초록 열기/닫기 버튼
This paper is organized into three sections: conceptual, historical, and empirical. The first section introduces the basic conceptual scheme of populism, which includes its driving forces, components, functions, and dimensions. A “multiple dualities” perspective is emphasized to take account of the fact that populism can be defined as either the advocacy on behalf of the people as an integrative normative symbol of politics or the distrust in elites and other groups targeted as enemies of the people. Accordingly, it may promote but also hinder democracy. The second section shows how populism has unfolded in the history of Korean politics. The third section deals with an empirical analysis of data collected in 2018 on the topic of populism. Throughout these steps, the paper attempts to integrate a conceptual, historical, and empirical analysis together to examine whether populism offers resilience to the people or is conversely a threat to democracy. More precisely, it seeks to identify which kind of populism may offer resilience and which may pose a threat to democracy. We present the case of Korea with the view that the multiple dualities of populism have not only been inscribed in history but have also confronted each other today as embedded in two diverging populist movements in 2016-2017: the candlelight vigils and the national flag (taegeukgi) movement. The most striking finding of our empirical analysis is that the type of populism driven by such push factors as distrust and hatred tends to threaten democracy, as measured by popular support for political autocracy, whereas the other type of populism that advocates for the primacy of the people, as can be found in the candlelight vigil, tends to protect democracy from backsliding or regressing.
