A few weeks ago, I met Gangnam District chief Shin Yeon-hee in her office for the first time. It was shortly before the district head stopped her official business to engage in her reelection campaign, as required by the election law.

Shin invited me and four other Gangnam residents to present letters of appreciation in her name. We were cited because we had planted trees along the banks of Yangjaecheon Stream last Arbor Day in response to the district’s neighborhood beautification program. I planted three cherry trees, already 4-5 meters tall, on the southern bank near my apartment. The district office attached tags on their branches to identify the donor. 

As soon as we introduced ourselves, Shin began making critical comments of Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon for some of his municipal policies, including the one concerning the development of the notorious Guryong Village, a shantytown at the foot of Guryong Hill. Immediately after her election four years ago, Shin took up the project to clear the worst eyesore in the Gangnam area, which was created by squatters on privately owned but military-controlled land more than 30 years ago.

The Defense Ministry later released the area from its “reserved zones.” The Gangnam-gu office contacted land owners and present (illegal) occupants to draw up an officially managed development plan. Then Park Won-soon was elected mayor in a by-election following the exit of former mayor Oh Se-hoon who was defeated in the free school meal plebiscite. The new mayor intervened in the Guryong project and demanded its alteration purportedly to give more benefits to dwellers. District chief Shin objected and requested the Board of Audit and Inspection to settle the dispute.

The state auditor is set to announce its decision a few days before the June 4 local elections. It was understandable that the district leader, affiliated with the conservative Saenuri Party, abhors the Seoul mayor from the liberal New Politics Alliance for Democracy, being very anxious about the outcome of the BAI inquiry, which would affect votes quite a bit. But it was not very reassuring to catch traces of partisan conflict overshadowing the local administration’s operations.

For the past several years, I have lived under conservative presidents, a conservative capital city mayor and then his liberal successor, and conservative district heads. Most citizens, including myself, must want to be free from the power politics of the central government, at least in their districts or neighborhoods, while eating out at local restaurants or walking along Yangjaecheon Stream. The election interferes with this wish every four years.

Hearing my district chief speak out her complaints about the mayor ― she may have counted me as one of her supporters ― I pondered the costs and benefits of having the leaders of different levels of governance with different party affiliations. What do the taxpayers gain when streams of criticism flow between Seoul City Hall and the Gangnam-gu office, and between the Blue House and the mayor’s office?

The local elections are less than a week away (with the first-ever “advance voting” taking place Friday and Saturday). Since 1995, we have picked mayors, district chiefs and local councilors under a complete system of party nominations for all levels of representation. Parties even nominated candidates for the proportional representation seats in provincial and district councils.

A thick envelope containing pamphlets for all candidates of my district was delivered to my apartment on Sunday. I carefully opened it and sorted the contents out into the six different levels: four were running for Seoul mayor; three candidates for Gangnam-gu chief; seven vying for the four Seoul City Council seats allotted for Gangnam-gu (a total of 266 candidates were registered for 96 seats of the capital city’s representative body); and four registered for the “sa” election unit of the district, which will produce two of the total 18 district councilors. There were four candidates for Seoul education superintendent.

A click on www.nec.go.kr led me to very detailed information related to the June 4 voting, complete with each party’s and candidate’s election pledges along with their personal data, including the current value of their individual properties and their records regarding military service and tax duties. Of some 50 names in the election papers, there were only five that I knew ― Park Won-soon, Chung Mong-joon, Shin Yeon-hee and a couple of candidates for Seoul education superintendent. The rest were total strangers.

As I will be away from Seoul from June 2-4, I’ve decided to cast my ballots through the advance voting at my “residents’ center” on Friday or Saturday. For Seoul mayor and education chief, my choices have already been made, but I am completely in the dark about other candidates. The brochures provide names of schools attended, present and former occupations and financial status but native places are not specified. The biggest emphasis is given to the candidates’ party affiliations and their individual pledges, detailed but generally impracticable.

Voters are most likely to choose from candidates by their parties because they have few other things to judge from. But they also know party membership has nothing to do with performing the missions as representatives of “basic units” (counties and districts) and their chiefs, and many believe that party affiliation is rather detrimental to making fair and just service to local communities.

President Syngman Rhee introduced the local autonomy system to check the National Assembly, Park Chung-hee abolished it in pursuit of administrative efficiency, and Kim Young-sam reintroduced it at all levels in 1995 to complete the framework of democracy. And ever since, the question of party nomination for basic local administration chiefs and councilors has remained unsolved. Most recently, Ahn Cheol-soo made a last-minute concession to acquiesce to Democratic Party leaders’ claim that “political reality” requires it.

When I opened the election pamphlets and saw the smiling faces of men and women, I wondered what party nomination meant for these individuals other than the hard political networking to win the influence of lawmakers or others in power, often risking brushes with law. Now, what should we do about party affiliation in the local autonomy system which has caused more conflicts than cooperation between the executive chiefs and councilors and between the heads of lower and higher administrations in my home district and elsewhere?

By Kim Myong-sik

Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer for The Korea Herald. He can be reached at kmyongsik@hanmail.net ― Ed.