SEOUL: South Korea has developed a vigorous democracy since mass protests 20 years ago ended decades of authoritarian rule, but analysts say a widening income gap is breeding disenchantment.

On June 10, 1987, public resentment against President Chun Doo-Hwan’s rule exploded into widespread protests that shook the nation for the following two weeks.

Chun, nearing the end of a seven-year term, had attempted to pass power undemocratically to his accomplice in a 1979-80 military takeover, Roh Tae-Woo.

The death of a student, who was killed after being hit by a police tear gas canister on June 9, sparked the upheaval.

Demonstrations, previously mostly limited to universities, surged off the campuses into the streets, drawing hundreds of thousands of protesters, including the middle classes. The military regime succumbed to public pressure and on June 29 announced direct presidential elections, press freedom and pardons for political prisoners.

“The June Struggle obliterated the possibility of dictatorship raising its head again in this country,” former president Kim Dae-Jung, a lifetime pro-democracy campaigner, said in a speech.

Kim Jong-Cheol of the Korea Democracy Foundation said it was “hard to imagine anyone would try to set the clock back to the past as South Koreans, who experienced democracy for 20 years now, would never allow it”. “Following the uprising, political democracy has been growing fast but there is much room to improve in social rights, labour rights and freedom of speech,” he said.—AFP