On June 1, South Korea held local polls and parliamentary by-elections to elect 17 city mayors and provincial governors, 226 lower-level heads of administrative divisions, and 779 provincial and metropolitan council seats, as well as seven parliamentary seats.
The elections were extremely important not only for the Democrats, but also for the Conservatives, because they ensured control over the regions. For the Conservatives, it was an opportunity to build on their success after their candidate won the presidential elections by the narrowest margin in the country’s electoral history. As the leader of the People Power Party’s parliamentary faction, Kwon Seong-dong, said, “If the presidential election was the first half of the government change, the local elections are the second half of the government change.”
For the Democrats, the election was important to show that Yoon’s election by such a narrow margin was some kind of mistake, and the majority of people are ready to fight for their ideals anyway. After all, 4 years ago they won by a crushing margin – the Conservatives retained only two seats in their main stronghold of support, plus one seat went to an independent candidate. Toburo Democratic Party Provisional Committee Co-Chair Yoon Ho-joong urged voters to “ensure a balance of power to prevent the concentration of power in one hand” and “block the country from degenerating into a country for the privileged class as seen in the military dictatorship of the past.”
Compared to the 2022 presidential elections, there were fewer scandals, but the parties studiously inflated what happened. The Democrats, over of a case of sexual harassment, expelled MP Park Wan-joo, a member of the party’s supreme council and head of the political affairs committee. The Conservatives suffered because of the President’s Secretary for Religion and Multiculturalism Kim Seong-hoe due to his set of homophobic and misogynistic statements.
But then the elections ended, and it became clear that for the Democrats it wasn’t another 2018, but another 2021, when the Democrats had pretty much lost their credibility, and the Conservatives “won back” Seoul and Busan. The result was just five of seventeen seats. Practically a complete defeat.
It is clear that, as in both the presidential and parliamentary elections, each of the nation’s political camps has a stronghold in which they always win, and as a rule, by a crushing margin. For the Democrats these are the provinces of North and South Jeolla, as well as the city of Gwangju. For the Conservatives, these are North Gyeongsang Province, the city of Daegu and, to a slightly lesser degree, South Gyeongsang Province, as well as the cities of Busan and Ulsan, where by a resounding tally of 59.78% to 40.21% Song Cheol-ho, an old friend of Moon Jae-in, who was once brought to power as part of an operation by “Blue House”, lost.
In addition to “their” regions, the Democrats won on the island of Jejudo, where 4 years ago power went to an independent candidate, which then joined the Conservatives. This can be put down to conditionally leftist sentiments being very strong there and being part of its recently nurtured regional identity, largely built on the memory of the 1948 uprising. Although, you may note that the gap was still not as large as in Jeolla.
The second place where the Democrats were able to win was the capital’s Gyeonggi Province, where Lee Jae-myung, Yoon Suk-yeol’s main opponent in the presidential election, was previously governor. It was a tough race where the candidates went head to head and the final tally was 49.05% to 48.92%. The gap was still lower than in the presidential elections, at around 0.3%. At the same time, the interests of the Democrats in this province were defended not by a classic protégé of Lee Jae-myung, but by Kim Dong-yeong, the former finance minister and founder of the New Wave party, who went to the polls with a very reasonable centrist program, but, gaining only 1%, withdrew in favor of the Democrats. His opponent was Kim Eun-hye, Yoon’s press secretary in the election campaign and soon afterwards known for both attacks on Lee Jae-myung and anti-Chinese rhetoric. Her statements that Chinese citizens with permanent residence who have the right to vote in elections in the ROK should be deprived of this made a splash because a) Korean citizens in the PRC do not have such a right; b) in this way, Beijing interferes in the nation’s political affairs.
The fact that Kim Eun-hye almost became governor could be an alarming sign, but classical Conservatives have also come into power. Hong Joon-pyo, Yoon’s main rival in the internal party elections, became the mayor of Daegu, but it is much more interesting that an even more right-wing representative, Kim Jin-tae, became the governor of the border province of Gangwon-do (Gangwon Province). A man who, at one time, had to apologize for alleging that the popular uprising in Gwangju was in fact a communist insurgency and arranging public hearings, where supporters of such a point of view were given the floor.
In all other regions, the Conservatives won by higher or lower margins, but Seoul is particularly noteworthy, where incumbent mayor Oh Se-hoon defeated former Democratic Party leader Song Young-gil by a tally of 59.05% to 39.23%. A gap of almost 20% is a lot for the capital and means very serious credibility for Oh. Another significant region is the province of North Chungcheong, where the ex-head of the Moon administration Noh Young-min ran for the Democrats and also lost by a rather offensive margin of 41.80% to 58.19%.
If you go down to a lower level, then the People Power Party received 146 seats, which is 64.6% of the total. The Democratic Party won 63 seats, the Progress Party (not to be confused with the Justice Party) – one, and 17 seats went to independents. For comparison, four years ago the Democratic Party won 151 seats (66.8%), and the Conservatives – 53 seats.
In Seoul the Conservatives won in 17 out of 25 constituencies (for comparison, 4 years ago, the Democrats had 24 out of 25). The People Power Party additionally regained its dominant position on the Seoul City Council, winning 76 out of 112 seats. This will obviously increase the effectiveness of Oh Se-hoon’s administration, whose initiatives were often sabotaged in the past and who was at loggerheads with the KDP-dominated city council.
Parallel to the local elections, by-elections to parliament were held. Two seats went to the Democrats and five to the Conservatives. After the by-elections, the opposition Toburo Democratic Party has 169 seats in the National Assembly, while the ruling People Power Party has 114.
Both political heavyweights we mentioned earlier were elected. Ahn Cheol-soo won by a significant margin, 62.9% to 37.1%, but he was so invested in the campaign that he fainted from exhaustion. It is now likely that he and his supporters will “shape the People Power Party” for themselves, making the country’s main conservative party less conservative. Since Lee Jun-seok, whose term expires in 2023, is allegedly not going to run for a second term, Ahn may replace him as party leader.
Lee Jae-myung won with a smaller gap, 55.2% to 44.8%, despite him running from Incheon – more precisely, from a district where even a cat could get elected from the Democrats. Now Lee, protected by parliamentary immunity from the possible consequences of “Seongnamgate,” can try to become leader of the Democratic parliamentary caucus and can compete for the chairmanship of the party at its national convention slated for August. Yet, critics still accuse him of hurting the Democratic Party by returning to politics too early, less than three months after his failed presidential campaign.
However the question of the extent to which people support the Conservatives still remains debatable. On the one hand, early voting ended with a turnout of 20.62%, the highest figure for all local elections (more than 9.13 million out of 44.3 million eligible voters). On the other hand, overall turnout was 50.9%. Out of a total of 44.3 million eligible voters, about 22.5 million voted. This is the second lowest figure after the 48.9% recorded in local elections in 2002.
In Seoul it was 53.2%, while in the province of Gyeonggi-do it amounted to 50.6%. The highest turnout was recorded in the province of South Jeolla (58.5%) and the lowest in Gwangju – 37.7%.
What’s behind this especially given that an earlier Gallup Korea poll showed that 69.8% of respondents were definitely going to vote, and 30.3% wanted to do it ahead of schedule? It’s possible that people were tired after the presidential election in March, and the new campaign took place with considerable excitement. Another explanation is that a significant portion of the population saw nothing good in either classical Conservatives or classical Democrats. And since this issue was less important than the presidential election, citizens ignored it despite it being the first election in which the voting age was lowered (it was 19 and is now 18).
So what now? The Conservatives are celebrating their victory. It will be easier for them to carry out their policies at the regional level because the opposition from the Democrats will be lower. As Kweon Seong-dong noted, “I think that we have completed the real change of the government by winning the local elections after the presidential election victory. We will work harder to realize the will of the people with a humble attitude.”
President Yoon Suk-yeol himself did not take much joy from the victory. When asked to comment on June 3 whether it was true that the electoral victory gave the Conservatives momentum, he stated that, “it is not time to be talking about the party’s electoral victory” because the economic situation is too grave. Consumer prices, for instance, jumped 5.4% in May compared to the previous year, and that’s not the only problem.
When asked if he plans to meet the newly elected mayors and governors soon, Yoon said such a gathering would be more meaningful after they have looked into their respective administrative and financial issues, instead of meeting to just shake hands. On a possible meeting with the leadership of the main opposition, the Democratic Party, he simply said: “There can be no partisanship in navigating difficulties.”
When the results of the exit polls came out, Park Ji-hyun stated, “The results were worse than we expected. This is very disappointing. I think we received our second punishment after the presidential election.” And after the official outcome of the election, all eight members of the interim leadership committee of the Democratic Party resigned to take responsibility for the election defeat. Now, perhaps, a crisis and the search for the guilty awaits the Democratic Party, on top of the conflict between the traditional leadership of the party and its youth wing. But that is a topic for another article.
Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of the Far East at the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.