This is kind of memory-holed, possibly because South Korea was a US ally long before it was a democracy, and "west aligned" tended to trump "democratic" a lot.

West-aligned still trumps democratic. The West generally doesn't have a problem with authoritarianism but rather with competition or obstruction of their economic goals. When the opposite is true they will gladly turn a blind eye to any number of atrocities.

See here: Saudi-Arabia, Oman, UAE, Philippines, Egypt (military junta), Turkey, etc.

If being friendly with an authoritarian state yields economic or military geographical advantage then that overrides any ideological hang-ups involved.

Brought about by a very bloody decade-long struggle for democracy led by student activists. That transition to democracy in Korea was written and paid for in blood. Successful? Yes. With high costs? Also yes. And they’re still dealing with the fallout.

I wouldn’t say it’s a huge success because South Korea and the United States are still spending a lot to keep others away from interfering with their Democracy. Without huge military spending, cybersecurity, and education, it can quickly get influenced by China or attacked by North Korea.

It's not called the Korean Miracle for nothing. The idea that South Korea is not a huge success because it still has adversaries is a bit much.

Also Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, and much of Latin America had capitalist dictatorships before democracy. But I don't think it was free markets that led to democracy in those cases so much as it was US political influence.

The US overthrew the democratic government of Sukarno and killed up to 3 million Indonesians funding the terrorist movements and proxy wars till the US backed military took over as “saviors”. The CIA considered this a successful playbook and named it as the Jakarta Method.

They attack democracies that they don’t like labeling them autocratic and dictatorships. Then install their military juntas. See numerous examples like Chile, Ethiopia, Iran etc.

Stephen Kinzer has written extensively on this in the book Overthrow:

https://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Cha...

On overthrowing the Iranian democracy and installing the Shah:

https://www.amazon.com/All-Shahs-Men-American-Middle/dp/B00S...?

On the Jakarta Method:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jakarta_Method

https://www.amazon.com/Jakarta-Method-Washingtons-Anticommun...?

After reading a bit about the issue, I think it's not accurate to describe Sukarno's government as "democratic", though clearly it was far less oppressive than Suharto's US-backed military dictatorship.

Yes, different variations of that also happened throughout much of South and Central America. They installed capitalist dictatorships to open the countries' markets to US products and establish capitalism, then (in many cases, though obviously not in Iran) pressured those dictatorships to cede power to democracy. I don't think capitalism alone would have destabilized dictatorship as a form of government.

It was a combination of pressure from above and below: US pressure, but also a newly middle-class population starting to raise hell. In most of those countries, protests and civil unrest presaged the transition to democracy--and suppressing it would cost the government their US support, so the easiest thing to do was to just give in.

Sorry, but in Latin America, US pressure was to create the dictatorships, not to remove them. US helped to create them, and supported the torture and chasing of dissidents.

They did, yes, and then (as ertian described) they also exerted pressure to get the dictatorships to hold democratic elections, as long as that wouldn't imperil US access to markets.

Sure, in some countries and time periods. I'm not in any way saying the US has a flawless record. I'm just saying that US pressure was not the only reason why countries transitioned to democracy: it was a combination of popular and international (largely US) pressure. When one or the other was missing, the transition generally never happened.

I'm confused about Indonesia ("reformasi"). You wrote <<US political influence>>. Can you explain how this worked in the context of Indonesia? As I understand, one of the major catalysts of Indonesian democratic reform was the Asian currency crisis.

No, I don't know enough.

Oh, dear... Who tells him...?

That Sukarno ran an autocratic government?

tell him what?