| Summary/Abstract |
Why was South Korea’s 2022 presidential election so close, when only a few years prior the party of the winning candidate had been out of contention? The answer can be found by situating the election against a battle between democratic and anti-democratic forces. Anti-democratic forces cynically bid for power by denigrating politics. An examination of how this cynical sensibility developed, from 2016 to 2022, but on the back of a deeper history, points both to what was at stake in this election and to the methods deployed by representatives of the anti-democratic forces that helped create parity in the vote.
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