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SDF2022 Rewriting Democracy

Insights for the Intellectually Curious

SBS has worked to shed light on technological advances and social change since 2004. Our early initiatives to this end, the Seoul Digital Forum (SDF) and Future Korea Report (FKR), were succeeded in 2018 by the SBS D Forum, which marked both a synthesis of and expansion on our earlier programs in view of the changing demands of our times. Exploring various issues confronting our society from a range of perspectives, SBS D Forum provides rich opportunities for knowledge sharing through the main D Forum event in November, featuring speakers who are globally recognized leaders in their fields, and a special year-round project.

YEARS2022
SPEAKERS750
AUDIENCE66083

*As of October 2022

Rewriting Democracy

Division and strife have become the fuel powering politics.
Meanwhile, democracy is dying.

In the face of a rising tide of authoritarianism and populism, democracies around the world are under siege.

This democratic decline is being accelerated by widening polarization across national, racial, regional, and class lines.

And South Korea is no exception.

Since undergoing political democratization in 1987, South Korea has continued to operate as a seemingly well-functioning democracy. Yet deep fissures are forming beneath the surface.

Democracy is built on the belief that free competition between contending views rooted in contending interests is what enables sound, reasonable decisions.

Our politicians are undermining our democratic foundations.
The quality of democratic engagement is deteriorating under “fandom politics.”

Yet our political leaders, the very people who have been entrusted with the responsibility of helping facilitate the democratic process, are instead actively undermining our democratic foundations.

Instead of mediating between individuals and groups with different interests to help them find common ground, they are stoking division and discord and feeding off the ensuing mutual antagonism to ensure their own survival.

Such attitudes in the political sector have caused the quality of political engagement to deteriorate.

People are increasingly voting along party lines rather than on the basis of policy successes, showing unquestioning support in fandom-like followings that have given rise to “political hooliganism.”

This situation calls for nothing less than a rewriting of democracy.

If we are to move beyond conflict towards a politics of respect for all, we must rewrite our democracy to go beyond the achievements of 1987.

Will our political leaders ever be able to leave their ongoing factionalism and feuding behind them and work towards collaborative governance based on compromise and a commitment to finding middle ground?
What must change for our political bodies to truly be a representation of us, the people, and of the problems most relevant to us, and to light the path toward a better future?

We look forward to your interest and support as we set out on another bold journey to continue the important work that earlier Korean generations began in 1987: building a thriving democracy where all people are respected and happy.

SDF Invitation

Living under crisis has become a daily global reality. Even as we continue to grapple with the pandemic, we find ourselves confronted by still more dark clouds: economic recession, rising prices, and such climate threats as unprecedented typhoons and heavy rainfall.
Navigating successfully through this “perfect storm” will depend more than ever on clear-sighted policies and a strong and united citizenry, both of which will only come when politics plays its due role.
The problem is that we seem to be headed in just the opposite direction. Our political leaders wield their starkly polar views like sharp blades in one another’s faces. Rather than working as mediators to bridge conflict, they are the ones actively stoking discord across gender and generational divides.
Even what some welcome as greater political engagement on the part of ordinary citizens has devolved into fandom-like followings marked by loyalty to specific political groups, and public discourse has become captive to political hooliganism. The interplay between irrational political fandoms and political populism has worrying implications for South Korea’s future.
The starting point of democracy is the shared acknowledgment of our differences. A foundational democratic principle is that sound decision-making is the result of a process of allowing various different views to come into free competition with one another. And our political institutions are what undergird and facilitate this process.
This year, SBS D Forum has chosen to go with the theme “Rewriting Democracy,” in an effort to stop our political systems from hurtling in the opposite direction of the aims they are intended to accomplish and set our declining democracy back on solid footing.
SBS D Forum aims to provide a platform for rigorous debate and lively conversations on the political reforms that are needed to help the political sector shed its long-held “third-rate” reputation, so that academics and ordinary citizens alike can pool their collective wisdom and find satisfactory solutions to the problems that plague politics today.
This year also marks the first time in three years that SBS D Forum will be welcoming an offline audience. We look forward to your continued interest and support.

PARK Jeong Hoon
President & CEO, SBS