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Can Democracy Work?
| Article
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13261 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1987 |
3,354 Words |
| Author
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Selig S. Harrison
Selig S. Harrison, a senior associate of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, has specialized in South
Asian affairs and American policy problems in Asia for forty
years as a foreign correspondent and author. He served as AP
correspondent in New Delhi from 1951 to 1954, returning as
South Asia bureau chief of the Washington Post from 1962 to
1965, and Northeast Asia bureau chief from 1968 to 1972. A
former managing editor of the New Republic, he has served as
senior fellow in charge of Asian studies at the Brookings
Institution, senior fellow at the East-West Center, and
professional lecturer in Asian studies at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Advanced International Studies. |
South Koreans are caught in a tug of war between the pulls of tradition and modernization. Deep-rooted historical memories of monarchical despotism, reinforced by Confucian values of obedience to authority, have facilitated the establishment of military rule since 1961. At the same time, rapid economic growth and mass education have broadened the base of political consciousness, generating increasingly powerful pressures for democratization.
The United States is unavoidably embroiled in this tug-of-war because it has had a peculiarly intimate relationship with the South Korean armed forces ever since the Korean War.
To back up the 1954 mutual defense treaty between Seoul and Washington, American air and ground forces, equipped with tactical nuclear weapons, are deployed in forward positions in the South. The 1954 treaty provides for an American-Korean Combined Forces Command headed by an American four-star general. This treaty gives the American commander-in-chief operational control not only over American forces in Korea (numbering 40,500 men in 1987) but also over South Korean forces (598,000). Thus, the United States has been closely linked in South Korean eyes with 26 years of military rule, first under Park Chung-Hee, who was assassinated in 1979, and then under Park's military intelligence chief, incumbent President Chun Doo-Hwan.
No evidence has surfaced to support the widespread South Korean belief that the United States directly connived in the Park and Chun coups. However, American military spokesmen, drowning out State Department professions of support for democracy, have consistently rationalized or justified military rule.
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