South Korea has been gripped by political drama since President Yoon Suk-yeol (2022-2025) unconstitutionally declared martial law in December, ultimately resulting in his impeachment on April 4. While historians will be parsing the tumultuous events of late 2024 and early 2025 for years to come, the focus for now is on the upcoming election: South Koreans will head to the polls June 3 to elect a new president.
Will Lee Jae-myung of the opposition and center-left Democratic Party (DP) – who narrowly lost against Yoon in the 2022 contest – finally secure the presidency as the polls suggest? Or will Kim Moon-soo, the candidate of the incumbent and conservative People’s Power Party (PPP), prevail?
Regardless of who wins, on the minds of the voters preserving South Korea’s democracy looms large. To that end, one issue is gaining salience: constitutional reform, specifically replacing the current single five-year term for the presidency – a measure put in place as the country transitioned from authoritarianism to democracy in 1987 – with the possibility of two four-year terms, akin to the U.S. system.
A string of South Korean leaders before Yoon, from Roh Moo-hyun (2003-2008) to Lee Myung-bak (2008-2003) to Park Geun-hye (2013-2017), have been either convicted of corruption or impeached. It has been proposed that such a change in the constitution would hold the president more accountable to the electorate. Both of the main candidates in this snap election are in favor of the reform, leaving only the technicalities over when and how for further debate.
Yet a constitutional fix alone won’t inoculate South Korea’s democracy from erosion. As U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to the White House demonstrates, even established democracies with multiterm presidencies can succumb to democratic erosion, because at the root of the problem is what many call the “strong leader syndrome.” This affliction incentivizes democratically elected leaders, once in office, to bypass democratic institutions and processes, all in the name of taking swift and decisive action.
These leaders push the power of the president’s office, not in good faith, but for self-serving reasons. However, their actions are justified on the moral grounds that democratic institutions and processes have been hijacked by particularistic interests, which necessitates unilateral moves by the president so that “the will of the people” is served. Yoon’s declaration of martial law against what he refers to as “anti-state” forces – meaning the opposition, which holds the parliamentary majority – is a stark example of strong leader syndrome at work.
Strong leader syndrome is not, of course, unique to South Korea. As alluded earlier, the United States suffers from it as well. The syndrome is perpetuated by the supply of strong leaders by the political elite and the demand for such leaders on the ground. What ultimately brings the potent supply and demand together in the electoral arena are political coalitions.
In the case of Trump’s America, there is an “unlikely coalition,” comprised of the supporters of the “unitary executive theory” – which argues for a political structure with the president’s office holding sole authority over the executive branch – and two other economic and cultural groups frustrated over the changes in the United States’ economy and culture: the “economic libertarians” who rail against technocratic regulations of the bureaucracy (as exemplified by Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency”) and the “Christian nationalists” who stand against cultural heterogeneity and the secularization of the state (as exemplified by Vice President J.D. Vance and the defunding of universities over their support for diversity, equity, and inclusion policies).
South Korea too has the supporters of the unitary executive logic, who maintain the view that the ever-present threat of war with North Korea necessitates a strong president’s office, and all the more so at a time of rising tensions between the United States and China, which makes peace and security on the peninsula highly volatile.
The country has also known its fair share of frustration over the changes in the economy and culture. Economically, South Korea is the most automated country in the world and is the global forerunner in artificial intelligence (AI). This – rightly or wrongly – creates havoc for mid-skills jobs, and by extension, middle class life. For those who aspire to a middle class existence not only for themselves but also their offspring, the prospect for upward social mobility is slim, despite having shouldered the ever-increasing cost of private education that higher-skilled jobs demand.
Culturally, heterogeneity has come in the form of women’s inclusion, en masse, in higher education and the labor market, which has put male-dominated systems of both work and family under a stress test. In a country that has a small welfare state relative to its wealth, the two of the most acute socio-economic problems facing the country – the highest number of elderly poor and the lowest fertility rate in the OECD – are direct consequences of unresolved questions over the burden of elder- and child-care, traditionally shouldered by women.
Hence, the thing to watch out for in the 2025 election isn’t who wins, nor the technicalities of constitutional reform. It is how the potent dynamics of supply and demand that create strong leader syndrome are played out in the electoral arena in the form of political coalitions.
The conservative right has a long history of supplying strong leaders, from Lee Myung-bak to Park Geun-hye, with the latter riding on the legacies of her father, Park Chung-hee, who rule the country as a dictator from 1963-79. The opposition has followed suit by putting up their version of a strong leader: the DP’s Lee has been ruthless in marginalizing opposition to his control over the party, despite legal challenges stemming from corruption and election law cases.
Will this supply be met with demand in the electoral arena to perpetuate the strong leader syndrome? This requires taking a hard look to see the coalitions in the making. The country saw the snippets of a potential coalition for a strongman leader when Yoon narrowly won the 2022 election by tapping into anger among men in their 20s and 30s. In this election cycle, it’s important to see if this group is forging alliances with “social conservatives” against feminism and the “techno-nationalists” in support of national security and economic growth over social welfare and care.
However, there is also a countervailing coalition in the making. If South Korea’s young men are turning more culturally conservative, young women are turning more progressive. South Korean young men and women show the biggest gap on gender-related issues in the world. These young women elected a record number of women to South Korea’s parliament in the 2024 parliamentary election. In the immediate hours of martial law declaration, these women also hit the streets, forging unexpected alliances with female leaders in industrial workers’ and farmers’ organizations.
If and how these protest movements will evolve into politically viable coalitions with a sustained presence in the electoral arena will be the defining story of the 2025 election, and indeed the years beyond. For now, it can be said that, where the health of South Korea’s democracy is concerned, “the future is female.”
