Republicans Ejecting Elected Lawmakers From Legislature Evokes Dictatorships of Days Past
The United States may be more free and democratic than South Korea was 45 years ago, but it is not more democratic than Korea is today.
In 1979, more than 170 female factory workers from Mokpo, a port city in southwestern South Korea, arrived on the doorstep of the New Democratic Party in Seoul after the wig manufacturer abruptly shut down its operations, denying the workers wages and lodging. The workers had formed a union and fought for higher wages since 1975.
Kim Yong-sam, the president of the New Democratic Party, welcomed the factory girls, served them bibimbap, and let them stay in the party headquarters while they protested. Police raided the NDP hq two days later, arrested workers, and caused the death of one. The dictatorial Korean regime of Park Chung-hee expelled Kim from the legislature and stripped him of his status as party president.
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In 2023, a gun owner murdered six students and staff at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee. Citizens tired of frequent crimes involving guns and the lack of action by politicians gathered around the Tennessee State Capitol. Some of them entered the lobby. They chanted and called for the legislature to enact new regulations on gun ownership. (Instead, the legislature is considering making guns even more easily accessible. In June, the state will let people carry concealed handguns without a permit.)
The protesters did not enter the legislative chamber. They did not smash the windows of the Capitol to break in. They did not assault police officers with flagpoles, hockey sticks, and fists. They did not disrupt important legislative business and attempt to stage a coup.
They may have been disruptive, but they did not harm anyone or vandalize the Capitol.
Three democratically-elected legislators utilizing a megaphone encouraged the protesters from the chamber.
The Tennessee Republican Party expelled two of them and voted to expel a third but came up short of the supermajority required.
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I’ve studied politics and history. I also run a Substack about Korea, the
. I am not the only one to find parallels between US and Korean politics. (Both countries have a losing presidential candidate facing criminal charges.)TK, the founder of Ask A Korean and The Blue Roof, has written, “I have been very wrong on so many things about the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But one of the few things I was right about was: Korean politics tend to foreshadow U.S. politics.”
Korean was a dictatorship with varying degrees of authoritarianism from the end of the Korean War until 1987. Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan both led coups to gain power or extend their terms of power. They rigged elections, dissolved the legislature, arrested dissidents, and sent the military to suppress on protests.
It’s not unique to Korea’s old regimes; dictatorships across the globe and across history have done the same.
The ruling party in Tennessee stripping two representatives of their political rights and stripping the voters of their legitimately-elected representatives is of the same order but not the same degree. The legislators were not arrested. There will be special elections where the dissident lawmakers will be able to run again for the seat they were already elected to.
But should we Americans feel satisfied that our democracy, while failing to represent the voters, failing to ensure voting rights, and failing to uphold individual freedoms, is more robust than Korean democracy was in 1979?
Yeah, we cleared that bar, and the expulsions of two lawmakers for annoying the ruling party is not as bad as the mass expulsions and arrests conducted by Park and Chun and other dictators.
America has experienced violent coups overthrowing local governments before, especially in the post-Civil War ex-Confederacy. We haven’t had a coup at the national level, but we did just experience an attempted coup in 2020-21. The man who tried to use his office and his mob to gain power after losing the 2020 election is still at large.
We can vote. But states are making it more difficult to vote, the former president pressured his allies in Georgia to “find 11,780 votes,” and 147 members of Congress voted to block Americans from having their votes counted and having the president they elected take office.
House Republicans wanted to expel the duly-elected president from office before he was even sworn in. Tennessee Republicans did expel duly-elected legislators from their offices.
The U.S. now is still much, much more free and democratic than Korea was 45 years ago. But Korea now is more democratic than the U.S.
The health of America’s democracy is declining in just about every measure. Will it always be the case that America remains a meh-pretty-healthy democracy? Should we shrug and wait until it’s too late to speak out?