullifies the core democratic principle of checks and balances, leading to isolated decision-making centered on the president and rigid governance methods.

This analysis focuses on multiple layers of the democratic crisis. The excessive concentration of presidential power and the neutralization of checks and balances, the institutional immaturity of political parties and their president-centered operation, recurring leadership crises and the misalignment of election cycles, and the spread of emotion-based mobilization politics all interact complexly, clearly demonstrating that Korean politics has significantly deviated from the ideal democratic model.

To address this, the following strategies must be pursued in parallel. First, in areas where constitutional amendment is not necessary, party democratization should be realized through the voluntary reform will and legislation of political actors, and citizen participation should be institutionalized. Second, for structural problems that necessitate constitutional amendment, a redesign of the power structure is required, based on mid- to long-term social consensus and political leadership. Examples include adjusting the president-legislature relationship, considering a parliamentary or dual executive system, deciding on the unification of election cycles, and introducing a vote of no confidence. Third, for cultural bottlenecks that are difficult to resolve in the short term through any institutional reform—namely, the lack of institutional restraint and mutual respect among politicians, political polarization based on negative partisanship, and politics of emotional mobilization—long-term strategies such as education, civic movements, and the restoration of public forums are required.

Ultimately, democracy is not established by institutions alone but is realized through the culture and attitudes that practice them, and through continuous coordination between institutions and reality. The crisis of Korean democracy is the result of failures in this practice and coordination, and its overcoming will only be possible through comprehensive reform that encompasses institutions, structures, and culture together. ■

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■ Bae Jin-seok_Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Gyeongsang National University.

■ Managed and Edited by: Park Han-soo_EAI Research Fellow

    Inquiries: 02 2277 1683 (ext. 204) hspark@eai.or.kr