Introduction: The Quality of Democracy in Korea

Abstract

This introduction offers a synopsis of the overall rationale behind the book and its individual chapters as well as an overarching argument about the quality of democracy in South Korea and more generally. It starts by outlining the course of events in Korea following the transition to formal democracy in 1987. Subsequently, it discusses some of the literature that most directly addresses recent developments in Korea and then turns to the perspective of democratic quality. After briefly discussing the relative strengths and weaknesses of various indices for assessing the quality of democracy, the chapter briefly introduces the basic idea of Larry Diamond and Leonardo Morlino’s approach to the quality of democracy, focusing on the eight dimensions of democratic quality as a starting point for the discussions in the remainder of the book. The chapter closes with an outline of the book, providing a short summary of the themes of each of the ten chapters.