By Chelsea Carlson
South Korea’s National Assembly building in Seoul. (Image from Wikimedia Commons.)
This post is intended to be a brief introduction to Korean politics for our readers. While I wanted to jump into more argument-based content from the very beginning, I thought you might appreciate a concise tour through the modern Korean electoral system. I will cover the election process in Korea, the structure of the National Assembly, and gender quotas in the National Assembly. A working knowledge of this material will be helpful when reading my future posts, so I hope that I’ve made this relatively easy to read and understand. For brevity’s sake, I’ll focus on the national level of politics in this post and elaborate on local politics in future discussions.
The primary system is a central part of the American election process, and should be familiar to American readers. While the exact structure varies from state to state, parties run mock elections several months before election day to decide which candidates merit party endorsements in a particular race. Candidates are responsible for funding any campaign activities prior to the primary, but the candidate that wins a primary vote can count on party support and infrastructure for the remainder of his or her campaign. Parties benefit from this system by stepping into the campaign process only after a particular candidate has proven popular with voters, avoiding any inefficiencies or expenditures incurred by supporting candidates that voters won’t pick. Candidates benefit from party infrastructure and unified party support for the remainder of their campaigns.
Korea runs this system in reverse. Instead of declaring one’s candidacy by filing with a government office and running in a primary, candidates for elected and appointed proportional representative positions in Korean city, provincial, and national government must apply directly to political parties for their endorsement. The candidate selection process occurs roughly six months prior to election day. Political parties create candidate selection committees that screen applications, deliberate, and then choose whom to lend the party’s endorsement. Candidate selection committees consist of roughly ten people chosen by party leaders. The exact composition of these candidate selection committees is not known, but based on the information I have gathered from my own interviews with Korean public intellectuals and politicians, party leaders typically pick people that are both close to the party structure and respected professionals in their fields. After the nomination process is complete, parties submit candidate lists to the National Election Commission so that candidates can be included on the official ballot. Independent candidacy is possible, but independent candidates must acquire direct endorsement from a certain minimum number of voters, depending on the level of government for which they are campaigning.
When constructing candidate lists, Korean parties must abide by gender quotas mandated by the national government. Korean legislation mandates gender quotas at all levels of politics, and national laws are supplemented by voluntary gender quotas implemented by the parties themselves. The first gender quota for the National Assembly was enacted in 1995 in the “Framework for Women’s Development Act,” but didn’t carry any penalty for parties that didn’t comply with the suggested 30% minimum quota for women candidates. The National Assembly remedied this problem in 2002 with the “Act on Elections for Public Offices and Prevention of Electoral Malpractice,” which established penalties for parties that didn’t comply with gender quota regulations, and created a financial reward system for parties whose number of female appointees exceeded the minimum gender quota. This law also increased the minimum gender requirement for party appointees to National Assembly proportional representation seats from 30% to 50%. Additionally, according to amendments to the 2006 National Assembly “Public Official Election Act,” women must comprise at least 10% of local party candidate nomination lists. The National Election Commission rejects in their entirety any candidate lists that don’t comply with these laws.
The National Assembly consists of 300 total seats: 246 are filled by elected representatives from single-member districts, and the remaining 54 are proportional representation seats divided among the parties based on which party wins the greatest number of votes in the national election. Typically the ruling party receives around 22 of those seats to appoint representatives of their own choosing. Parties then fill their seats by moving down the list of appointees that the candidate selection committees constructed prior to the election. The list is ordered alternating by gender so that parties are able to meet the 50% minimum gender quota mandated for National Assembly proportional representative seats. Representatives appointed by the parties are expected to serve as “representatives-at-large,” where they have no obligation to a particular district. Usually these representatives have no prior experience in politics, and are appointed so that they can contribute their professional expertise in fields like economics, agriculture, gender issues, etc. to legislation in the National Assembly.
As a consequence of the gender quota’s implementation, the number of women in the National Assembly increased from just under 6% to around 15% practically overnight in the 2004 national general election. (Most of that increase was accounted for by the appointment of women candidates through the proportional representation party list system.) While the 2004 elections were promising for developing women’s political representation in Korea, progress stagnated and women’s representation in the National Assembly continues to creep along at the rate of increase of around 1 or 2 percent. Gender quota laws and regulations have been helpful in increasing the number of women in elected positions in all levels of government, but don’t seem to be encouraging women to run in greater numbers. Female interviewees serving in the National Assembly as appointed representatives-at-large have describe feeling “unconfident” about running for election in a particular district in my interviews with them, even though they have experience in the National Assembly and ostensibly have support from their parties by receiving nomination for a proportional representation seat.
Given the slow rate of increase for women’s representation in the National Assembly and women proportional representatives’ lack of confidence about running for a district seat, the question remains about what kinds of obstacles women politicians face when they run for office in Korea. In my opinion, it seems that the candidate selection committees play an important role in determining which candidates “make it” in Korean politics. These committees are shrouded in secrecy, and, while their existence is common knowledge in Korean society, they remain incredibly misunderstood. Another arm of my project focuses on the role that personal and professional networks can play in aiding a woman politician’s career. Do local women politicians have a fair chance at rising through the ranks to the national level, or are there unarticulated structures working against them? While women’s lack of adequate representation in politics is a complex problem and my project falls far short of providing comprehensive answers, my hope is that my research here in Korea can contribute to future solutions and perhaps create new perspectives that we can apply to the analysis of women’s political representation around the world. I welcome your comments and criticism on my work, and I look forward to answering these questions with you.
References:
Jones, Nicola Anne. Gender and the Political Opportunities of Democratization in South Korea. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Oh, John Kie-chang. Korean Politics: The Quest for Democratization and Economic Development. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
The Quota Project. “Country Overview: Korea, Republic of.” Last modified 29 March 2011. http://www.quotaproject.org/uid/countryview.cfm?ul=en&country=122#cview_subnational
Republic of Korea Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. “여성발전기본법 시행령” (Executive Order for the “Framework on Women’s Development Act”). 23 March 2013. Accessed 22 January 2013. URL:http://www.lawnb.com.access.ewha.ac.kr/lawinfo/link_view.asp?cid=2229979753224F039910BDEA1693FE1B
Republic of Korea National Assembly. “여성발전기본법” (“Framework on Women’s Development Act”). 13 June 2008. Accessed 22 January 2013. URL: http://www.lawnb.com.access.ewha.ac.kr/lawinfo/link_view.asp?cid=A944EB1B39244FC785B10A159168044B
Republic of Korea National Election Commission. “Candidate Registration.” http://www.nec.go.kr/engvote_2013/02_elections/01_07.jsp
Soh, Eunyoung. “Ten Years’ Experience of Gender Quota System in Korean Politics.” Tohoku University, ISS, University of Tokyo. GEMC Journal 4 (March 2011): 98-105. Accessed 22 January 2014. URL: www.law.tohoku.ac.jp/gcoe/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/gemc_04_cate3_5.pdf
Wireless Peninsula 