they have premature understanding of what democracy is

SK's problem is that unlike Japan with zaibatsu there was basically no movement/attempt to delimitate the powers of chaebols. Result: You "average" SK person is quite happy to launch into "deep state" related topics and has been ready to do so for the last (at least) 20 years. I've spent quite a bit of time there and a lot of the people I met have "shady oligarchy nudges the country" as their default image of the political landscape.