South Korea Is Not Liberal Democracy... Rated 'Authoritarian' for 2 Consecutive Years

Swedish Democracy Diversity Institute Annual Report
Downgrade from Liberal Democracy to Electoral Democracy

An international democracy research institute has evaluated South Korea as an 'Autocratization' country for two consecutive years.

Yonhap News

On the 17th (local time), the Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem) under the University of Gothenburg in Sweden diagnosed South Korea as an autocratizing country in its '2025 Democracy Report' published this month.

Until 2023, this report classified South Korea as a 'liberal democracy' country, but last year it downgraded South Korea to an 'electoral democracy' country. The 179 countries worldwide are classified into ▲liberal democracies ▲electoral democracies ▲electoral autocracies ▲closed autocracies.

Even when classified as a liberal democracy in 2023, autocratization was pointed out, and with the downgrade to electoral democracy last year, it was again evaluated as autocratization. However, South Korea's overall democracy index ranked 41st out of 179 countries, an improvement from 47th in 2023.

Looking at the sectoral evaluations, the 'deliberative democracy index,' which measures whether political decisions are made based on the public good and rational perspectives, plummeted from 36th in 2023 to 48th last year. The equality democracy component index also dropped one rank to 26th. The other three categories, including the electoral democracy index, showed improvement compared to the previous year.

This institute annually quantifies and publishes the level of democracy in countries worldwide. Based on the overall ranking, European countries such as Denmark, Estonia, and Switzerland occupied the top three positions. North Korea ranked 178th, second to last.

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