On 10 April 2024, South Korea held its 22nd general election, which marked the highest ever turnout for a parliamentary election. Voters used the election as an opportunity to issue a verdict on the first two years of the right-wing conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol’s five-year term. Giving the opposition one of the biggest parliamentary majorities in recent decades, voters pushed the president, who has inappropriately exercised his presidential veto power on bills passed by the parliament, to the verge of being a lame duck. This article analyses the driving forces behind these results, suggests implications for Yoon’s foreign policy and explains the challenges that the election results have created for progressives in South Korea.
In the South Korea’s 22nd general election, the electorate showed a strong preference for opposition sides, along with mistrust towards President Yoon, who appeared to be out of touch with the public. Out of the 300 seats, the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) triumphed in 175 of them, as well as in 161 districts, and added 14 seats via its satellite party, while Yoon’s ruling People Power Party (PPP) secured 108 seats, 90 districts and 18 proportional representation seats. Including other seats won by opposition parties – such as the Rebuilding Korea Party (12 seats), the New Reform Party (three seats), the Saemirae Party (one seat) and the Progressive Party (one seat) – two-thirds of the National Assembly will be opposition lawmakers.
Backlash against the president’s inappropriate use of veto power
The election brought a wide range of issues to the table, from traditionally important issues such as rising living prices and the inadequate nominations of candidates based on personal connections, to newer ones such as the Yoon administration’s plan to increase medical school quotas. But a key reason for the unfavourable outcome for the ruling party was voters’ desire to rebuke a president who can hardly be described as democratic.
In the past two years, President Yoon, a former prosecutor general with no prior political experience, has used the presidential veto nine times against bills passed by the National Assembly, which is a record-breaking figure for the Korean presidency. In a country with an overwhelming presidential system, his predecessors have been hesitant exercising this power, with former President Moon Jae-in, for example, never using it.
One of the bills that Yoon vetoed included a special prosecutor Act targeting his wife, Kim Keon-hee, for her alleged involvement in manipulating the stock prices of Deutsch Motors, a BMW car dealer in Korea. Since no president had ever vetoed a bill requesting a special investigation involving family members of the president or close associates, the public was outraged, with the perception being that his wife was above the law.
Against this backdrop, Cho Kook, a former justice minister under the previous DP government, has said he will push for a special prosecution of Kim as soon as the National Assembly opens, arguing that Yoon’s remaining three years in office are too long to stand.
With this framing of the elections as a judgement on President Yoon, policy discussions on the future development of each region were not sufficiently addressed during the campaign.
Weakening confidence to push his conservative foreign policy further
President Yoon has been proud of his conservative value-based foreign policy, with a vision of making South Korea a global pivotal state contributing to freedom, peace and prosperity.
In July 2023, he undertook the first-ever presidential participation in a NATO meeting and agreed to increase information sharing by joining NATO’s Battlefield Information Collection and Exploitation System (BICES) and institutionalizing cooperation with NATO through the Individually Tailored Partnership Program (ITPP). After the meeting, he made a surprise visit to Ukraine, announcing South Korea’s peace initiative in support of Ukraine, including military, humanitarian and economic reconstruction aid.
South Korea also enthusiastically endorsed the Biden administration’s Summit for Democracy, convening the third Summit for Democracy in March 2024. However, civil society participation was very much limited, with leading South Korean democracy activists and organisations, mostly opposition leaning, not invited to the side event of the summit, and information about the side event being kept secret until the last minute. This led to domestic criticism that the government treated it as a showcase for the international community, particularly the United States.
Most controversial among his foreign policies at home, however, are his moves to expand military cooperation with Japan, South Korea’s former colony, and to alienate China, South Korea’s largest trading partner, in favour of the United States. On North Korea, he has also prioritised sanctions and military deterrence over dialogue and humanitarian aid, and pressured the regime by publicising North Korea’s human rights record in the international community, which have been deeply unpopular with progressive voters hoping to build peaceful relations with Pyongyang. The opposition voters view this as Yoon reversing policies of the previous Moon years, provoking inter-Korean instability and putting North Korea into closer cooperation with Russia and China.
While South Korea’s foreign policy largely rests in the hands of the president, the election outcomes could put the brakes on his foreign policy initiatives. The new opposition-led National Assembly could challenge existing foreign policy and demand modifications in coalition with civil society.
The progressive-led opposition to the 2015 South Korea-Japan Comfort Women Agreement between Seoul and Tokyo and the 2016 deployment of the US-made THAAD missile defence system are prime examples of such actions.
The Democratic Party, advocators for ‘strategic ambiguity’ with regard to issues concerning the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, and taking a hard line on historical issues with Japan, is expected to block Yoon's efforts toward trilateral security cooperation with the US and Japan. In return, the US and Japan will have less confidence in the implementation and continuity of the negotiated outcomes with the Yoon government. Opposition party members may also demand a fundamental change in the Yoon administration’s approach to North Korea, which seems unlikely to be accepted by the president.
Meanwhile, foreign policy issues with the EU, NATO and key European countries have not been prominent in the general election campaign, which provides a clue that Yoon’s efforts to strengthen stronger partnership with the Euro-Atlantic region are expected to continue on the current track. Interestingly, South Korea, which aims to become the world’s fourth-largest defence exporter by 2027, is expected to push arms exports to the EU as one of the key agenda items in its relationship with the bloc. The supposedly ‘progressive’ Democratic Party is unlikely to oppose this endeavour, as it too sees arms sales as a crucial part of the country’s economy.
A painful side effect of this referendum
The voters’ will to weaken the president’s power was so strong in this election that the Green Justice Party, which has offered a third alternative amid the two giant parties in Korean politics, was completely left out of the spotlight and failed to gain any seats.
The Green Justice Party has previously been a ‘casting vote’ as one of the three largest parties in parliament and has produced several MPs in general elections over the past 20 years. In the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, the Green Justice Party’s female candidate, Sim Sang-jung, was the only candidate to speak out in favour of LGBTQ rights during TV debates that included discriminatory remarks against LGBTQ people.
In conclusion, this general election has left the progressives in South Korea with the daunting task of figuring out how to realize progressive agendas in the absence of green alternatives at the National Assembly.
