Long-term effects of political violence on political trust: Evidence from the case of the Gwangju Massacre in South Korea, 1980
| Author | Esther E. Song |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20578911221147994 |
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| Subject Matter | East Asia |
Long-term effects of political
violence on political trust:
Evidence from the case
of the Gwangju Massacre in
South Korea, 1980
Esther E. Song
Institute for Asian Studies, German Institute for Global and Area
Studies, Germany
Abstract
What are the long-term effects of authoritarian repression on political trust in a post-democra-
tization context? Using the Gwangju Massacre in South Korea as a case study, this article finds
that indirect and direct experience of state-perpetrated violence of the critical-period cohort—
who were aged 17–25 during the incident—can have long-term negative effects on trust levels
towards the government. Difference-in-difference analysis of national survey data collected in
2008 and 2012 reveals that experience with violence has long-term negative consequences on gov-
ernment trust. Results are robust even when including significant covariates of institutional theor-
ies and cultural theories, such as interpersonal trust, evaluation of government performance, as
well as satisfaction with the economy. Drawing from memory studies, this article argues that
the effects are due to collective memory formed during the critical period.
Keywords
collective memory, political attitudes, political violence, South Korea
Introduction
What are the long-term effects of political violence on political trust after democratization? Despite
a burgeoning literature on the long-term effects of repression on political identities and attitudes, the
Corresponding author:
Esther E. Song, Institute for Asian Studies, German Institute for Global and Area Studies, Rothenbaumchaussee 32,
Hamburg 20148, Germany.
Email: esther.song@giga-hamburg.de
East Asia
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics
2023, Vol. 8(1) 364–380
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/20578911221147994
journals.sagepub.com/home/acp
long-term effects of authoritarian repression on political trust in a post-democratization setting have
been overlooked. Trust in government institutions is fundamental to democracy, and its legitimacy
depends upon it (Dalton, 2004). Political trust is part of civic culture and is a precondition for strong
democracy (Almond and Verba, 1963). The importance of political trust in a functioning democ-
racy implies that the effect of violence on political trust is an important question that warrants exam-
ination in a post-democratization context.
This article contributes to answering the question by examining the case of the Gwangju
Democratic Movement,
1
which occurred in a city located in the southwest of South Korea on
May 18, 1980. Initiated as a popular social movement against the authoritarian government, the
movement ended in the beating and killing of civilians and protestors by government troops, an
incident which has later been coined as the ‘Gwangju Massacre’. The incident resulted in more
than 5060 victims, including deaths, disappearances, and casualties, in Gwangju Metropolitan
City.
2
The case of the Gwangju Massacre is suitable for answering the question due to two condi-
tions: the unprecedented level of repression and the geographical concentration of violence.
These conditions enable clear comparison of the long-term effects of state violence on the pol-
itical trust of citizens in the area and those in areas that have not experienced such direct state
violence. Although the dictatorship in South Korea under military rule (1961–1988) used a
wide range of repressive tactics, open fire against civilians in a public space rarely occurred.
3
In comparison to repression of anti-government protests, which mostly consisted of arrests and
beatings, the Chun dictatorship used an unprecedented scale of violence to contain the Gwangju
movement, leading to mass killings of civilian participants, who were primarily residents of the
area.
To hypothesize the relationship between political violence and political trust, I draw insights
from the theory of collective memory. Collective memory refers to the memories retained by
members of a group, class, or nation via community-based socialization and reinforcement of a
shared narrative (Halbwachs, 1992; Walden and Zhukov, 2020). The theory of collective
memory states that people who were in their “critical period”—their adolescence or young adult-
hood—when extreme, intense societal-level events occurred are more likely to retain the memories
throughout their lives. I test the implications using survey data with geolocation information of
respondents using difference-in-difference (DID) design. DID is used to estimate the causal
effect of experiencing violence on political trust. I find that compared to the non-critical-period
cohort, experience in political violence has causal, long-term effects on political trust on the critical-
period cohort that experienced violence.
The results of this article contribute broadly to the burgeoning research on the long-term
consequences of political violence on political attitudes. Extant works have examined the
effect of the legacy of political violence on political behavior, such as political identities, elect-
oral preferences, and political engagement. Balcells (2012) examined how individual and
family victimization during the Spanish Civil War affects political identities and electoral pre-
ferences. Lupu and Peisakhin (2017) find that compared to those who have not experienced
forced deportation, the descendants of individuals who suffered from the Soviet regime’s
deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944 more intensely identify with their ethnic group, more
strongly support the Crimean Tatar political leadership, hold more hostile attitudes toward
Russia, and participate more in politics. Rozenas et al. (2017) show that past Soviet state vio-
lence in West Ukraine has made affected communities less likely to vote for “pro-Russian”
parties today. More recently, by replicating Lupu and Peisakhin (2017), Wang and Carter
Song 365
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