On May 9, 2022, South Korea held its 20th presidential election. This election brings Yoon Suk yeol, a candidate from the People’s Power Party (PPP) to power. Yoon won the election with a small margin of victory, 247 votes or 0,99 percent. In other say, he won less than 50 percent of the votes to become the next South Korean president.
PPP is basically a conservative party. He was a former prosecutor general. With this background, Yoon became a symbol of change in the existing politics, particularly to people disillusioned with the ruling party, Democratic Party. There has been high support in South Korea for a change of the government in the election, and Yoon was the main alternative for people who want to change the government.
“Immediately he became very popular because he had this image of a principled prosecutor who was against the political power during all his tenure. For example, he investigated very difficult political scandals under the Park Chung-hee government,” Ki-Young Shin, professor of political science and gender studies, Ochanomizu University Japan describes.
According to Ki-Young Shin, Yoon and his party have used identity politics and economic crisis on housing prices and limited professional job opportunities to garner the votes. Throughout the election, there were various scandals and mudslinging, and people were very divided.
” Under the Moon government, the biggest failure was the house price, so young people are so frustrated because they can’t dream to buy their own house. Also, the failure is the lack of good jobs. There is more and more competition for young people who are highly educated. There are not many quality jobs from them,” she confirmed.
Political cleavages in South Korea
For a long time, the political cleavages in South Korea have been conservative and progressive ideology, and the divide between the east and the west regions of the nation. The east has traditionally been very conservative and supported the conservative parties, while the west tends to be progressive, and they have supported progressive parties.
The cleavage also happened on generation and gender in the 2022 presidential election. The younger generation under the age of 50s had been far from supporters of the conservative parties. On the opposite, the young generation traditionally supported the progressive parties. It is a challenge for conservative parties to gather support from the young generation.
As a strategy, PPP used gender division. The PPP capitalized on the anti-feminist sentiments of young men in their 20s or 30s. He has been making problematic comments, such as there is no longer structural gender discrimination in South Korea, and that the gender-responsive budget should be reduced and used for national defense instead.
”Yoon has a lot of election pledges, including deletion of the ministry of gender equality and family, and to strengthen the punishment for false accusations of sexual acts of violence and crimes. These policies were appealed to the young men who have opposed the gender equality policy of the current government,” Ki-Young Shin narrated.
This anti-feminism campaign made young women feel that they are politically homeless, with no party or public authority to support them. To capture support from young women, Lee Jae-myung, a presidential candidate from Democratic Party, was recruiting an influencing young woman activist into his campaign. The recruitment of her, and her speech to support Lee Jae-myung were efficient at the last minute. The election result showed that 58 percent of women in their 20s voted for Lee Jae-myung.
“The voting pattern of the young women marks a significant event, that they clearly expressed their collective political will in the election. Young women have supported center-left or progressive parties much much more than men and any other generation” she concluded.
On another side, during the campaign period, PPP chose a chief of the party a young man of 36 age. Young representation aimed to garner support from the youth. PPP has also capitalized on the young generation’s anger at house prices and limited job vacancies. In fact, PPP didn’t propose policies to fundamentally improve the reality, but Yoon got the support of 58,7 percent of men in their 20s votes.
In total, women under the age of 50 have had higher voter turnout than men in the same age group. Voting turnout of the young generation (the 20s and younger) is lower than the 5 years election ago. Now, the young voter turnout is 65,3 percent, which drastically fell by 10 percent.
Challenge for the new government
Yoon Suk yeol’s and PPP’s government are facing at least three challenges. The first is, unifying divided people. Identity politics used in election has already divided society. Young men hate women. Hate speech on feminism milling about on social media. The divided young generation and society based on the regional area must be unified.
“It is not clear how the new government will win the cooperation of how larger opposition party and young people, therefore, Yoon and PPP seem to be obsessed with the political policies that promoted the region rather than unifying people.
Second, gender and generation matters. Yoon reconfirmed his pledge to abolish the ministry of gender equality and family. He recklessly claims that the ministry has fulfilled its historical roles, although the South Korean gender index indicates that the reality is far from gender equality.
Third, is the underrepresentation of young people, particularly young women. In the presidential committee were only four women appointed out of 24 members. The rate of women MPs in national assembly creates only 19 percent. Ki-Young Shin alleged that South Korea’situation will return to the old voice network type of politics.
“I’m concerned that politics that relied on the old boy’s network which we now see could further deepen the political exclusion of women and youth, and their lack of political representation. I believe, unless women and minorities’ voices are heard and represented, neither a truly unified society nor an inclusive and full-fledged democracy would be possible,” she added.
South Korea’s situation and the global trend of populism
Executive Director of the Association of Election and Democracy or Perludem, Khoirunnisa Nur Agustyati tells in the discussion that globally, there is a decline in the value of democracy, refers to the 2019 Economist Intelligence Unit and the Global State of Democracy of International IDEA index. The factor, one of them is the impact of populism that occurred in the rise of populist movements. Populism exploits the citizen’s discontent and causes polarization.
“Polarization is harmful to democracy. Polarization in society occurs by bringing up issues that are close to people’s emotions. It is a very critical issue for democracy because the emergence of polarization can threaten democracy because it can reduce democratic values. Democratic values can be compromised for the interest of a populist group,” Ninis said.
She then explained that are two sides of polarization. First, populism reminds the elite of the weakness of representative democracy. Democracy needs criticism because the government who are elected from the majority votes sometimes forgets the minority, and sometimes the minority feels that they are not represented enough in the government. Populism is also a sign of the non-functioning of several organs in the political system.
“It can be a mirror of democracy so that the elites do not forget to absorb as much as possible the interest of the people,” she argues.
On the other side, populism can be a pathology of democracy, because it tends to take advantage of momentary electoral emotions. It can be exclusive, intolerant, racist, delegitimizes electoral processes, and make electoral democracy regress.
Ninis then reminds about the relation between identity politics and voting behavior. People are influenced by the character of identity, which can also influence political choices. For example, economic status, religion, occupation, age, and ethnicity.
“There are three components of sociological voter behaviors. The first is sociological characteristics of society, like education, work, social networks, social class, and religion. Voters have a potential to choose parties or candidates that have the same characteristic as the voters. This becomes the commodity in the election to use the identity.”
In Indonesia’s context, said Ninis, social media was one of the factors that polarize society. In the 2014 election, identity politics aimed to change people’s opinions or preferences in the election, and it was spread massively on social media. There were hoaxes and disinformation that were used to suppress the voters.
“So, what happened in South Korea’s presidential election I assume that it is also a global trend. Many countries have already a policy to increase women’s participation in politics, but the progress is very slow. So, the International IDEA said that if there is no progressive policy, then we still need more than 40 years to get gender parity in politics. So, it is a challenge for Asia to make sure that elections are not used as a tool to polarize society because the impact is very harmful. In Indonesia, the polarization in the 2019 election still happens until now, and two years from now, we will have an election again,” as she closed her statement. []
AMALIA SALABI
