South Korea's midterm election tests democratic resilience
South Korea's
midterm election tests democratic resilience
WRITTEN BY DR HANNES B. MOSLER
9 April 2024
On 10 April, South Korea will elect a new parliament, and there is more at stake in this midterm election than meets the eye. The stakes are twofold: the distribution of power in parliament in the short term and democratic resilience in the medium and long term.
The East Asian country currently ranks 13th among the world's largest economies, K-pop culture has long since made it into the world's top ten, and until recently South Korea was an international beacon of hope for democracy. After the corrupt conservative president Park Geun-hye’s impeachment in 2017, the international press praised South Korea as a haven of modern democracy that everyone should learn from; the country’s citizens were awarded the FES Human Rights Prize for their tireless efforts during the mass demonstrations of 2016/17; and even political scientists put South Korea back on the map of democracy research after its acclaimed transition to formal democracy in 1987.
But disillusionment soon followed. The next liberal president, Moon Jae-in (2017-2022), picked up the pieces of the previous ten years under right-wing conservative governments and patched up the basics. However, his government did not make a decisive contribution to strengthening democracy in the long term. Since conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol’s term in office starting in 2022, South Korea has again faced a serious democracy problem. This is not surprising and follows a pattern that emerged after democratisation in 1987. As reflected in the democracy index of the Swedish research institute V-DEM, the democratic achievements of South Korea’s liberal governments have repeatedly been reversed under subsequent conservative governments. This backsliding in South Korea’s democracy is also well captured in the latest V-DEM report, which warns of its latent fragility and categorises South Korea as an ‘autocratizing country’ along with Cambodia, Indonesia, and Myanmar, noting that its democracy has "substantially deteriorated" to a level last seen during conservative President Park’s government (2013-2017). As a result, South Korea fell 30 places in the Liberal Democracy Index in just two years, from 17th in 2021 to 47th in 2023.
Negative campaigning
The run-up to the election has been overwhelmingly dominated by negative campaigning. Due to the focus on smearing opponents, there has been less discussion of specific promises or policies. Nevertheless, three sets of issues have been predominant in the run-up to the election.
The short-term challenge of this election is to prevent a conservative majority in parliament, lest the current autocratic episode in South Korean democracy turn into a post-democratic vortex.
The first set of issues is raised by the opposition and large parts of society who hold the government accountable for the governance failures of the past two years. This concerns a long list of critical issues, beginning with the alleged and confirmed crimes of President Yoon's wife and his mother-in-law, decisions on key personnel in his administration who are seen as unfit for office, and Yoon's policymaking based on New Right ideology. Other serious criticisms include generally amateurish policymaking, questionable competence in crisis management (e.g., Itaewon disaster), and serious restrictions on press freedom and labour rights. According to polls, large parts of society see his government as unable to address major challenges. These include the negative effects of the phenomenon of an ageing society, inflation and economic difficulties, soaring real estate prices, the government's peculiar efforts to increase the admission quota of medical schools by 2,000 new students, and foreign policy, to name only a few.
The second set of issues concerns power struggles within and between political parties. Right after President Yoon's inauguration in the spring of 2022, both major parties went through processes of reorganising their party leadership. The public debate revolved around Yoon's efforts to install a loyal party leader in the People Power Party (PPP) and Lee Jae-myung's efforts to ensure that he maintained a strong grip on his Democratic Party (DP). In a second phase since early 2023, public debate turned to the issue of electoral law reform, which ultimately did not happen. After this controversy, all eyes turned to the nomination of candidates within each political party, which led to yet another controversy, as party leaders made sure that only loyal personnel were nominated. This directly related to and overlapped with the next big issue, the formation of satellite and splinter parties, since many of the hopefuls who did not get a shot in their party decided to go independent or join one of the newly formed parties.
Throughout this time, we have seen very strong negative campaigning, which has resembled a huge mudslinging contest over who is more morally corrupt or which party has more candidates with criminal records. This has been far from helpful for voters to make an informed decision at the polls.
The third set of issues came to the fore only two weeks before election day, but only as typical goodwill promises regarding health care, welfare, and housing, and not as a serious topic of public debate. The same is true of President Yoon who toured the country holding town hall meetings, pouring out one campaign policy after another without sufficiently elaborating how he plans to implement them or where the funds would come from.
Opposition likely to retain majority
The ruling conservative PPP’s goal is to win enough seats to have a blocking minority of at least 101 in the 300-seat National Assembly. This is to ensure that the liberal opposition DP does not gain too much power, for example, to amend the constitution, for which the DP would need a supermajority (two-thirds or 200 seats). The DP, for its part, wants to make sure that it gets at least an absolute majority, i.e. 151 seats, so that it can continue to effectively check and balance the government's policies. The various smaller parties in the race hope to win enough seats to form negotiation groups, which can participate in determining the assembly's legislative agenda and nominating committee chairs, and are also entitled to additional state funds. However, to form such a group they need at least 20 seats, which seems unrealistic according to the latest polls.
In an early April poll, most respondents (41 per cent) said they would vote for one of the DP's and 30 per cent said they would vote for the PPP’s candidates in the 254 constituencies. Meanwhile, 23 per cent were still undecided or did not support any of the parties. In the second ballot for the 46 proportional representation candidates, 24 per cent and 14 per cent respectively said they would vote for the satellite parties (see below) of the PPP and the DP. A full 25 per cent said they would vote for former Justice Minister Cho Kuk's new Rebuilding Korea Party. Other minor parties received less than 5 per cent support and a full 24 per cent are still undecided.
This time, smaller parties have even fewer prospects of entering parliament, mainly due to the exclusive electoral law and its interpretation by the two major parties. According to the current Public Official Election Act, proportional representation (PR) seats are allocated not only based on the share of votes received in the second round, but also in relation to the number of constituency mandates won by a party. In other words, a kind of linkage mechanism is supposed to ensure that the more seats a party wins in the 254 constituencies, the fewer seats it receives from the 46 PR seats. Although this provision was originally intended to give smaller parties a better chance, as they tend to win fewer constituency seats, both the conservative PPP and the liberal DP have deliberately undermined this mechanism by creating so-called satellite parties. These bogus parties run only for PR seats and then merge back into the parent party after the election, which in turn runs only constituency candidates. This leaves almost nothing for smaller parties that hope to win at least some of the PR seats.
Divided government with a lame-duck president
There are two possible outcomes in this election: a divided government or a unified government. Currently, however, the first possibility is more likely and would offer more advantages. This scenario would see the DP winning a majority in the election and maintaining its dominance in parliament; even if the size of this majority shrinks, it will still be large enough to prevent the ruling party from becoming overly powerful in both branches. The DP will be even more dependent on small parties because of the Rebuilding Korea Party’s expected success and its electoral alliance with other small parties. This scenario could have a positive effect: the presence of diverse forces could aid in the development of a culture of political compromise among the opposition parties, which would help keep the conservative government in check based on rational and reasonable arguments. However, the many different positions within the opposition could also lead to even more conflicts, affecting parliamentary work negatively. In any case, we can expect a lame-duck phenomenon to set in very soon in this scenario. This means that President Yoon will face more headwinds than before — even from within his own ruling party, which will have to prepare for the next presidential election in 2027.
The short-term challenge of this election is to prevent a conservative majority in parliament, lest the current autocratic episode in South Korean democracy turn into a post-democratic vortex. The long-term challenge is to ensure that political institutions are not only properly reformed, but that the constitution and election law are implemented in de facto terms. We can only hope that South Korean society will rise to this challenge as it has in the past.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Dr Hannes B. Mosler is a Professor at the Institute of East Asian Studies and the Institute of Political Science of the University of Duisburg-Essen. Image credit: Unsplash/SC Jang (cropped).