In South Korea, All Politics Is National

Campaigns & Elections, August 2006

(SKPE note:  This is my final draft and of the an article I wrote for C&E last summer and does not reflect some changes that editors made.)

Some 20 years ago, elections in South Korea were generally decided by large-scale fraud and intimidation, which ensured the sitting president kept his position and had the services of a rubber-stamp legislature. Gradually the laws changed, and candidates today face severe restrictions on campaign spending, a very short campaign season, and limits on advertising. Those rules have made politics in this emerging democracy an often high-turnover affair and have allowed for the relatively rapid rise of generation of newcomers who cut their political teeth as college students during the democracy movement of the 1980s.

That dynamism was on full display in local elections on May 31 in which the conservative Grand National Party (GNP) swept six of seven mayoral races in major cities representing 23 million of South Korea’s 48 million people. They also won six of nine provincial races and took approximately 160 of 230 seats up for grabs county governors, major city borough chiefs and smaller city mayors. To cap their victory, the GNP also took the bulk of 3,621 local council seats, ensuring a strong ‘farm club’ for future elections.

Campaign spending limits are determined by the position sought and the population it serves. Candidates for the mayor of Seoul, with 10.3 million residents could spend about $3.6 million; those running for the same job in Daejeon, with 1.5 million people, could only spend about $680,000 each. The revised Political Fund Act of 2004 also reduced public funding for candidates and their supporters.

The effects of those spending limits are mitigated somewhat by the short legal campaign period and limits on advertising. Local campaigns officially last 14 days - 23 days for presidential elections. Before then, the size of a campaign’s staff is restricted to relative skeleton crews. Until the first official day, campaigns can raise funds and prepare materials but cannot campaign publicly. Public opinion polls cannot be released for the last six days, and no campaigning is permitted on Election Day.

Television advertising was banned in the May elections. While candidates were allowed to broadcast their speeches, the expense involved meant that only a few campaigns could afford to do so.

South Korean campaign law even restricts the use of direct mail and posters. Candidates print brochures and submit them to their local party organizations. The parties in turn submit them to the local election commission, which mails them in a packet to voters in the district for free. Similarly, campaigns provide posters to local election officials who hang them in designated areas.

Campaign laws are strictly enforced. After every election, several successful candidates lose their seats due to election law violations. Elected officials are striped of office if they are fined more $1,000 or sentenced to jail time. Most convictions are for bread-and-butter finance violations, such as Uri party National Assemblyman Shin Geh-ryoon’s February conviction of eight months in prison for accepting $255,000 in illegal campaign contributions. However, some convictions are for more interesting crimes. In 2000 the GNP’s Chung In-bong was striped of his National Assembly seat after he was convicted of plying television reporters with liquor and prostitutes. In addition to stricter enforcement, the emergence of ‘citizen journalists’ writing for online news services such as the internationally recognized OhmyNews has added thousands of potential roving eyes that might catch election law violations.

Korea is one of the most wired nations in the world. Broadband Internet access is widely available throughout the country. People who don’t have a computer can access the Internet at one of the tens of thousands PC bangs (computer rooms) for only $1 an hour. About 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s and 30s use the Internet, and more than 45 percent of all Koreans belong to an online club.

Much has been made of Joe Trippi’s use of the Internet to help Howard Dean emerge as a leading contender for the Democratic nomination in 2004. But Dean’s campaign faltered once votes were counted, which revealed a weakness in Internet-centered campaigns in the United States. Enthusiastic supporters in Los Angeles or New York can raise a lot of money for their favorite candidates and pepper the Web pages with hits, but their ability to deliver votes in a targeted state or district is still limited. Local factors still largely trump national trends, as Dean discovered in Iowa.

Korea offers a different story. In 2000, backbencher Roh Moo-hyun lost his bid for reelection to his National Assembly seat in the port city of Busan. After his defeat, a nationwide group of fans, impressed by his speeches in the assembly, started the Internet site Nosamo, a Korean acronym for “gathering of people who love Roh Moo-hyun.” Nosamo continued to grow as celebrities and political figures joined. This Internet fan club is credited with helping him gain strong support among younger voters in his upset victory over GNP candidate Lee Hoi-chang in the 2002 presidential election.

South Korean politicians and parties have made extensive use of the Internet to promote themselves. The broad strokes of Internet campaigning are ideally suited to South Korea’s more national party-centered campaign environment. Korean voters are more likely than their American counterparts to vote party-line rather than for individual candidates. So when Internet campaigning, which tends to reach voters on a demographic rather than geography basis, improves a party’s general standing with voters, it sweeps marginal districts its way. While the National Election Commission restricts Internet advertising and media, the strength of online campaigning has helped candidates and parties reach voters.

“Sometimes Internet portal sites are more influential than newspapers, because younger voters prefer getting information from the Internet,” said Walter Paik, spokesman for the GNP. “Korean society is one of the strongest Internet-dominated societies in the world. Voters get huge amounts of information from (the) Internet, so we can’t say that the election law itself helps or hinders communication between candidates and voters.”

The effect of Internet campaigning is not the only thing that tends to nationalize Korean local elections. South Korea’s restrictive campaign laws have made local campaigns dependent on the parties for volunteers and planning. Individual candidates are less able to stand apart from their national parties and reach voters independently.

“In (the may 31) election, not only the candidates’ personalities influenced voters,” Paik explained. “Voters’ evaluations of the ruling and opposition parties were more important. Most candidates followed strategies and themes set by the GNP national headquarters. … Of course, candidates should try to develop public pledges based upon their districts’ circumstances. But in Korea voters tend to be more influenced by state-level politics and the parties’ images and their leadership.”

South Korea’s strong presidential system means that the public’s view of the president influences their perceptions of the candidates from his party. Over the past several years President Roh’s popularity has steadily declined due to several missteps and perceived incompetence in managing state affairs and the economy. Support for his Uri party has similarly declined.

The GNP successfully cast the local elections as a referendum on Roh. Additionally, the party got a boost in the polls when a man with a box cutter attacked Chairwoman Park Geun-hye just 10 days before the elections. While the man screamed, “Let's save democracy. Long live the Republic of Korea!” during the attack (in an apparent reference to her father, former dictator Park Chung-hee), police later declared him to be mentally unstable. The fact that Ms Park’s father and mother were both kills by assassins in the 1970s added to the sense of drama. The attack dominated the news for a week and ended any Uri party hope for changing the dynamics of the race. Her emergence from the hospital to campaign for the party just two days before the elections gave the GNP a further boost.

On the other hand, many Uri party candidates sought to distance themselves from Roh and the party. Kang Kum-sil, Uri’s popular candidate for mayor of Seoul was especially emphatic.

“If you chose a mayor (based on the) candidate’s party, you would not see the problems of Seoul solved. You should not be deluded by existing parties; rather, you would be well advised to elect someone who is truly able and can deliver,” she told viewers during a TV forum just before the election. Despite her attempts, Seoul voters chose GNP rival Oh Se-hoon over Kum-sil 61.1 percent to 27.3 percent.

Another problem that the Uri party faced is the fractured nature of the Korean left. While the GNP is the only major conservative party in Korea, Uri had to compete for votes with the Democratic and Democratic Labor parties. The GNP was able to concentrate its resources on close elections while Uri had to fight for its base. Once she emerged from the hospital, GNP Chairwoman Park Geun-hye mostly campaigned for the GNP in swing areas like Daejeon (where the GNP candidate scored an upset victory over a popular incumbent mayor from the Uri party). On the other hand Uri Chairman Chung Dong-young was forced to spend much of his time and his party’s resources in places like Gwangju in an attempt to take seats from the Democratic party and eliminate it as a rival. Laws prohibit President Roh from actively campaigning.

Despite the GNP’s victory in local elections this year, they do not necessarily have an advantage in next year’s presidential election. Korean voters are notoriously fickle (A different party has held a plurality in the National Assembly after each of the last three general elections), and major shifts in public opinion, like the late surge that put President Roh in office can happen rapidly. Progressives are in disarray right now, but they most likely can coalesce around a candidate in the months before the election. In Korea, a year is a political lifetime.