[Robert J. Fouser] South Korea's deep political divide

Korea Herald

21 hours ago

Lee Jae-myung of the slightly center-left Democratic Party of Korea began his presidency with a whirlwind of activity after winning a decisive victory in the recent presidential election. Though only ten days have passed, the election seems like a distant event. As with other elections, the results offer insight into the current state and future direction of South Korean politics.
This was the ninth election held since the 1987 democratic reforms that permitted the direct election of the president to a single five-year term. Since then, no party has won more than two presidential elections in a row, and power has shifted from center-right to center-left groups four times. Similar shifts between parties have occurred in National Assembly elections, which are held every four years. These shifts suggest that South Korean voters are evenly divided.
Lee Jae-myung's recent victory underscores this pattern. Going into the election, most polls predicted he would win over 50 percent of the vote, but he ultimately won 49.4 percent. Park Geun-hye is the only presidential candidate since 1987 to win a majority of the vote, having won 51.6 percent in 2012. Left-wing candidate Kwon Young-guk got just under 1 percent of the vote. Combined with Lee's 49.4 percent, center-left candidates earned a total of 50.4 percent. Though this is a majority, it is only slightly above the 50.2 percent that center-left candidates earned in 2022.
In contrast, Kim Moon-soo, the leading center-right candidate from the People Power Party, won only 41.2 percent of the vote. This is the second-lowest percentage for a candidate from the established center-right bloc since 1987. Only Hong Joon-pyo did worse in 2017, winning 24 percent of the vote. Controversial right-wing candidate Lee Jun-seok won 8.3 percent of the vote, bringing the total for center-right candidates to 49.5 percent.
Though Lee Jae-myung had a large lead over second-place candidate Kim Moon-soo, the combined vote total of center-right candidates has remained close to 50 percent in every election since 1987. In 2022, center-right candidates, including election winner and now disgraced former president Yoon Suk Yeol, garnered 49.4 percent of the vote. In 2017, Moon Jae-in won the election with 40.1 percent, and center-right candidates received 52.2 percent of the vote. These statistics suggest that South Korea is evenly divided between center-right and center-left groups, each dominated by a large party with historical roots. This means elections are decided by a small shift in votes or division within one of the groups. Both occurred in the recent election, helping Lee Jae-myung open a large lead over Kim Moon-soo. The same thing helped Moon Jae-in win in 2017.
A look at any map of recent election results explains why neither group can win by a large margin. The results of the 2025 election show the country divided evenly between east and west, with the People Power Party in red on the right and the Democratic Party in blue on the left. There are splashes of red in the Gangnam area of Seoul and in rural areas of North and South Chungcheong Provinces, but most of the area is blue. The Honam region, centered on Gwangju, is deep blue. The east is dominated by red, with the Yeongnam region, centered on Daegu and Busan, being heavily red.
This sharp division between Honam and Yeongnam has been a constant in South Korean elections since 1987. Though this division has lessened slightly in recent years, it remains significant at all levels of politics. Democratic Party candidates show strength in Busan and Ulsan, which have attracted residents from around the country. However, People Power Party candidates rarely win anywhere in Honam.
The problem for the Democratic Party is that Yeongnam's population is twice that of Honam. Nationally, voters in their 40s and 50s overwhelmingly supported Lee Jae-myung, offsetting Kim Moon-soo's strong support in Yeongnam. Meanwhile, Lee Joon-seok's anti-establishment rhetoric attracted male voters in their 20s and 30s, who supported him in large numbers, confirming the emergence of another generational divide that first appeared in the 2022 presidential election.
Ultimately, the election was triggered by the successful impeachment of Yoon Suk-yeol for briefly imposing martial law in December 2024. Although polls showed that 60 percent of voters supported impeachment, Lee Jae-myung received just under 50 percent of the vote. This suggests that established regional and generational divides influenced voters more than the desire to repudiate Yoon by punishing the People Power Party at the ballot box. These deeply entrenched divides are likely to continue to influence South Korean politics for years to come.
Robert J. Fouser, a former associate professor of Korean language education at Seoul National University, writes on Korea from Providence, Rhode Island. He can be reached at [e-mail]. The views expressed here are the writer's own. -- Ed.