South Korea’s populist turn
Author: Editorial Board, ANU
7 March 2022
South Koreans will head to the polls to elect a new president this Wednesday, 9 March. With campaigning characterised by mudslinging and populist rhetoric, the contest has been dubbed the ‘unlikeable election’.
Leading the race is Yoon Suk-yeol of the main conservative opposition People Power Party (PPP) and a former prosecutor general under the current Moon Jae-in administration. Yoon jumped ship after clashing with the administration over prosecutorial reform, and his reputation as a tough investigator who doesn’t bend to political pressure has propelled him to the top of many pre-election polls.
Closely following Yoon is progressive ruling Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung, a former mayor and governor in Gyeonggi province. Starting out as a factory worker who then injured his arm in an industrial accident before turning to politics, Lee is promoting a rags-to-riches story as part of his promise to roll out a universal basic income and address wealth inequality.
Trailing the two leaders was Ahn Cheol-soo, a renowned former doctor and software entrepreneur of the centrist opposition People’s Party. This positioned Ahn to play the role of spoiler or kingmaker.
Just six days out from the election, Ahn withdrew from the race and threw his support behind Yoon. With Sim Sang-jung of the small opposition leftist Justice Party unable to gain traction, the four-way contest has now been stripped down to two.
The issues that voters are most concerned about are the cosy relationships that breed corruption between political elites and the chaebol (the family-owned conglomerates that dominate the South Korean economy) and socioeconomic and standard-of-living issues such as housing affordability and jobs. These issues gained traction against the backdrop of the 2016-17 candlelight protests, which saw millions take to the streets to demand the ouster of then president Park Geun-hye who was ultimately impeached.
While Moon Jae-in promised hope and change, many in South Korea feel too little has been done. It is unclear whether Yoon or Lee can do much better in the areas where voters demand the most progress. Neither of the two leading candidates have any experience as legislators in the National Assembly – a first in South Korea’s democratic history. Yoon and Lee each routed nominees from their own parties with more experience and pedigree, helped by scandals that tarred their opponents.
Both are also beset by scandals and drama of their own.
Lee’s wife is accused of using a government employee as her personal assistant and misappropriating public funds, while Lee himself is under scrutiny for a suspicious land development deal and rumours of ties to organised crime.
Yoon has been forced to apologise for his wife’s fraudulent CV, and to deny accusations of connections to a cultist shaman and a predilection for anal acupuncture.
The negative style of campaigning that has characterised the election has left a significant number of swing voters and younger voters still undecided in the lead up to the poll.
In our first lead article this week, Myungji Yang explains that Yoon’s tactics to win the presidency are focused on winning young male voters through a ‘divisive “us-versus them” strategy’. This involves demonising gender equality as the cause of South Korea’s economic woes. Yoon has promised to ‘abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, among other anti-feminist signals’.
Yoon’s approach is to tap into the frustrations of young men surrounding social mobility and the continuing widening of wealth inequality, themes portrayed so starkly in the South Korean global smash TV show Squid Game. Skyrocketing housing and rental prices in Seoul and an unemployment rate of nearly a quarter of South Koreans aged 15-29 highlight the problems. It is an approach that appears disingenuous given that South Korea is a male-dominated society which ranks 108 out of 153 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap report.
Lee’s core pledge of a universal basic income has also been labelled populist. To his supporters it is the sort of radical fix needed to address the growing wealth gap. But his detractors say he is seeking to buy votes with free money and the economics of his policies don’t add up.
Amid the populist pledges and mudslinging, both Yoon and Lee have failed to outline how they will address chaebol reform. Neither candidate has touched on the issue in their campaign manifestoes or shown signs in campaign debates that they will bring serious pressure to bear on chaebol elites.
The populist turn in South Korea politics also comes at a time when South Korea’s geopolitical position is becoming more challenging than ever.
As Peter K Lee explains in our second lead this week, ‘the next South Korean president will face a difficult conundrum between North Korea and China. South Korean leaders on both the left and right have long claimed that North Korea’s denuclearisation was the foremost priority for the region and world peace … Yet North Korea is increasingly of secondary importance to the United States’, behind dealing with China, and now behind Russia too in the wake of its aggressive war against Ukraine.
How the next leader in the Blue House decides to balance the continuation of Moon’s diplomatic outreach to North Korea with policy towards China and Russia ‘will inform South Korea’s position on the Indo-Pacific, wartime operational control, trilateral cooperation with Japan, participation in groupings like the Quad, and prospects for deeper cooperation with partners like Australia’.
If a turn to populism is the way of the future in South Korea politics, the country will again need to rely on its strong culture of civic participation and protest, which gave rise to the 2016-17 candlelight protests, to safeguard the quality of its democracy.
The EAF Editorial Board is located in the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University.
How South Korea’s conservatives hope to
divide and conquer on the way to the
presidency
Author: Myungji Yang, University of Hawai’i
Five years after the Candlelight Revolution in South Korea, the effervescence, spirit of solidarity and optimism for social change have faded away. When millions took to the streets to oust corrupt president Park Geun-hye in late 2016 and early 2017, Moon Jae-in’s election promised hope and change. Many thought conservative political forces — the corrupt establishment — would lose their political influence.
But as South Korea prepares to elect a new president on 9 March 2022, voters seem more than ready to move on from Moon. The conservatives are back, led by Yoon Suk-yeol, a one-time member of the Moon administration who now leads the primary opposition People Power Party (PPP) and seems to have captured the imagination of those disillusioned with left-leaning policies, especially younger males.
Despite Yoon’s lack of policy knowledge and often reckless remarks, he holds a not-unsubstantial lead over his Democratic Party opponent Lee Jae-myung. In the polls.
One of the most interesting aspects of the imminent 2022 election is that many parts of the electorate have not made up their mind yet. Recent surveys show that both Yoon and Lee’s support rates combined add up only to about 70 per cent, split evenly between the candidates. In previous elections, most presidents-elect received more than 40 per cent of the vote. Both candidates still need to gather more votes. Neither strongly appeals to the broader population and voters are not enthusiastic about the upcoming election.
Yoon is an intriguing and unusual case as he had no experience in electoral politics before becoming the PPP’s presidential candidate. Ironically, he was Moon’s prosecutor general before defecting to the conservatives after the administration pursued prosecutorial reforms. Yet it is not clear what political values and new visions the conservative candidate and his party represent or how they would achieve them. Beyond dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, Yoon’s support is built on voters’ disappointment and frustration with Moon’s performance as president.
Identifying itself as the ‘candlelight government’, the Moon administration promised to realise the values supported by the candlelight protesters — equality, fairness and social justice — but has failed to successfully address important socioeconomic issues. The Moon administration has overseen a rapid increase in housing prices while failing to meet high expectations about social and political reforms.
Further, real estate, college admissions and sexual harassment scandals among high-ranking government officials — although sometimes politicised and exaggerated by conservative media — have led many to believe that the Democrats are not that different from those they replaced. Yoon’s support comes mostly from opposing the incumbent government.
Traditionally, young South Koreans vote for more progressive candidates. A new phenomenon that needs more attention in this election is that Yoon’s strongest political base is young male voters in their twenties. His promise to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, among other anti-feminist signals, has certainly helped him. South Korea’s conservatives have found success by provoking gender conflict and mobilising anti-feminist narratives, arguing that gender equality policies violate meritocratic values and fair competition and result in reverse discrimination against men.
One possible explanation why this message has resonated so strongly with young South Korean men may lie in the efforts of conservative elites to capitalise on frustration and resentment about a lack of economic opportunities and limited future prospects in an extremely competitive labour market.
Instead of pledging to reduce social inequality and increase opportunities for younger generations, conservative presidential candidate Yoon has adopted the easier and more divisive ‘us-versus them’ strategy: men against women. Just as right-wing populists in other countries scapegoat immigrants and minorities by accusing them of taking jobs away from native-born people and threatening the existing social order, South Korean conservatives are hoping to win the presidency with the similar messaging.
The current presidential electoral scene is not what candlelight protestors expected. Left-leaning reformers failed to deliver the socioeconomic changes they promised. Conservatives have learned nothing from their maladministration in the previous government and continue to repeat outdated anti-communist and anti-feminist rhetoric.
Whoever becomes the next president will inherit a huge political burden: the necessity of healing a society wrecked by divisions of gender, generations and class. If the new government continues to rely on a politics of exclusivity and immediate political gain, it will damage South Korean democracy and exacerbate disillusionment with the country’s political class.
Myungji Yang is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa
South Korea’s candlelight protests
Author: Sun-Chul Kim, Emory University
Political protest has always propelled South Korea’s democratisation. It was through the mass uprising in April 1960 that South Koreans ended the autocratic rule of Syngman Rhee. The democracy that followed the ‘April Revolution’ was short-lived, but the subsequent military regimes of Park Chung-hee (1961–79) and Chun Doo-hwan (1980–87) had to cope with a recalcitrant opposition that tirelessly protested authoritarian rule. In June 1987, another mass mobilisation eventually forced the authoritarian rulers to concede democratic reforms.
Political protest did not slow down with South Korea’s transition to democracy. On the contrary, street protest became the new normal as democratic space expanded. Students, workers, civic organisations, and even opposition political parties and lawmakers took to the streets in protest of government policies. Observing the pervasiveness of protest in South Korea in 2008, an Al Jazeera reporter came to the conclusion that ‘protest has become part of [South Korean] culture’. Given this context, the recent candlelight protests that erupted in response to the scandals of President Park Geun-hye and her confidante, Choi Soon-sil, were no isolated event.
The use of candlelight as a form of protest traces back to 2002 when two teenage girls were killed by US armoured vehicles on military training manoeuvres. A proposal for a candlelight vigil circulated among internet cafes after the news spread that the US soldiers responsible for the deaths of the Korean girls had been acquitted in the US court-martial. Thousands gathered in Gwanghwamun Square to commemorate the victims. The candlelight vigil was picked up by activist groups and turned into a symbol of the movement against the perceived injustice. Ever since 2002, mass demonstrations in South Korea have taken the form of candlelight protest.
The advent of the candlelight protest signified important changes distinct from earlier protests. In the past, it was impossible to picture a protest scene in South Korea without conjuring up the image of violent clashes and the exchange of teargas and Molotov cocktails between protesters and riot police. Violent protests persisted into the 1990s, well after South Korea’s democratic transition, but the emergence of the candlelight protest offered a new platform that enabled protesters to convey their seriousness of intent through peaceful means.
Specifically, the candlelight protests of the past three months have been remarkable in their absence of violence, despite the high political tension and massive number of protesters roaming the streets. On the one hand, this had to do with greater tolerance on the part of the police and favourable court rulings that opened up new marching routes previously unavailable to the protesters — a trend not uncommon during times of revolutionary change. But it also had much to do with the adept handling of the rallies and marches by the organisers.
The weekly candlelight protests were organised by Emergency Action for Park’s Resignation, a coalition of more than 1500 civic organisations. In the past, large coalitions were often plagued by fierce infighting among competing political groups. To avoid discord, the anti-Park coalition set rules for decision making based on the lowest common denominator among participant organisations.
Its role was focused on providing political space for citizens of all walks of life to come and express their views freely. From booking celebrities to setting up lost-and-found services, the coalition paid close attention to the details of the rallies to make them more accommodating to all.
Combined with unprecedented levels of frustration and anger among South Koreans, the outcome was explosive. Week after week, the coalition successfully mobilised millions of South Koreans on the streets of dozens of cities and channelled their anger into a powerful political message. Eventually, the candlelight protests pushed reluctant lawmakers to cast their vote to impeach the president in the National Assembly, marking one of the most significant events in South Korea’s political history.
The success of the anti-Park candlelight protests illuminates the growth and maturity of civil society in South Korea. At the same time, it brings to attention the weakness of its party system as a mechanism for political mediation. South Korean political parties have been characterised by their extreme fluidity, which involves frequent splits, mergers and name changes.
In the absence of stable political parties with which to communicate political agendas and develop a shared identity, civil society organisations often bypassed the mediation of political parties when it came to promoting new agendas or resisting policies. Consequently, direct action was frequently used as leverage vis-à-vis the decision makers.
The latest candlelight protest set an unusual example in that street protesters and opposition lawmakers found themselves in sync throughout the impeachment campaign as well as the subsequent legal proceedings. But this rare accord is unlikely to be sustained as the ruling party goes through another split and the fractured opposition field prepares for an early presidential election in late spring, pending confirmation of President Park’s impeachment by the Constitutional Court.
Lacking a reliable partner in party politics, the anti-Park coalition will likely break into multiple political lines as the competition for the president’s office deepens. Precisely because they lack reliable partners in party politics, however, they will most likely get together again and return to street politics when there is another serious breach of democratic principle. Protest politics will continue in South Korea.
Sun-Chul Kim is Assistant Professor of Korean Studies at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Emory University.
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