Candidate registration begins for tight general election

Politics

Published: 21 Mar. 2024, 16:23 Updated: 21 Mar. 2024, 20:40

Candidate registration begins for tight general election

A sign outside the Seoul branch office of the National Election Commission in Jongno District shows that 20 days remain before the April 10 general election on Thursday, the same day that candidate registration began. [YONHAP]

Candidate registration for the April 10 general election began on Thursday, capping weeks of controversies over party nominations and the start of a fierce nationwide contest likely to shape President Yoon Suk Yeol's remaining three years in office.

The election takes place amid unfavorable ratings of the president’s performance as the country faces a myriad of challenges, including the ongoing doctors’ strike, rapid population aging and rising security concerns over North Korea’s illicit weapons development and arms trade with Russia.

Both the conservative People Power Party (PPP) and the liberal Democratic Party (DP) are calling on voters to support their candidates in the general election, either to empower the Yoon administration or to pass judgment on its record from the past two years.

The PPP, which is closely aligned with the president, appealed to voters to back its bid to wrest control of the National Assembly, arguing that the Yoon administration’s agenda has been stymied by the DP’s majority in the National Assembly.

The DP, which seeks to maintain control over the legislature, has capitalized on various controversies surrounding Yoon and his government, urging voters to empower the party so that it can continue checking the president’s powers and prevent his administration from pursuing policies that it claims will inflict more harm on the economy.

A third party — the Korea Innovation Party led by former justice minister Cho Kuk — has also emerged as a dark horse and could prevent either of the two main parties from winning an absolute majority in the National Assembly.

Recent surveys foretell a tight election, with the PPP facing the particular challenge of winning over voters despite its close alignment with an unpopular president marred by controversy. Currently, Yoon is under fire over his wife’s private affairs, his hardline stance toward doctors on strike against the government’s planned medical recruitment increase and the appointment of former defense minister Lee Jong-sup as ambassador to Australia.

Lee, who is under investigation for allegations of abuse of power, returned to Korea on Thursday after the DP accused the Justice Ministry of letting him flee the country by lifting his travel ban.

In a public opinion poll conducted by Gallup Korea from March 12 to 14, President Yoon Suk Yeol was rated favorably by 36 percent of 1,002 respondents, marking a decline of 3 percentage points from the previous week.

The survey had a confidence interval of 95 percent and a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.

Support for the PPP in the same survey came in at 37 percent, the same as the week before, while support for the DP and the Korea Innovation Party rose by 1 percentage point each to 32 percent and 7 percent.

Support for the DP has slumped in surveys conducted over the past few weeks as a long-simmering feud between internal factions that support or oppose leader Lee Jae-myung burst into the open during the party’s nomination process.

DP lawmakers who were excluded from nominations have accused the party of deliberately eliminating members deemed insufficiently loyal to Lee, with some even defecting to the PPP or former DP leader Lee Nak-yon’s splinter party.

While the PPP is ahead of the DP in most recent polls by varying degrees, conservatives face an uphill battle in the capital region’s 122 constituencies, which make up almost half of the 254 directly elected seats in the 300-seat National Assembly, which also includes 46 seats filled by party-list proportional representation.

Forty-eight constituencies are up for grabs in Seoul, while the capital region’s remaining 74 constituencies are spread across Incheon and Gyeonggi, which lean toward the DP.

The direction of the vote in Seoul has mirrored public opinion in the past two general elections held in 2016 and 2020. The party that won the majority of Seoul’s constituencies in those elections — the DP — also won the most seats in the National Assembly.

According to a Gallup survey conducted from March 12 to 14, support for the DP in Seoul rose by 6 percentage points from the previous week to 32 percent, overtaking support for the PPP, whose support fell from 45 percent to 30 percent over the same period.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]