A campaign poster in Wŏnju for a candidate in Saenuri-dang, Korea’s conservative majority party. (Author’s own image)
It’s election season again in Korea! Campaign posters have gone up all over and candidates have begun meeting with voters in earnest. Local politicians are up for election this year, which includes city and provincial council members and city mayors. It’s an exciting time to be in Korea for a researcher of gender and politics, since this year is the first election after the inauguration of Korea’s first woman president, Park Geun-hye.
There’s a lot to look forward to in this year’s elections, but first we have to get through the kongchŏn stage of the pre-campaign process. For those unfamiliar with Korean politics, the kongchŏn causes a great deal of confusion. Bewilderment is a natural reaction given that the process differs by party, region, and election year. I will try to deconstruct the kongchŏn enigma, and hopefully it will help readers to understand some of the current events in Korean politics regarding the elections.
First, what does kongchŏn (Kor. 공천) mean? In direct translation, it simply means “nomination.” In common parlance, it refers to the system of party committees that nominates candidates for Korean elections. Each political party does kongchŏn in their own way, but all Korean political parties have stuck with largely the same process since at least the mid-90s.
An easy way to think about kongchŏn is that it is an American primary in reverse. A candidate can’t run for office in Korea without registering with a party and going through their nomination procedures first. Independent candidates do exist, but they must collect thousands of signatures from individual citizens for the National Election Commission to put them on the ballot. Korean candidates only start campaigning after the party gives them endorsement through a committee evaluation. By comparison, American primaries are a way for parties to determine which candidate is most popular among voters before investing party resources in any one candidate.
About two to three months before any election, Korean political parties announce their kongchŏn process and the committee members. One committee usually consists of 7 -15 members, depending on whether it’s a local election or a national election. The committees themselves are in a national hierarchy with other party kongchŏn committees. In a local election, for example, a party might have kongchŏn committees at the subprovincial or even city level that appoints all of the candidates for districts in that area. Those committees report to the party’s Central Kongchŏn Committee, which ostensibly has final word over the decisions made for every party candidate in the nation. Even beyond the Central Committee, though, is the Supreme Committee, which consists entirely of party leadership and has the power to move candidates to different areas, ask for certain candidates to be chosen or thrown out, etc. The Supreme Committee continues to exist and oversee party functions after an election, whereas the Central Committee and provincial kongchŏn dissolve once candidates are selected.
How does the kongchŏn committee select candidates? That is the factor that fluctuates most from election to election, and can differ even by local kongchŏn. Local kongchŏn seem to be given a fair amount of autonomy in how they choose candidates, though that differs by party and by year. The most common method is to use a point system, in which the committee scores candidates based on their loyalty to the party, history of government service, likelihood of winning the election, preparedness for their desired position, quality of their application answers, and their performance in an interview with the committee. After the party determines the top two candidates in a district through this point evaluation, they allow them to go into the kyŏngsŏn (Kor. 경선) stage of the process, in which candidates begin campaigning in the usual style. During kyŏngsŏn, the party also distributes a public poll to assess how voters react to the top candidates. Based on a combination of these scores, the committee then endorses the candidate they feel is most likely to win the election.
Keep in mind that this process can differ based on party and district. But this should give readers a basic sense of what Korean media are talking about when they refer to the kongchŏn.
Sources:
Interviews conducted on January 22, February 6, February 10, February 11, March 24, March 31, and April 23, 2014 with current and past members of the National Assembly, Gangwŏn Provincial Council, Saenuri-dang’s Supreme Committee, and Minju-dang’s Supreme Committee.
Wireless Peninsula 