Bringing the military back in political transition: Democratic transition by and for powerless officers in South Korea

This study goes beyond the conventional dichotomy between political and military elites by examining tripartite relations among political leadership, military leadership, and ordinary officers in South Korea and other East Asian countries. My argument is that there is a power relation in the military that exists separately from the formal chain of command. In South Korea (1948-1992), authoritarian rulers often neutralized the formal chain of military command, providing officers favored by them with greater power than their official rank. Paradoxically. South Korean authoritarian regimes were overthrown in 1960 and 1987 not because of intra-state elite conflict but because of strong elite cohesion between the political and military leadership. This cohesion grounded in favoritism produced intra-military conflicts between military elites and frustrated powerless officers. The powerless officers never fought against revolutionaries when faced with a popular uprising in 1960 and 1987. However, they did fight against the "Spring of Seoul" in 1980, shortly after the military mutiny of 1979. This mutiny had allowed the powerless officers to seize power. The military suppression in 1980 reflects powerless officers' effort to defend the power they had achieved the previous year rather than an institutional decision by the upper-ranks of the armed forces to reverse democratization. The dissertation is based in South Korean generals' assignment and promotion data. As a South Korean military officer, I was given access to information about South Korean Army commanders. As a result, the dissertation makes use of previously undisclosed information and documents. The study is also based on select interviews with retired senior generals who had served in the military during the period of political upheavals in South Korea. The information and interviews obtained during my field research provide the foundation for an empirically rich dissertation that traces the process by which democratic transition occurred in South Korea.