Parties strive to recruit fresh faces for April 11 parliamentary elections


Two women in their 20s, who belong to opposing parties on the ideological spectrum, have recently grabbed the media spotlight.

Sohn Su-jo, 27, has been the main subject of political discourse since she was chosen last week as the conservative ruling Saenuri Party’s candidate to run against a liberal heavyweight in a Busan constituency in the April 11 parliamentary elections.

She has been trying to catch up with Moon Jae-in, a potential presidential contender from the main opposition Democratic United Party, arguing she is better placed to represent the constituents than Moon, who she claims may be using his legislative seat as a stepping stone for his presidential challenge.

Moon, a former chief secretary to late President Roh Moo-hyun, has shown no sign of loosening his belt despite his comfortable lead over Sohn in opinion polls.

Moon, 59, said a young newcomer can be “more threatening” at a time when public desire for political reform is running high.

Later last week, another 20-something woman stirred up controversy with her Twitter post opposing the construction of the naval base on Jeju Island. Kim Ji-yoon, 28, posted a photograph of herself holding up a tablet PC showing a message referring to it as a “pirate base.”

The Navy filed a complaint against her with the prosecution on charges of defamation and contempt. Besides the legal step, a group of retired admirals called on leaders of the far-left splinter Unified Progressive Party to demand she be dropped from the list of its proportional representative candidates for the upcoming legislative elections.

Young aspirants

Kim said she had not meant to call all Navy personnel pirates and staged a one-person rally near the construction site over the weekend.

The two women are among dozens challenging to become the first 20-something member of the National Assembly in nearly half a century.

The main parties have been going the extra mile to recruit more candidates in their 20s and 30s to field in the upcoming elections, in an attempt to demonstrate their reform credentials and rally support from younger voters.

Better connected through social networking services, younger voters swayed the results of the parliamentary and Seoul mayoral by-elections last year.

Suffering a series of election defeats, the ruling party has tried to be more interactive with people in their 20s and 30s, who have turned their growing discontent with President Lee Myung-bak’s policies perceived as pro-rich into support for the opposition.

Its interim emergency council, formed last December, includes a 27-year-old CEO of a venture company, who studied economics and computer science at Harvard University.

Lee Jun-seok has drawn media attention for his outspoken remarks critical of established politicians, who he claims have been steeped in corruptive and old-fashioned practices. He has made frequent contact with Sohn through social networking services since she applied for party candidacy.

Some critics say her selection for the Sasang district in Busan has been calculated to minimize the possible impact a loss to the opposition big name would have on the presidential bid of Saenuri’s interim leader Rep. Park Geun-hye.

Park, however, rebuffed such criticism, saying at a debate last week that her party selected Sohn because it believed she “stands a chance of winning.”

The Saenuri Party, renamed from the Grand National Party in February, has also been looking to field other young candidates in the legislative elections, which are set to be followed by a presidential vote in December.

Party sources say a 29-year-old man, who runs an online site to help students from poor families with their studies, is likely to be included in the list of its proportional representative candidates.

The opposition groups have recruited young candidates in a way similar to popular TV audition programs, hoping to amplify public interest in the process.

Ending a three-month process called “Rock Party,” the DUP chose four people in their 20s and 30s ― two men and two women ― to be placed on the list of its candidates for proportional representative seats in an online vote by some 17,000 people aged 19-35, Sunday.

The UPP also picked up a young proportional representative candidate Monday through an online vote by about 49,000 young people, completing the one-month process named “Great Advancement.”

Favorable response

Despite some criticism over their motives and methods, the moves to inject young political aspirants into the legislature seem to be meeting with a favorable response.

“Voters in their 20s and 30s have been underrepresented at the National Assembly,” said Jaung Hoon, a political science professor at Chung-Ang University in Seoul.

He said it is desirable for young lawmakers to represent their generation whose thoughts he said have been changing too rapidly to be followed by those in elder generations.

“We definitely need 20-something lawmakers,” said Jeon Ki-hun, 27, who majors in mechanical engineering at Pusan National University in Busan.

“I believe a 20-something legislator would be able to better understand the problems facing those in their 20s,” he said.

Jeon said his preferred candidate would not necessarily be famous or talented but should be sympathetic to the younger generations.

Former President Kim Young-sam holds the title of youngest-ever lawmaker in the country. Kim, now 84, was first elected to the parliament in 1954 at the age of 26 in his hometown of Geoje, South Gyeongsang Province. He served nine terms as legislator before being elected president in 1992.

The second and latest politician to become a 20-something lawmaker is Kim Sang-hyun, who won a parliamentary by-election in Seoul in 1965 at the age of 29. A lifelong confidant to late liberal President Kim Dae-jung, he was last elected to the parliament in 2000 for a sixth term.

In the current Assembly, whose four-year term ends on May 31, the eldest lawmaker is Lee Yong-hee, 81, of the conservative Liberty Forward Party and the youngest is Kim Se-yeon, 40, of the Saenuri Party, with the average age of its members around 55.

One must be over 25 years old to be eligible to run in a parliamentary election.

Young candidates have pledged to focus on resolving difficulties with their generation and facilitating communication between political circles and younger people.

“If elected, I would try to ease the burden of tuition for college students,” said Jung Eun-hye, 29, one of the DUP’s four young proportional representative candidates.

Jung, who studies politics at the graduate school of Yonsei University in Seoul, also said she would devote herself to working out measures to support less privileged people. She has helped her parents with running a facility for single moms and taking care of aged people living alone.

Jung said she began being involved in political activities when she campaigned for a liberal candidate in the 2004 general election as a university student in Busan.

While most young candidates from the liberal and progressive parties have committed themselves to turning the upcoming parliamentary elections into a judgment on the corruptness and disconnectedness of the Lee administration, Sohn from the Saenuri Party has taken a different approach.

Sohn, a daughter of a truck driver, has said she wants to show people around her age that an ordinary person like her can make their dreams come true in politics. She has pledged to carry through her campaign with only 30 million won ($26,700), less than a third of the average expenditure by candidates during the 2008 parliamentary elections.

Some observers are skeptical that a handful of young politicians would perform their role as expected and change politics.

They express concern that the young lawmakers would be assimilated into the political establishment rather than injecting new voices.

Shin Yul, a professor of political science at Myongji University in Seoul, said the problems political novices say they would focus on might be too complicated and extensive to be settled from a generational viewpoint.

He said the major parties may be just using young political aspirants as means to give credentials to their reform work.

Jaung said it depends on political parties’ democratic structure and operation whether the ongoing experiment of injecting fresh blood into the political establishment is successful.

Key to election outcome

Observes note the turnout of younger voters will be key to the outcome of the upcoming elections as different generations are poles apart in their partisan support.

In a survey conducted by Media Research, a private pollster, early this month, 56.9 percent of respondents in their 20s said they would vote for a candidate of the opposition alliance, while slightly over 30 percent replied they would support a ruling party contender. The corresponding figures for those in their 60s or above were 29.0 percent and 50.2 percent, respectively.

With their proportion of eligible voters at a similar level near 20 percent ― in the 2008 general elections, 20-somethings and those aged 60 or above accounted for 19.0 percent and 18.6 percent, respectively -― their turnout is set to be a key factor in deciding the election results, observers say.

Traditionally, a higher turnout among younger voters has served liberal parties better.

The gap between the turnouts of younger and aged voters remained at 23.5 percent in the 2002 presidential election when Roh defeated his conservative rival Lee Hoi-chang but it widened to 33.4 percent in the 2007 poll when President Lee won a landslide victory over liberal contender Chung Dong-young.

In the 2008 general elections, when the conservative ruling party secured an overwhelming majority in the parliament, the turnout reached 65 percent in those aged 60 or above compared to around 30 percent for 20-somethings.

Opposition candidates defeated ruling party rivals in last year’s by-elections with more younger voters coming to polls, which they hope to be repeated in this year’s elections.

The main parties are competing especially to gain more support from 20-something voters. In a survey conducted in February, the DUP held a slim edge of 2.0 percentage points over the Saenuri among voters in their 20s while enjoying a 15.3 percentage point advantage over the ruling party among those in their 30s.

According to some election experts, the two rival parties are expected to safely secure about 120 seats each, and stage a neck-and-neck race in some 30 districts, with the rest of the 300 seats up for grabs likely to be occupied by independent or splinter party candidates.

The turnout and sentiment of 20-something voters will decide on the outcome of races in the key battlegrounds and thus the whole election, they say.

By Kim Kyung-ho (khkim@heraldcorp.com)