South Korea’s Nastiest Presidential Election

When the 22-day official campaign period started on February 15, South Korea’s presidential election, set for March 9, entered its final phase. As it did, Lee Jae-myung from the ruling Democratic Party (DP) and Yoon Suk-yeol from the main opposition conservative People Power Party (PPP) were neck-and-neck; followed by third party candidates Ahn Cheol-soo from the minor opposition centrist People’s Party and Shim Sang-jung from the minor opposition leftist Justice Party. A Gallup survey two weeks before the election showed that Yoon’s support stood at 39.0 percent and Lee’s at 38.3 percent, with a gap of just 0.7 percent between them.

Ahn Cheol-soo, a renowned software entrepreneur and medical doctor, garnered 9.5 percent support in the poll. Ahn emerged as a potential game-changer on February 13, when he proposed to merge his campaign with Yoon by fielding a single candidate based on a popular survey to pick between them. Yoon and the PPP, despite welcoming the idea of a unified candidacy, opposed Ahn’s preemptive proposal, arguing that an opinion survey method could produce “distorted results.” Ahn dropped his offer a week later, citing the lukewarm reception from the PPP.

While the blame game between the two opposition parties intensifies over the failure to merge campaigns, Ahn’s moves – vowing to finish the race on his own while at the same time publicly hinting at his willingness to merge candidacies if “Yoon accepts [his] offer” – has rapidly added further uncertainties to the already tight race.

Unsurprisingly, Lee and the DP are engaged in an all-out campaign to entice Ahn away from the PPP. The ruling party offered to form a coalition government with Ahn’s party, which currently holds three seats in the 300-seat National Assembly.

The feverish courtship of the third party contender was just another twist in the most unpredictable and nastiest presidential election since South Korea democratized in 1987.

To win this duel, Lee and Yoon, along with their parties, have resorted to mudslinging, accusing each other and their respective families of corruption and moral misconduct. At the same time, they have flooded voters with populist pledges and policy proposals to win support, with each candidate claiming to be the decisive leader needed to make South Korea a truly fair and just country.

But voters are cynical toward both scandal-ridden candidates, neither of which has offered a clear vision or convincing policy narrative for the future. This is evident in various polls, which show most South Korean voters are basing their decisions on what they don’t want – and often what they don’t want is the status quo. In the February 21-22 Gallup poll, for example, 54.2 percent of the respondents agreed with the phrase “It is better for opposition candidates to be elected to change the government” while 37.6 percent agreed that“It is better for the ruling party to be elected to maintain the current administration.” That reflects widespread anti-Moon sentiment, especially among young people, who are upset about the perceived hypocrisy of the leftist Moon Jae-in administration and the Democratic Party.

What is noteworthy about this and other polls in regard to the two top candidates is that they both are struggling with a revolt of stronghold voters. In both liberal and conservative strongholds, more and more voters have turned their backs on their previously preferred parties. This voter cynicism, feeling betrayed by both top candidates and their parties, unsurprisingly exposes voter concern about the major issues comprising their top priorities, which demand urgent attention from the next president.

Voter Demand for Fairness and Justice

The biggest issue is voter demand for fairness and justice in South Korean politics and society. South Korean voters at large are disenchanted with Moon and the ruling DP’s failed policies, which have led to skyrocketing housing prices and a mushrooming of political corruption together with moral laxity. Moon’s political tribalism, imposing specifically his own norms while rejecting those who oppose them, has particularly exacerbated polarization in South Korean politics and society.

To his critics, the imprisonment of two former conservative presidents, Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak, under the pretext of eliminating “deep-rooted evils” is a telling example of Moon’s political tribalism and its politics of vengeance focused on a monopoly of power.

By sharp contrast, the scandal involving former Minister of Justice Cho Kuk, centered on his daughter’s fraudulent university admission using her family’s privileged social status, explicitly exposed the hypocrisy and self-righteousness of not only Cho himself but also the Moon administration and the ruling DP.

In this context, the youth revolt at the April mayoral by-elections in Seoul and Busan last year, which led to a crushing defeat of the ruling DP candidates, directly pointed to Moon and the ruling DP’s failed policies and lack of competence, especially in regard to high youth unemployment, income inequality, and skyrocketing housing prices. Voters were also incensed over wild land speculation scandals, among other political scandals.

The youth revolt reflected young Koreans’ collective sense of “betrayal,” especially toward the mainstream of the Moon administration and the DP, known as “Generation 586” (people in their 50s, former pro-democracy activists in the 1980s, and born in the 1960s). Young Koreans believe that, contrary to their self-proclaimed governing philosophy of “equal opportunity, fairness, and righteous results,” Moon and the DP have betrayed these values, dividing Korean society into an “establishment cartel” versus the “class of ordinary people,” as illustrated by the Cho Kuk scandal. Ultimately, young voters demand fairness and justice through due process, especially in their ongoing struggle for upward mobility within South Korea’s outdated classist society.

Demand for New Competent Leadership

Public demand for new competent leadership is another major issue that pushes voters to look beyond party allegiance. South Koreans are looking for a leader who can spearhead a wide range of action for fundamental change on major issues and challenges, putting the nation on a judicious path incorporating individuals and the country as a whole amid the ongoing pandemic.

The voters’ dilemma is that the two top candidates, Lee and Yoon, have no parliamentary experience, and neither has an unblemished record. Each is associated with a string of scandals and accusations. Above all, neither is trusted by many voters, especially young voters in their 20s and 30s who are touted as the key swing voters in this presidential election as they account for about 34 percent of all eligible voters.

As if to compensate for their lack of public confidence, both Lee and Yoon have pushed populist pledges and policy proposals in their election manifestos, each claiming to be qualified to build the democratic values of fairness and justice in South Korea, bringing hope for the future of the nation.

Lee, the former governor of Gyeonggi Province, for example, pledges to introduce a basic income, as he did in Gyeonggi, while portraying himself as a “competent economic president.” Lee’s populist views and anti-elitist streak are often compared to those of Donald Trump in the United States by his supporters and critics alike. Meanwhile Yoon, a former prosecutor-general with the public image of being a “defender” of constitutional rule of law, vows to restore the value of fairness and common sense in South Korean society through a change of government. Their election manifestos, being uncannily alike, have drawn media criticism for copying from one another and from elsewhere, espousing a raft of small impromptu “happy button” lifestyle promises.

Populist Pledges vs. the Demand for Housing Stability and Job Creation

The mirror-imaging in Lee’s and Yoon’s election manifestos is most evident in regard to the third major issue: voter demand for housing stability and job creation. Lee has pledged to distribute an annual basic income of 2 million Korean won ($1,736) to young people and 1 million won to all other citizens while also supplying 3.11 million new homes and creating over 3 million new jobs over the next five years if elected president.

Lee has pledged to form the youngest ever cabinet by recruiting people in their 30s and 40s, just as the ruling DP announced a related political reform seeking desperately to edge out his rival. The DP chairman, Song Young-gil, alarmed by the party’s crisis, with Lee’s approval rating trapped in the mid-30s, publicly pledged not to seek re-election in the 2024 general elections. Song is calling for the party’s mainstream lawmakers, Generation 586, to voluntarily give up their privileges and usher young people into politics, an all-out move to woo young voters.

Meanwhile, Yoon has also made numerous populist pledges and policy proposals, including a plan to supply 2.5 million new homes, as well as promising 1 million won in annual basic income for young people. In targeting young male voters, he also promised to raise monthly salaries for military conscripts to 2 million won, while offering 300,000 residential units to young people at cheap rates. Other promises include seating young representatives in every government office and allocating 50 trillion won ($42.2 billion) for small businesses and the self-employed.

Yoon’s pledge to relocate the presidential office to the Government Complex in Gwanghwamun and opening the “Gwanghwamun era” is the core of his political reform plan, appealing to nonpartisan middle-class swing voters, especially young people. With his pledge to end what he calls “the Cheong Wa Dae [Blue House] era, during which the presidential office reigned over the people,” Yoon is promising to reform South Korea’s imperial presidency. In so doing, he has anointed himself the successor to President Moon’s “candlelight mission” to clean up the office as successor to the impeached President Park Geun-hye – a remarkable transformation as Yoon, like Park, represents the conservative camp.

The main problem with both Lee’s and Yoon’s pledges and policy proposals, as well as their respective party’s additional proposals, is that they have no detailed action plans to carry them out. There are no future projections, implementation strategies, and cost analyses of how they will pay for these proposals, whether for housing cost stability or job creation, or even political reform for structural change.

Lastly and arguably the most risky and complex major issue is public demand for health safety, especially amid the Omicron surge. South Korea’s daily new infections soared to a record high of over 171,000 on February 22. As of February 25, South Korea had recorded a total of 2.67 million COVID-19 cases, with a death toll of 7,783, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

Under a newly revised Omicron-tailored home treatment scheme, KDCA and the South Korean government will be more focused on patients aged 60 and over and those classified as “high-risk” groups, while also offering rapid antigen tests to all. This new COVID-19 self-test system indicates clearly that South Korea’s much-lauded “K-quarantine” or “3T” virus management strategy of testing, tracing, and treatment is on the brink of collapse amid the soaring Omicron wave, despite 86.4 percent (44.32 million) of South Korea’s 52 million population being fully vaccinated, with 60.1 percent having received booster shots as of February 23.

Many South Koreans, including medical experts from various sectors, openly criticize the government’s chaotic new COVID-19 self-test system, which, in their view, has not only left those classified as “low risk” virtually to their own devices but has also caused medical chaos and civil anxiety with a sense of “being locked up and neglected.” From the end of January to February 22, the daily count of infections surged more than ten-fold. Given the soaring number of new COVID-19 confirmed cases per day – giving South Korea the world’s second-highest daily case count, as of publication time – 370,000 newly confirmed infected cases are expected on March 9, the presidential election day, according to the National Institute for Mathematical Science.

Unless South Korea miraculously brings the raging Omicron variant under control well before the presidential election, as Moon has mentioned a possible shift to a “return to normalcy,” voter backlash, especially against Lee and the ruling DP, may be severe. The consequences could last beyond the presidential election, deepening social, political, regional, and generational conflicts across the country more than ever.

Overall, Lee and the ruling DP’s major challenge lies in how they can dramatically increase the number of supporters amid a “crisis of trust.” Lee faces three major risks, including insufficient approval ratings in the Seoul metropolitan area, allegations of involvement in a massive land development project in the city of Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province while serving as Seongnam’s mayor, and abuse of power allegations levied against his wife.

The so-called “errand-gate” scandal has triggered public outrage well beyond Lee’s own alleged misdemeanors. Lee’s wife allegedly used civil servants of the Gyeonggi provincial government as personal secretaries to run errands and also used a government card for personal spending while Lee was governor. The scandal, unfortunately for Lee, hits at a sore spot: Koreans’ existing perception of the ruling elite’s hypocrisy. In an attempt to limit the damage, Lee and his wife have repeatedly apologized for her alleged abuse of power and misuse of government funds.

It appears, however, that Lee’s stagnant approval rating, hovering around the mid-30s for months, will increase significantly only if Lee and the ruling DP secure unity within the party – especially by ending the persistent factional feud between supporters of President Moon and Lee himself – while also convincingly regaining voter trust in Lee’s moral standing. Most urgently, the DP needs to win over traditional stronghold voters who have turned their backs on Lee and instead have chosen to remain undecided voters.

Yoon and the opposition PPP’s major challenge also lies in how swiftly they can increase Yoon’s approval rating to above 40 percent – a level safe enough to secure election victory – in spite of his own crisis of trust. Yoon not only faces allegations of abusing his power while he was top prosecutor, but also his own family scandals, which have become a key issue in this ongoing neck-and-neck race. Like Lee’s wife, Yoon’s wife is also embroiled in a string of allegations, including using false credentials and stock manipulation, among other accusations.

Beyond his own set of major risks, Yoon and his party most urgently need to take decisive action if they are to achieve their goal of regime change, which the majority of Korean voters want. Many media reports show that the PPP’s failure to field a unified opposition candidate is the biggest reason for Yoon’s decline in approval ratings. According to a Korea Research survey, 46.7 percent of respondents said that Yoon was more responsible for the collapse of a campaign merger compared to 32 percent of respondents who thought Ahn was more responsible.

Hence, Yoon and his party need to take bold and transparent action for “greater integration” through direct talks with Ahn instead of conducting under-the-table negotiations in the mistaken belief that they can win the election by maintaining the status quo of a divided opposition.

Toward that same goal, they also need to regain their traditional stronghold voters. Yoon did improve his approval rating in Seoul, especially among young voters, as well as other members of the middle class, in January.

The ultimate judges in this unpredictable and nasty election are, of course, the Korean people, who at a time of crisis have rarely failed to show their collective will to guard their precious democracy. Come election day on March 9, Koreans will again choose their future president based on which candidate persuades them most convincingly that he has captured their burning demand for a fair and just Korean democracy.