ABSTRACT
Using narratives of a group of parties that stemmed from the New Korea Democratic Party (NKDP) founded in 1985, this chapter argues that minjoo (democracy or democratic) parties in South Korea have had a stronger commitment to democratic contestation and participation than others. These minjoo parties also played a crucial role in mobilizing a united pro-democracy front that achieved the transition from authoritarian regimes in 1987 and operated well for protecting democratic institutional settings against authoritarian tendencies that persisted through the two conservative presidencies in the 2000s. This strong democratic commitment, however, has not been able to develop into a further motive for moving Korean democracy forward, as manifested in the minjoo parties’ apparent incapacity for promoting democratic governance with accountability, a necessary condition for liberal democracy. Such a gap of commitment between democratic contestation and accountability, or what I call “commitment discrepancy,” thus provides a better understanding of why institutional settings of new democracies, including party politics, are unexpectedly stable but hardly conducive to further stages of democratization.
