ABSTRACT
It is a common belief that Korean democracy originated in the sixteenth century when Occidental civilization was introduced via China. This form of civilization was called Suhak in Korea and had a great impact on the Korean way of life. In that era, Korea was a typical forbidden country in Asia, located far from the domain of Western rationalism. The hierarchical relationship between the wise King and the untaught people was so strong that people never thought of equality and freedom as ideological principles of democracy. The peasant resistance to the authority of the Yangban (nobility) reached a peak in the regime of Chuljong in 1862. It was the first full-scale insurrection of the people who were anxious for equality between the classes. Ever since then, popular uprisings have broken out from time to time. Catholicism, which taught of a God under whom people are born equal, sparked these movements. It was in the late nineteenth century that an enlightened age came into bloom led by those who had studied abroad or visited foreign countries as interpreters for diplomatic missions. Egalitarianism was inspired and culminated in the Dokriphyuphoe (the Independence Society) under the leadership of Su Jae Pil, a front runner of Korean civilization and democratization at that time. Seoung Mann Rhee, President of the First Republic of Korean in 1948, might have been influenced by the Society in his younger days.
