National Assembly by-elections background

There are going to be 12 by-elections for the National Assembly on June 13^th. As no party currently has a majority in the National Assembly these elections could be crucial in deciding close votes over the next few years. 

 I’m going to try and do a blog on all 12 of the elections. In the meantime a list of the elections can be found on wikipedia. but first thought I’d do an introduction of a) how National Assembly elections work b) how the last election in 2016 went and c) what has gone on in terms of party politics in the national assembly since then.  

Korean general elections use two different electoral systems and every voter gets two votes. Voters are given a ballot for their constituency/ district- 253 members are elected by first past the post in single member constituencies. Voters are also given a ballot with political parties on it. 47 members are elected from these ballots by proportional representation.

2016 election results:

Democratic 123

New Frontier 122

People’s Party 38

Justice Party 6

Independents 11

Current party political makeup

Democratic 118

Liberty Korea 113

Righteous Future Party 30

Peace and Justice Party 20

Minjung 1

Korean Patriots 1

Independents 5

Vacant 12

Clearly quite a lot has happened since the elections in 2016

I’ll start with the Democratic Party. 2 members have defected other parties. 3 of their seats are now vacant. The President of South Korea is now Moon Jae-in, the leader of the Democratic party. That was easy.

The New Frontier party has rebranded after the impeachment and imprisonment of their President Park Geun-hye. They are now known as the Liberty Korea party and are down to 113 members. In 2016 the breakaway Righteous Party formed to try and force Park from office. Most of these members have since returned. One member left to the pro Park Korean Patriots party after her impeachment. 

4 of their seats are now vacant

The People’s party was only founded as a breakaway from the Democratic party in 2015. The People’s Party never really made their mind up where they were on the political spectrum initially claiming to be a new radical centrist party then running  (at least rhetorically) to the left of the Democrats in the 2016 National Assembly elections. Then in 2017 their candidate Ahn ran in his presidential campaign as a centrist- spotting a gap in the market when the relatively left-wing Moon Jae-In won the Democratic primary and the hard-right Hong Jun-Pyo won the Liberty Korea parties nomination. Therefore, the People’s Party had members from different parts of the political spectrum. After Ahn came third in the Presidential election the party had quite a lot of infighting. In January 2018 Ahn pushed through a merger with the remnants of the Righteous Party to form the new centrist Righteous Future party. However 14 more left-wing members rejected this attempt and formed the Party for Democracy and Peace. In the assembly having a group of 20 members is important bringing numerous benefits including state subsidies. So they formed a parliamentary coalition with the left wing Justice Party though outside of parliament they remain two separate parties.   

4 seats initially won by the People’s Party are now vacant.

The Minjung Party (I’ve stuck with the Korean name because it also translate’s to People’s Party and I didn’t want anymore confusion than necessary!) seems to be a re-foundation of the United Progressive Party which was outlawed by the Supreme Court for its alleged ties to North Korea. In 2017 they attracted two left wing independents from the Ulsan area though one of there members has been removed from the assembly for breaking campaign finance laws. 

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