This study investigates the democratic deficit as a fundamental cause of the 2016-2017 candlelight movement in South Korea. The candlelight protests are more than merely overthrowing the incompetent and corrupt Park Geun-hye presidency; rather, they reflect citizens’ dissatisfaction with and frustration about the ways the political community was governed and their desire for more substantive democratic ideals. By utilizing various survey datasets, this article empirically demonstrates that post-democratization politics in South Korea were haunted by the legacies of authoritarian rule that engender the democratic deficit; and the 2016-2017 political movement fought to transform the vestiges of the authoritarian past and was an example of the actual realization of popular sovereignty.