Essay On South Korean Democratization

The Republic of South Korea 's evolution into the flourishing democracy it is today would have been very difficult without the security, economic and investment ties generated by America’s heavy military engagement in Korea from the beginning of the Cold War and the close economic ties with Western countries that resulted from this alliance with the United States. Thus, America’s efforts to balance against Soviet influence in the peninsula led to the growth and modernization of the South Korean middle class and economy and this middle class spawned the real South Korean democratization. In these fundamental years of the republic’s development, one could observe the fungible conversion of military force into economic power and an increased sense of the young republic’s regional hegemony as integral to its early American-led “democratization.” Eventually, a simultaneous incorporation of institutionally interdependent policy-making and alliance-weaving also aided the South Koreans to start to enjoy a level of economic prosperity that rivaled that of their Western European and North American allies and made a middle-class hungry for a fairer government. The U.S. initially …show more content…
's intervention-to-prevention arming and training strategy with South Korea against the communist threat in North Vietnam basically speaks to the Cold War international relations theories of "open door policy" and was essentially motivated by the fear of the "domino theory." The Americans had to peacefully preserve their capitalist interests in the surrounding geopolitical environment of East-West extended deterrence and couldn’t afford to let an unpredictable liberal democratically win the presidency and risk the spread of socialism or communism. They had to keep South Korea on track as a strong ally that could stay as a cog in the machinery of the international capitalist military-industrial complex to prevail against socialist and communist