Abstract for: Modeling the Resilience of Democracy in South Korea: Toward a System Dynamics Archetype Based on the Constitutional Court’s Decision

Democracies worldwide face a persistent wave of autocratization that resists explanation through individual leaders' failures alone. This study reframes democratic threat as a structural consequence of the mismatch between rising social complexity and institutional adaptation, making crisis recurring rather than eliminable. Examining South Korea's 2024 martial law crisis and the Constitutional Court's impeachment decision, this research develops a System Dynamics model of democratic resilience—the capacity to absorb shocks, defend the constitutional core, and restore legitimacy. dopting System Dynamics, this study deduces structure from the observed goal-seeking behavior of South Korea's recovery, treating the Constitutional Court's decision (2024Hun-Na8), together with prior rulings on the Gwangju Democratization Movement, as institutions of recognition rather than mere numerical indicators. A revised goal-seeking structure—Perceived Current State, Perceived Target, and Corrective Action—explains both the martial law declaration and the recovery that followed. Drawing on Hegel's Sittlichkeit (ethical life), as reconstructed by Honneth, the target stock is reformulated as "Democratic Sittlichkeit." The same goal-seeking logic explains both the martial law declaration—modeled as an act of misrecognition—and the citizens' resistance—a struggle for recognition—differing only in the sign of the perceived gap. Democratic Sittlichkeit functions as a gravitational anchor for restoration, yet decays under social entropy. Simulation shows recovery alone cannot sustain resilience: only an independent Recognitive Reinforcement allows system function and Sittlichkeit to co-evolve upward. Practically, this study suggests that democratic security depends on sustained investment in the institutions of recognition that sediment Sittlichkeit, not on legal reform alone: no democratic system can sustainably exceed the level of its own Sittlichkeit. Methodologically, the study demonstrates that a System Dynamics archetype can be deduced from judicial text and philosophical reasoning where numerical data are unavailable, offering a generalizable structure that shifts attention from political events to the underlying conditions of institutional recovery. grammatical refining