The 2024 South Korean National Assembly Election: Efficiency Amid Political Polarisation

Such deep polarisation reached its climax in the bitterly fought election campaign period that lasted for 14 days, from 28 March to 4 April. Particularly in the lead-up to its final phase, the election campaign was significantly tainted by hostile discourse, slanderous attacks between rival parties, and harsh rhetoric. Policy and reform discussion was notably absent from the discourse.

Furthermore, the 2024 NA election was held amid the President Yoon's decreasing approval rate, following his struggle to achieve his agenda in a legislature dominated by the DPK, a cost-of-living crisis, a spate of political scandals, his administration its perceived mismanagement of economic issues and corruption allegations.

Elected to the presidency in 2022, Yoon Suk Yeol defeated the DPK's candidate, Lee Jae-myung, by a mere 0.73 percent margin, the slimmest victory recorded in any presidential election. However, upon assuming his office, Yoon had inherited a DPK dominated assembly, elected in 2020.

Hence, the outcome of the 2024 NA election came as a major political setback to President Yoon. With the DPK further consolidating its control of the NA,for his remaining three years in office Yoon will be the first president in decades to contend with an opposition-controlled parliament for his entire time in office. This will de facto further reduced his already limited ability to implement reform and policies requiring bipartisan legislative endorsement.

For the DPK and allied parties, despite the remarkable success at the 2024 NA elections, they fell short in obtaining the 200 seats that had been forecast by exit polls. A two-thirds majority in the National Assembly would have allowed them to override any presidential veto, rewrite the Constitution, or even impeach him.

Key takeaways from the 2024 NA election

Looking at the 2024 NA election, two contradictory insights - one on the positive side, the other on the negative one - can be highlighted:

Firstly, the Republic of Korea's politics continue to be persistently polarized, characterised by a deepening ideological divide between the major political parties and their supporters. Regrettably, this factor contributes to a political landscape where dialogue is increasingly challenging, policy and reform agendas fail to be pursued, and where social conflicts and the divide between opposing political ideologies continue to be amplified rather than resolved through mediation, compromise, and party politics.

Secondly, the limited yet smart and strategic harnessing of technology introduced by the NEC to enhance voting in the RoK, aiming for inclusivity, efficiency, and convenience for voters while upholding security, transparency, and reliability standards.

Notably, such application of technology is primarily focused on typically less contentious aspects of the voting procedure, such as voter eligibility verification, ballot printing and sorting, rather than on procedurally or politically sensitive areas like ballot marking or counting of the votes, which are more prone to scrutiny, controversy, and disputes. This strategic approach reflects a balanced deployment of technology to streamline certain aspects of the electoral process without compromising its integrity which can serve as an important lesson to be learned by electoral management bodies across the world, planning to adopt technology solutions for their elections.

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Footnotes

¹ The National Assembly is the unicameral national legislature of the Republic of Korea.

² In the 2020 NA election, the DPK had won 163 seats, the highest number of seats won by any party since 1960 which, together with the 17 proportional representation seats secured by the DPK's satellite party, the Platform Party, had given to them a total of 180 seats.

³The introduction of a legal quota in the RoK has been followed by an increase in the number of female legislators elected to its unicameral parliament.

⁴ During the "blackout"period the publication of opinion poll results is prohibited.

⁵See: https://korean.stackexchange.com/questions/2712/what-is-the-significance-of-the-korean-voting-stamp

⁶See: "YouTuber faces prosecution in Korea over suspected spy camera installation at polling stations", The Korea Times, available at: https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2024/04/251_372149.html

⁷BeforeSlovakia's 2023 parliamentary election fake AI-generated audio recordings impersonated a liberal candidate discussing plans to rig the election.

⁸A robocall impersonating President Biden advised New Hampshire voters not to vote in the state's presidential primary election.

⁹The 2024 Indonesian election saw a deepfake video "resurrecting" the late President Suharto. 

¹⁰The use of deepfake content, albeit not for malicious aim, is not entirely new to politics in the RoK. During the presidential election campaign in 2022, the two main candidates had employed AI-generated avatars of themselves to appeal the electorate.

¹¹Hefty sanctions (up to (U$37,000) have been introduced for anyone found to show or divulging political campaign videos created with deepfake.

¹²See: "April 10 elections under threat from AI deepfake manipulation", the Korea Tomes, available at: https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2024/04/113_369059.html

¹³See: Australian Institute of International Affairs, "Voting Preferences in the 2024 South Korean Legislative Election"; available at: https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/voting-preferences-in-the-2024-south-korean-legislative-election/

¹⁴This age group played a decisive role in influencing the razor-thin outcome of the 2022 presidential election.

¹⁵ Gallup Korea poll.President Yoon's popularity recorded a 18 percentage point drop from 52 per cent in May 2022, when he first took office, to 34 per cent in March 2024

¹⁶President Yoon often blamed the DPK-controlled Parliament for blocking or undermining his reform agenda, in particular the introduction of labour and health care policies.

¹⁷The last two actions require confirmation via a referendum and the Constitutional Court, respectively.

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