NBR

APLN member Eunjung Lim discusses the role of economic factors and communication issues in the crushing defeat for the ruling People Power Party in South Korea’s legislative election. In considering the implications for domestic politics, she maintains that the Yoon government still has public support on several key issues.

On April 10, South Korea held one of the most competitive elections in the country’s political history. The 22nd National Assembly election used a one-person, two-vote system to elect 254 local constituency seats and 46 proportional representatives. The result was a crushing defeat for the ruling People Power Party (PPP). Of the 254 constituency seats, the conservative PPP won only 90 seats and the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) won 161 seats. The New Reform Party (NRP) led by Lee Jun-seok, a former president of the PPP who left the party because of conflicts with President Yoon Suk Yeol, and the New Future Party led by Lee Nak-yeon, a former prime minister who left the DPK because of frictions with Lee Jae-myung, also won one constituency seat each.

Meanwhile, in the seats determined by proportional representation, the People’s Future, the satellite party of the PPP, won 18 seats, and the Democratic Union, the satellite party of the main opposition DPK, won 14 seats. The Rebuilding Korea Party (RKP), led by former justice minister Cho Kuk, who acted as the biggest variable in the election, won 12 seats through proportional representation alone, followed by the NRP with 2 seats and the Progressive Party with 1. The Green-Justice Party, a coalition of the two existing parties, the Justice Party and the Green Party, won no constituency or proportional seats.

In the end, the PPP won a total of 108 seats, while the largest opposition party, the DPK, won 175 seats, and the opposition as a whole won 192 seats, solidifying its power in the four-year term of the 22nd National Assembly. President Yoon’s term is shorter than that of the 22nd National Assembly, with approximately three years remaining.

The full article can be accessed here.

Image: Former Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl, a front-running presidential aspirant who has People Power Party, enters a Eungam Station in in Seoul’s Eunpyeong District on Aug. 3, 2021, Wikimedia Commons