Recently, a prudent group of scholars made a compelling case for starting a movement named “Occupy Populism in Korea,” which aims to investigate the fundamental causes and impacts of populism deeply rooted in Korean political circles. At present, Korea is apparently overrun by populism: welfare populism, free populism, half-tuition-fee populism, good or bad populism, right-wing or left-wing populism, anticorporation populism, etc.

Literally, populism is well defined by M. Canovan as “an appeal to the people against both the established structure of power and the dominant ideas and values,” and it is often referred to as a pathological symptom in a democratic society. Here the people implies the poor, or “ordinary” people. Populist politicians and leaders use the rhetoric of aggressively defending the interests of the common man against the privileged elite. However, any populist policies end up hurting rather than help the poor. In reality, populism tends to eventually lead to economic crisis and collapse which negatively affects the people it initially intended to favor. This is a huge irony. Furthermore it is proved by historical evidence, particularly in Latin America. There has been no evidence that populist policies were helpful to the ordinary people.

In Korea, political parties in both the conservative and progressive realm are competing to develop a variety of populist policies without taking policy constraints into account in order to single-mindedly attract voters. Put simply, political parties in Korea are now all about populism. We are greatly concerned about the future results of this myopic populist competition between political parties and thus have initiated such a brave movement. We do believe that irresponsible populist policies are not in the best interests of the poor or the ordinary majority.

By Lee Sung-kyu 

Lee Sung-kyu is a professor of the Department of International Economics at Andong National University in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province, Korea. ― Ed.