2020 South Korean legislative election (April 15th)

[xelas81]

300 Members total 
253 first-past-the-post
47 PR 3% threshold but 30 Mixed-member Proportional and 17 Parallel Vote

 
Current parties as today
Democratic Party 129 seats - main Liberal Party
Liberty Korea Party 107 seats- main Conservative Party
Bareunmirae Party 17 seats - Center-right, merger of People's Party and Bareun party
New Conservative Party 8 seats - Bareunmirae splinter party
New Alternatives 7 Seats - Spilt from Party for Democracy and Peace
Justice Party 6 seats - Leftwing
Party for Democracy and Peace 4 seats - Spilt from People's Party
Future Korea Party 2 seats - Satellite party of the LKP to run PR vote
Onward for Future 4.0 1 seat - another Bareunmirae splinter party
Our Republican Party 1 seat - Far right Pro-Park party, LKP splinter
Minjung Party 1 seat - Leftwing

[kelestian]

I'm very interested in results. Last time around, there was basically three-way race between Democrats, Conservatives and People Party, but now, based on polls, it seems like 40%+ for liberals, 30%+ for Liberty party and others in single digits.

[DC Al Fine]

Major issues? What caused some of the party splits/mergers?

[jaichind]

In 2016 it was Center-Left Democratic Party vs Center-Right Saenuri vs Centrist People's Party with Justice Party as a fringe Left party.   Due to the Park scandals Saenuri  split into the pro-Park Liberty Party and anti-Park Bareun Party 

After Democratic Party Moon was elected in 2017 in a landslide the opposition sought ways to consolidate.  In 2018  People's Party and Bareun Party merged into a Center-Right Bareunmirae while a  more Center-Left faction of the People's Party that opposed the move formed the Centrist Party for Democracy and Peace.  The Center-Left Justice Party if anything grew a bit since 2016.  Right now Bareunmirae and Party for Democracy and Peace are both polling in single digits and behind  Justice Party with Liberty Party a distant second to Democratic Party. 

Moon's approval rating might have dropped a lot since his 2017 landslide victory but for Democratic Party it is still the TINA factor while Liberty Party  needing a couple of election cycles to get out the shadow of the Park scandals.

[kelestian]

Leader of Liberty Korea party now is Hwang Kyo-ahn, former prime-minister and interim president after Park's impeachment. If i remember correctly, in 2017 conservatives wanted him to be the nominee (he would still lose, but was the strongest Moon's opponent in polls), but he declined.

[urutzizu]

Realmeter poll:
Moon-Jae-in Approval rating:
46.8% Approval
49.4% Disapproval

Moons approval rating has staying mostly stable since the end of his Honeymoon after the end of 2018.

Party support:
DP: 40.3% (+0.1)
LKP: 31.1% (+0.9)
JP: 4.8
NCP: 3.8
Bareun: 2.2
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-02/13/c_138780302.htm

A good introductory read on the current state of ROK politics here: https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/protesters-storm-national-assembly-capping-off-a-divisive-year-for-korean-politics/

The Coronavirus is likely to hit the SK economy hard in the next months, which is not good for Moon.
The National Assembly after much delay end of last year passed a watered-down Electoral reform act against the resistance of LKP that would ensure that the 30 of the 47 Proportional Seats are distributed under a MMP type system. The LKP wants to use decoy lists (see Italy 2001) to get around this and ensure that the Parallel Voting system is de facto maintained. If this happens the other Parties would likely be forced to do the same, and the entire change would end up useless.

[urutzizu]

The election Commission has approved the LKPs decoy list, under the name Future Liberty Korea Party.

The small Parties (except JP) are, to put it mildly, well sorta screwed, as the election reform was a concession by DP intended to secure their survival in exchange for Backing the Moon administration in the National Assembly. Less-than voluntary Mergers were on the cards already, now certain.

New Conservative Party and Onward for Future 4.0 plan to merge with LKP to become the "Party for Future Integration".

Ahn Cheol-soo, is preparing to launch jet another new party for "pragmatic and middle-of-the-road politics". He would have had a so much better Career by sticking to tech. But it seems he really wants to learn the hard way.

The BP will try to merge with the Party for Democracy and Peace (PDP) and the Daeanshin Party. What was the point of Splitting in the first place then?

[PSOL]

You know, I’m more interested in the prospects of the Justice Party and the left in Korea. Considering the justice party was polling 9-10% just a few months ago, falling behind their previous national vote totals is surprising.

[jaichind]

It seems in early 2020 Bareunmirae  suffered a split as part of its right wing formed the New Conservative Party.

[jaichind]

New Realmeter poll (diff from 3 days ago)

Democratic Party                        39.9 (-0.4)
Liberty Party                              32.0 (+0.9)
Justice Party                                4.8 (----)
New Conservative Party                3.9 (+0.1)
Bareunmirae                                2.6 (+0.4)
Party for Democracy and Peace     1.5 (+0.1)

Liberty making a nice recovery from the ashes of the Park scandals and might become viable to win an election cycle from now.

[urutzizu]

You know, I’m more interested in the prospects of the Justice Party and the left in Korea. Considering the justice party was polling 9-10% just a few months ago, falling behind their previous national vote totals is surprising.

A number of factors, but first and foremost the fact that they have stained by major ethics scandals. It first started when Noh Hoe-chan (노회찬) one of its rather better politicians, killed himself over a 2018 Opinion rigging scandal and has gone down since, and they destroyed much of what remained of their reputations after the Cho Kuk scandals. Its not as if most South Korean politicians are exactly known for their ... shall we say... ethical behaviour, but their for the party that is supposed to be the non-corrupt anti-establishment party, they failed completely.

The North Korea/Communism issue had little impact, although some of its politicians have trouble with keeping their mouths closed on Issues where it is (still) wise to tread carefully in Korean society, such as proclaiming themselves "socialist".

[urutzizu]

As you may know the Coronavirus has been spreading like Wildfire in Korea, completely tanking the already weak economy, that is very dependent on china, and suspending normal public life for at least a while, and it is having a big political impact. Back when the Virus was going through China, President Moon predicted that the outbreak would “disappear before long,” while the prime minister assured people that it was OK not to wear surgical masks. LKP politicans are blaming Government incompetence and "leftist sinophilia" (a favorite schtick of the SK right, despite conservative adminstrations making SK dependent on Chinese business), by not moving to close the country’s borders to China and not supplying enough surgical masks for citizens. The former point exceptionally illogical, because there are like literally 4 chinese citizens in SK with the Virus out of a total of 2000 and all of them got it from South Koreans, none of them brought the Virus into the country, Koreans did that entirely by themselves. But thats populism, I guess. Not like Liberals held back from politicising similar stuff either, like Sewol or when in 2015, when South Korea was hit by an outbreak of MERS, Moon called the crisis “a catastrophe spawned by an incompetent government” led by ​Ms. Park, so what comes around.... More than one million South Koreans signed an online petition calling for Moons impeachment. But I mean, one million Koreans would be willing to sign a petition if Moon wore the wrong color suit, so..
(Also, like using the national petition system created by the Moon government to remove Moon from office, is pretty funny)

The Administration has kinda been caught between a rock and a hard place here, being accused simultaneously of being too weak and to authoritarian.
When the government tried to ban weekend anti-government rallies over health concerns, the participants accused it of political suppression and when he announced a “maximum containment” of Daegu and nearby towns this week, conservatives took that as a decision to punish korean towns while being spineless toward China. They had to backtrack quickly, forcing the government to deny any lockdown plan and Hong Ihk-pyo, the spokesman who announced the maximum containment, resigned. Korean people's anger reached its highest just now, when Chinese cities started quarantining South Koreans, while Korea refused to do so for Chinese.
Liberals have mainly been trying to shift blame to the Shincheonji Christian cult, that violated the quarentine and was almost single handedly responsibile for massively inflating the outbreak. The Cult is very close to the Conservatives (conservatives love these weird christian cults, which have a ton of followers in SK). Evangelical Christians have always been very conservative in SK, while Catholic/Buddhist anti-evangelical resentment feeds into them leaning liberal.

If the outbreak doesn’t let up soon, it could spell disaster Moon.

[mileslunn]

With South Korea being hard hit by the virus, any idea what the impact of this will be.  Could it lead to a surprise?  Especially if it gets worse.

[jaichind]

Latest Realmeter poll now that Party for Future Integration has been formed by the merger of New Conservative Party and Onward for Future 4.0 with Liberty Party.

Democratic Party                     41.5
Party for Future Integration      31.6
Justice Party                             4.4
Bareunmirae                             3.7

[kelestian]

Constant change of main political parties' names is a pretty fun feature of korean politics

[xelas81]

For some reason the election is still scheduled for April 15th.
I guessing it still could be delayed but the fact that it has not been delayed yet is surprising. 

 

[jaichind]

Year, for some reason it seems like the election is on although there are signs that ROK is getting the virus under control with the growth in infections growing linearly versus logarithmicaly.   Polls do seems to show that Moon's perceived bungling in handling the crisis is eating into his approval numbers with the newly created big tent Center-Right party United Future Party making good gains on the Democratic party.  I doubt they will overtake the Democrats but I guess they could now make it close.

[Antonio the Sixth]

"Bungling"? Wasn't South Korea's response to the coronavirus widely hailed as a success across the world?

[Lord Halifax]

Latest Realmeter poll now that Party for Future Integration has been formed by the merger of New Conservative Party and Onward for Future 4.0 with Liberty Party.

Democratic Party                     41.5
Party for Future Integration      31.6
Justice Party                             4.4
Bareunmirae                             3.7

On February 24 Bareunmirae merged with the Party for Democracy and Peace (People's Party dissidents that didn't approve of the merger with Bareun) and the New Alternatives (a splinter from the Party for Democracy and Peace) as the Party for People's Livelihoods (Minsaengdang). Uniting all of the centre-right (mostly Jeolla liberals and various moderate SoCons) who don't want to be in the Party for Future Integration.

[Walmart_shopper]

"Bungling"? Wasn't South Korea's response to the coronavirus widely hailed as a success across the world?

By far it has been the best.

[urutzizu]

National and International perceptions can differ. Once the large Outbreak in South Korea had happened, South Korean Government was internationally praised for its containment effort (something that in Korea was mainly credited the Civil Service and Medical staff). On the other hand Moon was very strongly criticised in in Korea for refusing to stop travel between China and South Korea unlike other Asian Countries (e.g. Singapore) did, and so purportedly allowing the outbreak to escalate to the levels we saw in the first place. Whether that is a fair assessment is questionable (see my last post), but in South Korea there is a tendency to blame the Government when bad things happen under their watch, even if it is not direct result of their policymaking (see Sewol, MERS, Sampoong Department Store, Deagu Metro fire). While in the West there is today a rally-around-the-flag effect, even where the response was arguably extremely bungled (US, Italy, France, Germany, UK). Different political cultures, different standards for politcians.

[urutzizu]

For what its worth the Impact seems to have been rather small.

Realmeter (Mar 19):
President Approval
approval 47.9 (up 0.7 week-on-week but down overall)
disapproval  48.9 (down 0.2)

Democratic Party: 40.9% (-0.6)
United Future Party: 35.1% (+?)
People's Party: 3.9 %
Justice Party: 3.2%

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-03/19/c_138894985.htm

[CumbrianLefty]

National and International perceptions can differ. Once the large Outbreak in South Korea had happened, South Korean Government was internationally praised for its containment effort (something that in Korea was mainly credited the Civil Service and Medical staff). On the other hand Moon was very strongly criticised in in Korea for refusing to stop travel between China and South Korea unlike other Asian Countries (e.g. Singapore) did, and so purportedly allowing the outbreak to escalate to the levels we saw in the first place. Whether that is a fair assessment is questionable (see my last post), but in South Korea there is a tendency to blame the Government when bad things happen under their watch, even if it is not direct result of their policymaking (see Sewol, MERS, Sampoong Department Store, Deagu Metro fire). While in the West there is today a rally-around-the-flag effect, even where the response was arguably extremely bungled (US, Italy, France, Germany, UK). Different political cultures, different standards for politcians.

That will not last if the effects of any such bungling become obvious to all.

[Lord Halifax]

For what its worth the Impact seems to have been rather small.

Realmeter (Mar 19):
President Approval
approval 47.9 (up 0.7 week-on-week but down overall)
disapproval  48.9 (down 0.2)

Democratic Party: 40.9% (-0.6)
United Future Party: 35.1% (+?)
People's Party: 3.9 %
Justice Party: 3.2%

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-03/19/c_138894985.htm

It's Ahn Cheol-soo's new People Party which split from Bareunmirae on February 23, the day before  Bareunmirae merged into the Party for People's Livelihoods.

The Korean name is the same as the 2016-18 People's Party, but they prefer People Party.

[Lord Halifax]

The full Realmeter poll

Democrats (Minjudang) 40.9% (0.6↓)
United Future Party (Milaetonghabdang) 35.1% (3.0↑)
People Party (Gugmin-uidang) 3.9% (nc)
Justice Party (Jeong-uidang) 3.2% (1.1↓)
Pro-Park New Party (Chinbagsindang) 2.5% (new)
Party for People's Livelihoods (Minsaengdang) 1.6% (0.5↓)
Minjung Party (Minjungdang) 1.5% (0.3↑)
Liberty Republican Party (Gonghwadang) 1.0% (1.4↓)
Others 1.7 (0.1↑)
Undecided 8.6% (2.3↓)

The Democrats and UFP's new satellite parties (established to allow the big parties to get a share of the 30 of 47 list seats that now function as top-up seats for parties running for constituency seats - as part of the partial/half-assed reform of the electoral system) are included in the two parties.

The Party for People's Livelihoods is the Bareun/People's Party merger, but since People's Party founder Anh Cheol-soo left it his new People Party seems to get most of the centrist/moderate vote.

The Minjung Party is a merger of two small de facto pro-North Korean ("left nationalist") parties descended from a party that was banned in 2014 for being pro-North Korean. It might still be prevented from running due to violating the National Security Act (a leftover from the dictatorship).

The Justice Party is Social Democratic and the biggest left wing party, but apart from Minding five minor ones are running (Greens, Labor, Women's Party, Basic Income Party and a youth party with a middle aged comedian/talkshow host as "advisor"), all presumably siphoning votes away from Justice. The Basic Income Party is allied with the Democrats.

There are two far right parties running, both "pro-Park". The Pro-Park New Party is a slightly more moderate right wing populist breakaway from Our Republican Party, which has merged with the even nuttier Christian Right and Korean ethnic supremacism (Ilminism, which SK's first president Syngman Rhee advocated) party to form the Liberty Republican Party.