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South Korean Trends

Increasing socio-political cleavages and the issue of anti-Americanism

BCAS, 15.12.2003, 7 Pages

Let me start with voting behaviour in the presidential election of December 2002. Until that election, explaining the outcomes of presidential and parliamentary elections in South Korea was a relatively straight-forward affair: The most important determinant of the vote was the regional background of voters. Until 1987, the central issue of democratisation had set the various ruling parties and the opposition apart. Moreover, there was a certain divide in the electoral behaviour of urban and rural citizens. While urbanites, in particular those living in metropolitan areas, tended to favour the opposition, voters in rural areas tended to favour the governing party.

After the so-called democratic opening of 1987, both the issue of democratisation and the urban-rural divide lost their importance in terms of determining the vote. The ensuing vacuum got filled by politicised regionalism. Against the background of somewhat blurry policy divisions between the different political parties, both the leaders of the government and the opposition parties resorted to appealing to regional sentiments. The necessary and sufficient conditions for this kind of voter mobilisation were, on the one hand, a history of inter-regional animosity compounded by the regionally-skewed industrialisation drive and the equally skewed elite politics which began in the 1960s, and, on the other hand, the existence of political party leaders hailing from different regions. I am, of course, referring here to the so-called three Kims - Kim YS, Kim DJ, and Kim JP - who played pivotal roles in Korean politics between 1987 and 2002. All three political and the parties they led - or should I say owned? - were firmly based in specific regions which served as their main "vote banks". The big question, then, has always been what will happen after the three Kims have departed the scene. The 2002 presidential elections provide us with some indications in this respect. I will discuss them under the familiar rubrics of "continuity" and "change".

Starting with the "continuity" end of the spectrum, we can note in passing that

  1. voter turnout has continued to fall, reaching a new low of 70.8% in 2002. Voter turnout in parliamentary elections tends to be even lower; in the 2000 parliamentary elections just slightly more than 57% of the electorate bothered to cast their votes. Thus, 16 years after Korea's democratic opening we can note clear signs of rising popular detachment from the political process. Abstention from elections is highest for voters in their 20s and 30s. In the 2002 presidential election, less than 48% of South Koreans in their 20s went to the voting booths.
  2. region-based voting still plays a critical, if no longer a sole determining role. Thus, in the 2002 presidential election Lee Hoi-chang received nearly 70% of the votes from the southeastern Yongnam region, while Roh Moo-hyun got more than 90% of the votes from the southwestern Honam region.

However, and here we turn to the "change" end of the spectrum, the most recent presidential elections also showed that inevitable generational change is beginning to cut across regional voting patterns. In most general terms, and this of course hardly surprising, younger voters in South Korea harbour more liberal views, while older voters tend to cling to a more conservative worldview. When I talk here about younger voters, I basically refer to Korean citizens in their 20s and 30s, the so-called "2030 generation", which by now makes up roughly half the electorate. What is interesting now, is that age interacted with another important factor in the 2002 election, namely salient electoral issues in the form of policy toward North Korea and anti-Americanism. These two issues which, at least to a degree, are connected with each other, as I will discuss in some more detail later on. The important point here to note is that in particular the controversial "sunshine policy" towards the North proved to be a divisive issue in the 2002 election. Until then, such salient issues had hardly ever come to the fore in presidential or parliamentary elections since 1987.

The 2002 election thus highlighted a new generational, if not ideological cleavage in Korean society, namely how to deal with North Korea. While young voters, who had not gone through the Korean War, tended to be strong supporters of a more accommodating stance vis-à-vis the North, older voters tended to oppose economic aid and further "concessions" to North Korea.