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South Korea’s presidential election slugfest
South Korean pop culture has taken the world by storm in recent years. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard of K-pop sensation BTS, the Oscar-winning film Parasite and the dystopian Netflix series Squid Game.
But the biggest show in South Korea these days is the presidential election campaign, which has featured so many gaffes, insults and scandals that it seems made for reality TV.
On Wednesday, South Koreans head to the polls, where they face a tough choice between two unpopular candidates in what’s been dubbed the “unlikeable election.” (Meanwhile, President Moon Jae-in is likely the most popular outgoing president ever — mainly for handling the pandemic well — but he’s constitutionally limited to a single term.)
Running for the center-left ruling party is Lee Jae-myung, a former provincial governor known as South Korea’s Bernie Sanders for supporting a universal basic income. Lee has come under fire during the campaign for his alleged mob ties, a prior DUI conviction, and for offering to drop his pants to prove he hadn’t had an affair with an actress.
Lee’s conservative rival is Yoon Suk-yeol, an anti-corruption crusader whose main claim to fame is helping convict former President Park Geun-hye of abuse of power in 2018. He aims to shut down the gender equality ministry and has blamed feminism for the country’s low birth rate. Yoon has been labeled the K-Trump for praising South Korea’s former military dictators, and he’s denied allegations that he’s into shamanism and anal acupuncture.
“The South Korean political landscape is deeply polarized, and this election shows that differences will be hard to overcome,” says Koo Se-woong, editor of Korea Exposé, a newsletter focused on all things Korean. “But the ugliness of the attacks on the two main candidates also reveals serious problems with the country’s political class, which suffers from entrenched corruption and moral turpitude.”
Neither Lee nor Yoon appear presidential, he adds, and “voters recognize that.”
Indeed, presidential politics have become so unhinged and detached from real issues that many young voters have checked out. So, the battle is on to woo the undecided under-40s who might go to the polls. And although Yoon is now polling slightly ahead of Lee, the outcome is more uncertain than usual precisely because the youth vote is so hard to predict.
“Younger voters helped propel Moon to power five years ago, but it’s not clear they will stick with his party,” says Jean Lee, a senior fellow at the Wilson Center. “I’ve heard a lot of frustration among young people with the current administration’s focus on engaging North Korea at a time when they feel they need their leader to focus on their needs.”
Koo points out that young South Koreans have rather practical concerns like employment or sky-high housing prices, which have doubled in Seoul since 2017. They also tend to be fiercely anti-China, pro-US, and are not worried about Kim Jong Un.
The question, says Lee, is whether young South Koreans who’ve struggled to find good jobs and affordable housing despite strong economic growth will give the ruling party another chance or express their frustration by voting for change, or by not voting at all.
Still, the outcome will have big foreign and trade policy implications. South Korea, the world's 10th-largest economy, is a manufacturing and tech powerhouse that is crucial to America’s security structure in the Asia-Pacific. It’s surrounded by a rising China, former colonial power Japan, and, of course, highly unpredictable North Korea.
If Lee wins, he favors warmer ties with Pyongyang, some daylight between South Korea and the US, and a cautious line on China. Yoon, for his part, wants to push back more against Beijing, bolster the US alliance, and ask the Americans to deploy a second THAAD anti-missile system to deter the North Koreans.
Yoon is leading in the polls, but not by much. With little distinguishing their domestic policy proposals and so much mudslinging, voters seem all but impressed.The other big elections of 2022
A few days ago we previewed five major elections to watch in 2022. Here are some others we'll be paying close attention to in the months ahead.
South Korea (March). South Korean voters will choose between two very different options to replace Moon Jae-in, the term-limited incumbent. The candidate from the ruling center-left party is Lee Jae-myung, a former civil rights lawyer and governor known as the South Korean Bernie Sanders because he backs a universal basic income. Lee’s rival and center-right hopeful is Yoon Seok-youl, a former prosecutor who helped convict former president Park Geun-hye of abuse of power in 2016.
On foreign policy, Lee wants warmer ties with China, more control over US forces in South Korea, and to play nice with North Korea. For his part, Yoon wants to push back more against China, bolster the US alliance, and deploy US tactical nukes on South Korean soil to deter Pyongyang. Yoon is ahead in the polls, yet not by much. Lee is more experienced and popular with young voters, who could decide the outcome if they turn up in high numbers.
Australia (by May 21). Australians will go to the polls before the end of May. It's a legislative election, so the party that gets a majority of seats in parliament will pick the next prime minister. The approval rating of the current PM, Scott Morrison of the right-leaning Liberal Coalition, is now at its lowest in 18 months due to frustration over one of the world's longest and strictest pandemic lockdowns, which has pummeled Aussie businesses.
Still, the Coalition remains neck-and-neck in the polls with the opposition Labor Party, struggling to capitalize on Morrison's unpopularity. The main campaign issues will likely be climate, but perhaps more COVID and the economy. On foreign policy, both parties want to maintain close ties with the US, support the AUKUS regional military alliance, and have similar views on China — although Labor doesn't want Australia to be in complete lockstep with America as it says Canberra has been under Morrison.
The Philippines (May). Philippine elections have always been deeply polarizing, and next year's will be no different. The current frontrunner in the race to succeed term-limited President Rodrigo Duterte is Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the late dictator. Marcos, a staunch Duterte ally, has the president's daughter as his running mate, and right now more than half of Filipinos would vote for him.
But Marcos is reviled by other Filipinos, who remember how his strongman dad embezzled up to $10 billion in his 21 years in power (which the Marcoses deny). With boxer-turned senator Manny Pacquiao polling in the single digits, the anti-Duterte and anti-Marcos opposition has pinned all its hopes on VP Leni Robredo, who beat Marcos in the 2016 Veep contest but at the moment is a long shot.
Kenya (August). Although President Uhuru Kenyatta cannot run for a third term, he will loom large over the 2022 election. Last May, the country's top court junked Kenyatta's planned constitutional referendum in order to make Kenyan politics less tribal in exchange for more executive power. The verdict was a big win for William Ruto, Kenyatta's deputy and current presidential frontrunner.
Ruto — the first candidate not from a political family with a shot at winning the top job — is leading the polls over Raila Odinga, the scion of a prominent dynasty and Kenyatta’s former enemy turned ally. Promising to fight both wealth inequality and political dynasties, the president’s number two styles himself as a "hustler" to appeal to the three-quarters of Kenyans aged between 18 and 35. But he needs to get young people to actually show up at the ballot box, and so far the ongoing registration drive isn’t going well.
South Korea's delicate US-China balancing act
South Korea is a close US ally, but also shares a border and does a lot of trade with China, so it's always walking a tightrope between Washington and Beijing. The South Koreans, says veteran Korea correspondent Jean Lee, are worried about growing US-China competition — but there's not much they can do about it. "We can't choose. We live next to China, we have lived next to China for millennia, but we are a staunch US ally," she explains. "I think there's no question that their loyalty lies with the United States, but it's very clear as well that so much of their financial future lies with China as well. Watch a clip of Lee's interview with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: The Korean Peninsula from K-Pop to Kim Jong-un
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