Scrap proportional seats if confusion continues

Jeon Ji-yeh — a controversial candidate for a proportional representative seat for a satellite party of the Democratic Party (DP) in the April 10 parliamentary elections — resigned from her candidacy Tuesday. Earlier, Jeon was nominated as the first candidate of the satellite party for proportional seats. But after she was found to have led protests against the annual Korea-U.S. joint military drills as head of an anti-U.S. group, the DP demanded she withdraw from her candidacy. In a statement, she refuted criticism about her by defining it as just “an outdated ideology-based attack.”

But the DP’s satellite parties nominated many provocative candidates like Jeon. Another candidate of the satellite party for proportional seats even orchestrated a methodical opposition to the deployment of the Thaad anti-missile system in Korea. What about the three candidates for proportional seats representing the left-wing Progressive Party? The party succeeded the Unified Progressive Party, which had been disbanded after being ruled as an unconstitutional party.

The 36-member panel of a satellite party of the DP to examine the qualifications of candidates for the 46 proportional seats in the 300-member National Assembly is mostly comprised of leftists, including those who worshipped the national liberation mantra ardently championed by left-wing student activists in the 1980s and ‘90s. Because such examiners were a majority in the panel, the two radical leftists, including Jeon, could be nominated as candidates for proportional seats. Another satellite party led by former Justice Minister Cho Kuk is crammed with ex-convicts and others on trial for criminal charges.

Proportional representative seats were created to represent a number of professional associations and the socially weak. But the DP’s satellite parties have turned into a shelter for pro-North Korea activists and other criminal suspects. The shocking disarray in nominations of candidates for proportional seats resulted from no guidelines for the nomination.

In 2019, the two main parties passed a revision to the Election Act to raise the transparency of the nomination process for proportional seats by mandating democratic internal voting systems and submission of records on the nomination process. But the two parties removed the requirements in 2020 ahead of a legislative election that year.

Given all the noise in nominating candidates for proportional seats, the National Assembly must include strict regulations on the nomination of candidates for proportional seats again. If dubious nominations behind closed doors repeatedly take place, it will be even better to scrap the proportional seats.