The prevailing portrayal of the 2024 self-coup in South Korea—marked by President Yoon Suk-yeol’s imposition of martial law—as either a byproduct of strong presidentialism or as Yoon’s opportunistic exploitation of concurrent crises to consolidate power lacks a deeper historical understanding of the self-coup. Alternatively, this study situates the self-coup within the broader historical trajectory of Korea’s distinctive democratic model, “democracy through strength.” Drawing on Karl Polanyi’s framework, which contemplates fascist transitions as reactions of privileged elites to working-class mobilization, this study contends that the self-coup represents the culmination of the political violence employed by conservative elites to resolve a legitimacy crisis following the so-called 2016 Candlelight Revolution. This crisis catalyzed three new ideational currents: (1) systematic efforts by the conservative People Power Party to subvert the legacy of the preceding Democratic Party government; (2) the push for social demobilization by so-called republican politicians and activists who conflate civil activism with populism; and (3) the rise of hyperlegalism among political prosecutors who frame legal punishment as a cure for political and social disorder. These currents converged in the Yoon administration’s escalating use of political violence, ultimately crystallizing in the self-coup and triggering broader reactionary mobilization from below.
Current Issue
Volume #29, Number #1
Published in June, 2025
The growing concern over misinformation stems from its potential to significantly disrupt democratic governance. This study examines the case of Taiwan and employs a survey experiment featuring realworld misinformation examples to evaluate the effectiveness of factchecking corrections in reducing public misperceptions. Grounded in the dual-process theory from social psychology and informed by existing international research, the study proposes and tests four theoretically driven hypotheses—all of which are supported by the empirical findings. The results demonstrate that fact-checking can effectively correct false beliefs, particularly in non-political domains such as health and lifestyle. However, its corrective power diminishes considerably when the misinformation is political in nature—especially when it targets the ruling party. The findings further indicate that motivated reasoning plays a key role in shaping responses to political misinformation. Fact-checks are largely ineffective when they challenge misinformation targeting an individual’s political outgroup, but become significantly more persuasive when the misinformation attacks the respondent’s own political affiliation. These results underscore the highly contextual and political nature of factchecking efficacy. We argue that misinformation should not be treated merely as an individual-level problem of misinformation acceptance or attitude formation. Instead, its persistence and impact must be understood within broader political, social, and historical contexts that drive its production and spread.
Election data from the Central Election Commission show that the voter turnout rate of women in Taiwan is higher than that of men. However, few studies have explored the differences in voter turnout between women and men. To fill this gap in the literature, this study examines whether the gender gap in political knowledge affects the differences in voter turnout between women and men, specifically whether political knowledge moderates the relationship between gender and voter turnout. Using data from the 2024 Taiwan’s Election and Democratization Study (TEDS 2024), the preliminary findings of this study indicate that women’s voter turnout is higher than that of men, yet their political knowledge is lower. Further analysis reveals that regardless of the measurement of political knowledge used, gender and political knowledge interact to influence individual voter turnout. Specifically, as political knowledge increases, women’s voter turnout declines. This might be due to women becoming more aware of gender inequality and institutional barriers in the political structure, leading to a reduced willingness to participate. In contrast, men’s voter turnout significantly increases with political knowledge, likely because men are more easily able to convert political knowledge into voting motivation and have more substantial confidence in their political influence. Overall, the findings of this study have significant academic and practical implications. Academically, the findings show that the improvement of political knowledge does not equally promote voter turnout among women and men. In other words, political knowledge has a heterogeneous effect on voter turnout of women and men. Practically, the findings have profound implications for policy design. Given that increased political knowledge may lead to a decrease in women’s voting participation, further consideration should be given to how policy interventions can eliminate the suppressive effects of gender inequality on voter turnout.