Description
This paper compares the rise of right-wing populism in the United States and South Korea from 2015 to 2025, focusing on Donald Trump and Yoon Suk-yeol. Both leaders mobilized grievances – economic dislocation and racial anxieties in the U.S.; gendered backlash and anti-communism in Korea – to justify exclusionary populist appeals. Each leader weakened democratic norms through executive aggrandizement, disinformation, and delegitimization of oversight institutions, culminating in violent assaults on democratic institutions: the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and the Seoul Seobu Court on January 19, 2025. Yet their trajectories diverged: in the U.S., erosion occurred gradually as norm-breaking and election denialism became embedded in partisan politics, while in South Korea, an abrupt martial law crisis triggered impeachment and removal. The comparison demonstrates that right-wing populism destabilizes both established and newer democracies, albeit through different mechanisms and speeds. The paper concludes with policy implications for protecting democracy through institutional reforms, regulation of disinformation, and the renewal of civic norms.
