By Kim Ji-soo
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A whopping 66.2 percent of voters showed up to exercise their rights, amid one of the nation's most contagious pandemics on record. Voters were spread across various age groups ― 18 year olds exercised their new right to vote picking National Assembly representative for the first time now with the lowering of the voting age ― which had been expected to show mixed results. The general logic is that a mid-term general election judges the incumbent administration, and therefore gives the opposition a glimmer of hope.
But the ruling bloc ― the Democratic Party of Korea and its satellite Civil Together ― won by an outstanding margin, securing 180 elected and non-elected seats. The main opposition United Future Party (UFP) and its satellite Future Korea Party together won 103 seats.
The drastic decline of the conservative opposition, which had been the mainstream in Korean politics, was a surprise. But pre-election polls had foreshadowed that voters in their 30s, 40s and 50s were leaning liberal or for a new era, with 60 percent of them stamping their approval for the Moon Jae-in administration's performance in the pandemic fight in Gallup Korea's poll conducted just days before the election. (Together the voters in their 30s accounted for 15.9 percent; 40s, 19 percent; and 50s, 19.7 percent of eligible voters at this year's general election.)
Many an analysis may be put forth, but we as voters are only the product of our history.
Those 60 and older are of the generations that witnessed Korea's fast industrialization era where conservative logic for a secure and prosperous nation overrode other sentiments. The political tent shared by voters in their 30s and 40s and to some extent voters in their 50s, however, includes political sensitivity. The voters in their 30s and the 40s are generations that experienced the 1998 financial crisis and directly feel the widening gap between the rich and poor. They lived through days of uncertainty in comparison to the "older" generation that believed hard work overcomes poverty. In addition, those in their 30s and 40s witnessed the Sewol tragedy. The 50somethings, or the so-called 586 generation, straddle many phases in Korea's history but are mainly identified as agents of Korea's democratization, which leads to higher sensitivity to what is a political right for a democratic nation.
Against the backdrop of such a voter makeup, the inability of the conservative bloc to revamp itself loomed large in voters' eyes, upstaging the Moon administration's and ruling party's erstwhile shortfalls. There is no question that the government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic affected voters. Thus, they voted for the party, the bloc that seemed to be doing better over the other.
The leap of faith has produced that whopping numerical contrast, "180 vs. 103." Many political pundits are calling it the end of conservatism as a mainstream political force and the ascent of liberalism.
The UFP with its satellite party has secured just enough seats to deter a unilateral party move in the Assembly to revise the Constitution. But otherwise, the ruling bloc enjoys a historic majority ― its first since 1987 ― that will allow it to surge ahead with its peace initiative toward the North, more income-led economic growth and more prosecution reform. Because the minor parties have not fared well, few pundits are forecasting that the Japanese political party environment of a 1.5 big ruling party vs. a mere 0.5 percent will set in. If the April 15 general election marked a change of the mainstream in politics, a more meaningful barometer comes in the form of the presidential election in March 2022.
