Democratic Crisis and Reform
Democratic Crisis and Reform
Research Focus
The Democratic Crisis and Reform research theme assesses the liberalized political evolution in Asian countries, identifies current challenges to democracy, and seeks future prospects for democratic longevity in the region.
This research is part of the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL).
Projects in this research track include:
Lee Jae-myung's Presidential Win and What's Ahead for Korean Democracy
Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party won South Korea’s June 3, 2025 presidential election with 49.4 percent of the vote – an outcome that both reflects the resilience of Korean democratic institutions and underscores the hurdles that lie ahead for Korean society and politics. In the Journal of Democracy, Professor Gi-Wook Shin weighs in on the election results and what's ahead for Korean democracy. Read his analysis.
In the months following Yong Suk Yeol's December 2024 attempted martial law, Shin provided his insights and commentary on Korea's political turmoil in national and international media. Explore his analysis via our news roundup and Shin's following blog and interviews.
December 2025 update: Although South Korea withstood the political storms that followed Yoon's martial law declaration, the events over the past year have “illustrated a fragile democracy divided against itself,” write Gi-Wook Shin and Kerstin Norris in an essay for The Diplomat.
[Trans]national Appropriation of Populist Movements: Trumpism and Right-Wing YouTube Discourse in South Korea (Kerstin Norris and Gi-Wook Shin)
This ongoing project examines how Trumpism has become a portable global populist repertoire and how its rhetorical tools are appropriated within South Korea’s right-wing YouTube network. Using a corpus of videos from major conservative channels spanning the 2024 National Assembly elections to the 2025 snap election, a period of heightened polarization, we show that Korean conservatives selectively draw from a transnational populist toolkit but re-signify its elements through domestic logics of securitization and national membership. Rather than replicating Trumpism, Korean actors recombine its slogans, conspiratorial frames, and moral narratives with longstanding national storylines about internal enemies, constitutional order, and contested belonging. Tracing these patterns of uptake and reworking across digital media, the project demonstrates how global right-wing populist repertoires circulate, mutate, and become nationalized in practice.
Tracing South Korea’s Gender War (Gi-Wook Shin and Irene Kyoung)
This project analyzes how South Korea’s democratic transition expanded formal rights while allowing core patriarchal structures to persist, producing a gender order that remains deeply contested in contemporary politics. Tracing developments from women’s workplace activism under authoritarian rule to post-1987 reforms and recent waves of feminist and antifeminist mobilization, we show that Korea’s democratization incorporated women as political actors while marginalizing feminist demands, resulting in persistent gaps in representation, economic opportunity, and care responsibilities. These structural inequalities form the backdrop to today’s intensifying “gender war,” in which antifeminist influencers and political parties strategically reframe equality measures as reverse discrimination and mobilize young male grievances for electoral gain. By mapping these dynamics across historical periods and political arenas, the project demonstrates how unresolved questions of gender justice circulate, mutate, and become central to Korea’s democratic contestation, revealing that democratization without gender equality remains an incomplete and unstable project.
"The Adventure of Democracy"
After a long fight, South Korea overcame an authoritarian government and achieved democracy. Nevertheless, maintaining democracy and its values today does not come without its difficulties. In The Adventure of Democracy ( 민주주의의 모험: 대립과 분열의 시대를 건너는 법), Professor Gi-Wook Shin examines major challenges of Korean democracy today, including the perils of polarization, populism, and illiberalism.
Based on a series of essays, titled Shin’s Reflections on Korea and originally published in Shindonga, Korea’s oldest monthly magazine, this book also discusses why and how Korea can defend a liberal international order and embrace cultural diversity to spur innovation as well as promote tolerance and inclusiveness, and pursue global engagement to support sustainable development goals in a way that can make Korea a mature democracy.
South Korea's Democracy in Crisis
Barely thirty years after its emergence in 1987, democracy is in trouble in South Korea. In the volume South Korea's Democracy in Crisis: The Threats of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization (Shorenstein APARC, 2022), co-editors Professor Gi-Wook Shin and Professor Ho Ki Kim of Yonsei University assemble contributions from leading scholars who trace the sources of illiberalism in today’s Korea; examine how political polarization is plaguing its party system; discuss how civil society and the courts have become politicized; look at the roles of inequality, education, and social media in the country’s democratic decline; and consider how illiberalism has affected Korea’s foreign policy.
Sustainable Democracy Roundtable
Liberal democracy is hard-earned but sometimes even harder to guard. The foundations of liberal democracy are being seriously challenged, leading to political decay and public distrust of democratic systems and their values. With democratic backsliding threatening old and new democracies, Western democracies no longer serve as guiding light.
Against this backdrop, the annual Sustainable Democracy Roundtable brings together scholars of diverse backgrounds to propose solutions to globally pertinent policy issues. In partnership with the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies (KFAS), the Sustainable Democracy Roundtable aims to create a unique platform for scholars to present alternative solutions to global issues, social progress, and long-term development. Our goal is to spur research partnerships and produce publication deliverables with experts, scholars, and students from the United States and the Asia-Pacific region.
2023 KFAS-Stanford Sustainable Democracy Roundtable I
The inaugural two-day conference took place on August 29-30, 2023, gathering scholars and students from the United States and South Korea. The sessions offered platforms for scholars to foster future collaborative projects to improve the trajectory of liberal democracy.
The conference report is now available.
Download the 2023 roundtable report
2024 KFAS-Stanford Sustainable Democracy Roundtable II
The second Sustainable Democracy Roundtable was held in Seoul, South Korea on June 18-21, 2024. Jointly hosted by APARC and The Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies (KFAS), the Roundtable is meant to foster conversations among scholars of all ranks of seniority, research backgrounds, and regional experience to evaluate current trends facing liberal democracy worldwide. The sessions also serve as platforms for scholars to jumpstart collaborative projects.
The conference report is now available.
Download the 2024 roundtable report
Related media:
Interview with Professors Gi-Wook Shin and Larry Diamond for Hankook Ilbo (in Korean) >
2025 KFAS-Stanford Sustainable Democracy Roundtable III
The third installment of the Sustainable Democracy Roundtable was held in Seoul, South Korea, on June 17-90, 2025. Jointly hosted by APARC, the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies (KFAS), and the CHEY Institute, the 2025 roundtable focused on identifying actionable solutions and policy recommendations addressing the challenges facing liberal democracies. Scholars met in closed-door sessions and, alongside practitioners and politicians, participated in a public session at the Korean National Assembly to share their thoughts and foster dialogue with the public and the government.
The conference report is now available.
Download the 2025 roundtable report
View the roundtable coverage by Asian media outlets:
Yonhap I >
Yonhap II >
The Fact via MSN >