Seventy four years ago Tuesday, north Korea invaded south Korea, starting a war that formally remains ongoing, under an armistice since 1953. One major legacy of that war has been the emergence of south Korea as a vibrant democracy. How that happened is worth Americans’ reflection. We should consider this a victory in what matters most. We should also see that for us, winning isn’t always a simple matter of victory and a parade.
South Korea, the Republic of Korea (ROK), has not vastly outperformed the north Korean dictatorship since the war. The country has become a world economic and cultural force, known globally for Hyundai cars, K-pop bands, Samsung phones – and artillery shells (indirectly to date) for Ukraine. Most important, it is a true democracy with free and fair elections, orderly changes of administration, rule of law, political freedom and personal rights.
While the ROK has always been allied with the U.S., a body of their public opinion is critical of American influence and policy. That perspective has various facets, but much has to do with US support for – some say imposition of – dictators and authoritarian governments into the 1980s. Some of those perpetrated outright crimes, the most visible being the 1980 suppression of an uprising in Gwangju, sparked in protest of Chun Doo Hwan’s military coup. Through all the machinations of dictators and strongmen, the US maintained its alliance, as part of our Cold War strategy against Communism.
If the ROK’s democratic emergence was not the sole objective of U.S. policy, how is it a win for us now? First, although we condoned military rule in south Korea, we treated it as a price of opposing Communism. As with dictators we supported elsewhere, we saw “our SOB” as better than Communism. When Communism went away, its replacement by electoral government was a fulfillment of our deepest interests, not a setback. We also took steps to curb arbitrary uses of power by the dictators, including the exchange of a U.S. state visit for Chun on condition that he not have dissident, later President, Kim Dae Jung, executed. Korea was caught in our global Cold War with the Soviets, but our purpose was not to impose dictatorship.
Second, in opposing the Communist foe, we voiced and supported liberal values, as a strategic measure but also in our ongoing belief in Liberal governance. Those values did take a back seat, but our rationale for the very Cold War for which we worked with Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan, was to stop a totalitarian ideology. Our values may have come out in the breach, but they underpinned the reasons for our transgression. Third, we remained friends with the democratic nation, and still celebrate their democracy. And yes, we have had trade disputes and political tensions with the ROK, including over relations with Japan. But beneath such day to day issues, America understands that Korea’s democracy and open society are more important, and vital to us.
Freedom is not a mere means to defeat an enemy regime. And again, no, we cannot really claim south Korea’s freedom as our creation, whatever role we may have had in supporting its conditions. Rather, their embrace of freedom and democracy and rule of law shows that our core ethos, of personal rights and government dedicated to securing those rights, works in their country as well as ours. That vindication is a victory for our core national purpose.
Our win did not come directly in the war – the actual fighting ended in stalemate. It did not come from our direct promotion of freedom – we compromised our principles, yes for the sake of a larger exigency but compromised nonetheless. We do not celebrate Korean freedom as something we did or something that serves us, but as something we would want for its own sake. We did keep a despotic north Korea out, and south Korea has prospered under our military umbrella. But we won this war because south Koreans have made themselves free and thrived in it. They have won, in the way our fundamental nature wants all people to win.
Common Conviction 