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South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol speaking at the presidential office on TV at Seoul Railroad Station in Seoul. April 1, 2024
Viewpoint: South Korea’s president looks to legislative elections to kickstart his agenda
All 300 seats in South Korea's unicameral legislature will be up for grabs in the April 10 election, offering President Yoon Suk-yeol the opportunity to kickstart his agenda if his conservative People Power Party, or PPP, can gain control of the National Assembly. The center-left Democratic Party of Korea, aka DP, currently holds a majority of the seats in the chamber and has frustrated Yoon’s efforts to advance business-friendly policies since he took office in 2022.
Nonetheless, the PPP faces long odds in flipping the chamber, according to Eurasia Group expert Jeremy Chan. We asked him to explain.
Why the poor prospects for the PPP?
The conservative party would need to gain roughly three dozen seats to recapture the National Assembly, a tall order that will be made even more challenging by Yoon’s low approval rating, which hovers below 40%. While his name will not appear on the ballot, the election is widely seen as a referendum on Yoon’s administration.
For Yoon, failing to recapture the National Assembly would effectively render him a lame duck with more than half of his term in office remaining. It would put his agenda of cuts to taxes and government spending on life support and make him the first Korean president in decades to serve an entire five-year term without ever exerting control over the legislature. Attention would promptly shift to the race to succeed Yoon in the 2027 presidential election.
What are the main issues for voters?
The state of the economy is at the top of the list, particularly sluggish growth and worrying debt levels for households and corporations. A recent rebound in Korea’s export sector — largely driven by an uptick in global demand for Korean semiconductors — has provided a bit of a tailwind to the economy, but overall sentiment remains negative. Voters are likely to hold the ruling conservative party responsible for this situation, even as the opposition in the National Assembly has watered down many of Yoon’s business-friendly reforms, which are meant to stimulate growth.
Scandals and other allegations of impropriety are another top voter concern. Many left-leaning voters find Yoon’s leadership style imperious, particularly his attacks against critical media outlets. His wife, Kim Keon-hee, is also a lightning rod for public criticism, with Yoon postponing a trip to Germany and Denmark in February to keep her out of the spotlight; if left-leaning opposition parties hold onto the National Assembly, they are likely to open an investigation into allegations that Yoon’s wife received unreported gifts and committed other misdeeds. Meanwhile, the leader of the DP, Lee Jae-myung, continues to face his own corruption investigations, which has decreased support for the main center-left opposition party.
What can this election tell us about the state of Korean politics?
Polls suggest that the election will likely be decided by a narrower margin than the last legislative election in 2020; the top two candidates in roughly 60 single-member districts are polling within the margin of error. Tempers are also running high in Korea, where political polarization has worsened in recent years. Both Yoon and Lee — the runner-up in the 2022 contest — are divisive figures, which has increased support for splinter parties, most notably the newly formed Cho Kuk Innovation Party. Korean politics have traditionally been dominated by two major political parties, but this election may be a harbinger of a more pluralistic system to come. With 30 of the 300 seats in the National Assembly to be allocated to non-major parties, chances are high that neither the PPP nor the DP will secure an outright majority.
Will the election outcome change Korea’s relations with the US, Japan, China, or North Korea?
This election will not have a significant effect on Korea’s foreign policy. Regardless of the outcome, Yoon will retain wide latitude over Korea’s external relations, including in diplomacy, security, and trade. Yoon will continue to deepen Seoul’s ties with Washington and Tokyo — he will participate in a trilateral summit with US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington in July — while relations with Beijing and Pyongyang will remain strained. The US is on the verge of overtaking China as Korea’s top export market, and Korean firms are increasingly directing their investments away from China. By the time Yoon steps down in 2027, his successor will face a remarkably different external environment than the one Yoon inherited in 2022.
If the conservative party manages to pull off an upset, how will that change the political landscape in Korea?
A conservative victory in the legislative elections — not likely but also not unthinkable — would breathe new life into Yoon’s presidency. His administration would move quickly to enact a raft of business-friendly reforms, including lowering taxes on corporations and increasing government support for small- and medium-sized enterprises.
“Strategic” industries such as semiconductors, electric vehicles, batteries, biotech, and AI would likely benefit from greater policy attention. And Lee would come under increasing pressure to step down as head of the DP.
A PPP-controlled National Assembly would also put wind in the sails of the government’s recently announced “Corporate Value Up Program.” The program is designed to reduce the “Korea discount” whereby domestic firms have lower valuations than peer companies in Japan and Taiwan; it promises tax credits and other incentives to firms that “value up” their stock price through increased dividend payments, share buybacks, and improvements to their corporate governance.
South Korea's deputy foreign minister for political affairs, Chung Byung-won, Japan's Senior Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Takehiro Funakoshi, and China's Assistant Foreign Minister, Nong Rong, pose for photographs during their meeting in Seoul, South Korea, September 26, 2023.
To win back South Korea, China tries to chill out
Diplomats from China, South Korea, and Japan agreed to resume high-level trilateral meetings at the “earliest convenient time” in a signal that Beijing may be rethinking its aggressive foreign policy approach.
South Korea will host the meeting, likely in December, which will feature South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and China’s second-in-command, Premiere Li Qiang. It follows the same format used in eight similar trilaterals between 2009 and 2019, before COVID-19 and tensions between Seoul and Beijing interrupted the program. At the time, Beijing was pursuing a maximalist foreign policy framework that often emphasized aggressive tactics against states perceived to be acting against China’s interests.
Seoul got a nasty taste of the approach when it announced it would buy advanced missile defense systems from the United States in 2016. Beijing objected to the powerful radars that could theoretically peek into Chinese airspace and retaliated economically after Seoul refused to back down.
It proved a serious misstep, according to Eurasia Group Korea expert Jeremy Chan. Virtually all aspects of Sino-South Korean relations soured, from the government and the private sector to the court of public opinion. And instead of knuckling under, South Korea reduced its exposure to Chinese pressure as its private sector increased trade with other countries and the Yoon administration pursued stronger relations with the US and Japan.
That last aspect, in particular, seemed to help Beijing wake up and smell the soju. After the historic summit between Yoon, Kishida, and US President Joe Biden at Camp David last month, “China actually reacted toward South Korea in a way many weren’t expecting, in that they extended an open hand,” says Chan, “They seem, if anything, like they want to halt the Korean tilt toward the US rather than bring out the stick again and accelerate that process.”
What’s more, Chinese President Xi Jinping told South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo that — after skipping major fora like the G20 and UN General Assembly — he is “seriously considering” making a trip to Seoul.
“The fact he’s even mentioning this indicates there has been some acknowledgment up to the level of Xi that they’ve alienated Korea,” says Chan.
Fish and sashimi imported from Tokyo are displayed for sale at a market on August 24, 2023 in Hong Kong, China.
Fish fight: China vs Japan
Japan, along with many independent scientists and the International Atomic Energy Agency, have said the water is safe. Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida even publicly ate fish from the affected area. But China isn’t buying it. Beijing sharply protested the release, banned imports of Japanese fish, and urged others to follow its lead.
This conflict appears to go well beyond safety concerns. In fact, China has been accused of deliberately spreading misinformation about the health risks from this event, prompting vandalism and threats against Japanese people and companies in China.
But so far, China has been unable to persuade more of Japan’s neighbors to join in the outrage. At a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in July, China called on member states to denounce Japan’s water discharge plan, but the joint communique that followed the meeting ignored the issue entirely. At another ASEAN meeting earlier this month, China’s Premier Li Qiang sharply criticized both Japan’s water plan and Kishida, but the issue was then dropped.
It appears that wariness of China’s growing influence has been a more important factor in the Great East Asian Fish Fight than the region’s traditional mistrust of Japan.
Taiwanese soldiers stand guard as a Chinook Helicopter carrying a tremendous Taiwan flag flies over a military camp, as part of a rehearsal for the flyby performance for Taiwan’s Double-Ten National Day Celebration, amid rising tensions between Beijing and Taipei and threats from China, in Taoyuan, Taiwan 28 September 2021.
China tries to shape Taiwan’s Elections
As Taiwan’s election season gets into swing, China is attempting to use its economic clout to swing the vote away from the ruling, independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party and toward the more Beijing-friendly Kuomintang.
The background: Beijing insists that self-governing Taiwan is part of China, and Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to “reunite” the island with the mainland, by force if necessary.
On Tuesday, China announced a plan for “integrated development” with Taiwan, which Chinese state media hailed as a step toward peaceful reconciliation. Meanwhile, in a less peaceful signal,Beijing deploying a carrier strike group off the island’s southern tip.
It’s a carrot and stick dynamic the world ought to get used to as Beijing attempts to frame the Taiwanese election as a choice between economic and political tensions with China under the DPP, or prosperous and peaceful cross-strait relations under the KMT.
The carrot: China’s new proposals would allow citizens of Taiwan to work and live in Fujian, a province with strong cultural ties to Taipei, and allow them to access government services there. The plan would also “pair” the mainland cities of Xiamen and Fuzhou with the Taiwanese-controlled islets of Kinmen and Matsu, and encourage Taiwanese to buy property in Fujian.
Rick Waters, formerly the U.S. State Department’s top China policy official and now a managing director at Eurasia Group, said Beijing’s proposal will likely backfire, as it will remind voters of how Beijing recently diluted Hong Kong’s autonomy by grouping it together with several other mainland cities.
“In Taiwan’s elections, that won't sell well,” Waters wrote in a text interview.
The stick: In addition to those aircraft carriers, Beijing also recently announced an investigation of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, a free trade agreement that gives certain privileges to Taiwan. When it was originally signed under KMT president Ma Ying-jeou, it was seen as an important step towards integrating the economies of China and Taiwan.
The investigation, which could result in revision of the agreement, is due to wrap up in January, just after the election. Waters says the timing sends a clear signal: if voters back pro-independence candidates, they could lose mainland market access — but he doubts Beijing’s gambit will pay off as Taiwanese voters have had a front-row seat as Beijing has crushed Hong Kong’s democracy and economic independence, formal guarantees of autonomy be damned.
“For now,” says Waters, “the mainland is exhausting the options short of an invasion, no matter how unlikely they are to succeed.
Bar charts of Singapore, South Korea, and the Philippines's views on the US and China
The Graphic Truth: Perspectives on the US and China
The US and China are competing for influence around the globe, but tensions are particularly high in East Asia, where China is the dominant power and the US is working to stop the region’s drift toward Beijing. The Eurasia Group Foundation surveyed 1,500 people across Singapore, South Korea, and the Philippines – three countries caught in the middle of the US-China rivalry with significant historical, economic, and diplomatic ties to both superpowers – for their views.
“We found that the US is still held in high regard in the countries we surveyed, much more so than China, but that most think increasing tensions between the two countries will negatively impact their country's national security and domestic political environment” says Caroline Gray, a senior EGF researcher.
We took a look at the data to see how the US and China are faring in their competition for influence in East Asia.
US now rejects Beijing’s South China Sea claims. So what?
For decades, Beijing has laid claim to vast swaths of the South China Sea, over the objections of its neighbors and even international courts. And until two days ago, the United States had avoided taking a strong stance on the question. Not anymore.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday said that the US now supports a 2016 international ruling that explicitly rejects China's sovereignty claims over the sea.
Does this move matter? It's certainly an escalation for the US to reject Beijing's long-standing argument that the South China Sea is an integral part of China. From Beijing's perspective, this is meddling in China's internal affairs, notwithstanding the fact that five other countries — Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam — also claim parts of the South China Sea as their own.
But Pompeo's statement doesn't change much. For one thing, the 2016 ruling is based on a treaty — the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea — that the US itself has not even ratified.
Also, the US is late to the party. Irrespective of what Washington now thinks, China has long been quietly creating facts on the sea, as it were.
Over the past four years, China has continued building new artificial islands, complete with anti-ship missiles and military airstrips, in defiance of the US Navy's freedom of navigation operations (in which it sends its own warships through these waters as a show of force).
At the same time, Chinese fishing vessels still operate in disputed areas, over the protests of Filipino and Vietnamese captains who feel chased out of their traditional fishing grounds.
Perhaps most impressively, in 2018 China signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly explore for oil and gas in disputed areas with the Philippines, precisely the country that had brought the international suit against China in the first place.
The fact that China was able to strike such a deal with a country that had sued Beijing for encroaching on its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea is a sign that when faced with China's economic and military might, weak claimant countries often have no choice but to bite the bullet by agreeing to share what is (legally) entirely theirs. It's also a far cry from 2012, when a standoff over a fishing shoal brought China and the Philippines to the brink of war.
Why does the South China Sea matter at all? The waters have huge strategic importance. About one-third of global shipping passes through the South China Sea, which accounts for at least 12 percent of the world's fisheries. It is also believed to hold vast untapped reserves of oil and gas.
Whoever controls the South China Sea controls the main commercial and navigation gateway to East Asia — and that's why China will never let it go.
So, what happens next? For the moment, barring some kind of miscalculation among warships — which last week overlapped naval drills in the disputed area for the first time, without incidents — full-blown conflict between the US and China over the South China Sea is hard to imagine. The costs would just be extremely high for both sides.
But absent strong pushback, China will continue to slowly and steadily expand its de-facto control over these waters in ways that can permanently alter the balance of power in the region. Tough talk from Pompeo won't be enough to stop it.