South Korea’s main opposition Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung and party members participate in a rally against the country’s president at the National Assembly on Dec. 4.
Photographer: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty ImagesThe End of Passive Democracy
South Korea’s brush with martial law is a reminder that democracy is not self-sustaining.
There is a simple beauty in the ideas behind Athenian democracy, humankind’s first known attempt at governing democratically: direct participation, political equality, freedom of speech, and a system of checks and balances that included the ability to banish citizens who had grown too powerful. Aristotle wrote that law is what made human society possible: “For as man is the best of animals when perfected, so he is the worst of all when sundered from law and justice.”
Imperfect as that democratic system was (only men above the age of 20 had full political rights), its principles are worth contemplating as the world digests this week’s shocking events in South Korea.