South Korea's election of trepidation

Hyunseok Ryu 18 December 2021

(Image courtesy of Unsplash)

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of InQuire Media

South Korea will hold its presidential election on 9 March 2022, less than a hundred days from now. The incumbent president Moon Jae-in is restricted to a single five-year term, meaning there is heightened attention to who will succeed him. However, this election may see the electorate becoming more jaded than ever as both main candidates struggle to gain true favourability, and the election devolves into populist promises.

Moon Jae-in being unable to run for a second term means that a fresh set of candidates are duly set to take over, and they will have to confront several key issues. Koreans remain bitter over how social mobility remains poor while the country experiences a housing crisis. Meanwhile, tensions have increased regarding feminism, with both candidates and their parties being extra cautious over supporting such causes, due to the risk of it costing them support from young men.

The lead candidates are as follows: Lee Jae-myung of the liberal Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) and Yoon Seok-youl of the conservative People Power Party (PPP). Both are outsiders but still notable in their levels of credibility. However, both ran into and are still encountering issues with their promises and styles.

The idea of a basic income was central to Lee’s platform; with him experimenting with onme for the youth when he was mayor of Seongnam, and later for everyone when he was governor of Gyeonggi. He promised a universal basic income for all, with plans for taxation on pollution and automation, but this ran into problems as everyone expected - it’s difficult to raise money to pay 50 million people. Furthermore, he promised to give COVID-19 related economic relief to everyone, which again ran into fiscal issues. This led to Lee modifying his promise or completely backtracking on them because voters, particularly centrists, are not wooed so easily.

The same happened with Yoon. He won on the back of promising to fight against the “corruption” of the Moon Jae-in administration as they had severe friction with Yoon over prosecutorial reform. Though, after he won it was clear he lacked coherence in his ideological platform as he frequently overshadowed himself with lacking knowledge in foreign policy alongside a series of gaffes showing either inexperience or clumsiness of ideas. He even ended up clashing with the anti-feminist chairman of the PPP after he appointed a female professor considered to be a feminist in his committee, showing that his election camp has glaring disunities.

Now it’s not necessarily unusual for presidential candidates, not just in South Korea but the world over, to hand out false promises, or promises with genuine intention but no direction. The actual reason why this election is so different is that the stakes are different. The 2017 election was the culmination of frustration against the conservative administration which undermined democracy and oversaw one of the greatest political scandals the country ever experienced. Similar circumstances apply for previous elections, with monumental issues of grappling with South Korea’s history, democratisation, and explosions of frustration being central throughout election campaigns. Now, not only have political outsiders taken the lead, but the election has boiled down into a tug of war between populist promises and centrist appeals.

This isn’t how it should be, and it shows the blatant problems with democracy in South Korea. Those who run have become ingenuine and, if genuine, still detached and incoherent. The only candidate who has any coherence to their platform is the minor progressive candidate Sim Sang-jung who realises the serious issues with Korean democracy and society by calling for an end to the two-party system, improved rights for women and LGBT people, and targeting the structural issues with Korea’s economy. And yet she remains snubbed by the ruling parties and the majority of the population.

South Korea’s election has become a case study for what happens when a country moves past great single issues and has instead boiled elections down to candidates not being voted in on both merits and promises, but solely on romantic pledges. It makes us learn that for a better democracy leaders must not be detached from the electorate, and for democracy to be healthy it must separate itself from unrealistic objectives. The two-party system has led to candidates and the principal parties growing self-centred, those with better or different ideas struggle to break through in law making, while people are left behind and forced into choosing a lesser evil. South Korea must end the two-party system by making elections more diverse and fair, embracing progress, and attacking the structural issues the economy and society face.