Is this a country? The Candlelight movement protests as a force impacting democracy in Korea

Abstract: South Korea has gone from a military dictatorship to being the highest-ranking Asian country in terms of democracy over the last 35 years. In 2016, massive social movement protests broke out after media uncovered accounts of widespread corruption by then President Park Geun-Hye. These public demonstrations become known as the Candlelight movement of 2016-2017, lasting for six months to culminate in impeachment and sentencing of the Korean leader. This paper takes aim at explaining the impact of social movements on democracy by analyzing the Candlelight protests based on a theoretical framework by Charles Tilly, defining a conception of democracy from a perspective of the government-citizen relationship. The framework presents five aspects of democracy, providing the structure for the analysis: rules-based, no exception, no exclusion, responsiveness and protection. The research concludes that the social movement in Korea had substantial impact on the institutional accountability of the President, but did not produce outcomes in policymaking reform to effectively change long-term structural deficiencies in the country’s democracy.