ABSTRACT
Korean democracy passed Samuel P. Huntington’s “two turnover test” by smoothly handing over power to a new president in the election of 17 December 2007. Huntington notes that “a democracy may be viewed as consolidated if the party or group that takes power in the initial election at the time of transition loses a subsequent election and turns over power to those election winners, and if those election winners then peacefully turn over power to the winners of a later election” (Huntington 1991: 266-7). As Adam Przeworski argues, “democracy is a political system in which parties lose elections” (Przeworski 1991: 10). Thus, passing the “two turnovers” test is decisive evidence that an emerging democracy has succeeded in “institutionalizing uncertainty” or “subjecting all interests to competition” (Przeworski 1991: 14). South Korea (referred to simply as “Korea” hereafter) experienced its first turnover when it elected long-time opposition leader Kim Dae Jung to the presidency in 1997. Ten years later, Lee Myung Bak and the Grand National Party (GNP) retook power in the 2007 presidential election and the 2008 National Assembly election, completing the second turnover. In East Asia, only Korea and Taiwan have passed the two turnover test. Taiwan completed its two turnovers in a shorter period (12 years), but it still took only 20 years for Korea to complete the process. Japan, although acclaimed as the most advanced and stable democracy in Asia, has had only one turnover since the emergence of the “1955 regime,” with the election of the non-Liberal Democratic Party politician Morihiro Hosokawa as prime minister in 1993.
