Suchergebnisse

This article deals with the policy decision process leading to the abolishment of party chapters in South Korea. Why and how the 'party on the ground' came to be banned by law twenty years after formal democratization is a puzzling question, since the institution of party chapters is key to achieving the central task that political parties have of translating the political will of the people into actual policy, and because parties are (therefore) constitutionally required to have the 'necessary means' to do so. While the justification for the abolishment can obviously be traced back to corruption and abuse of power at the election-district level, a systematic analysis of the decision-making process has been largely neglected in academic literature. The author of this article, however, has scrutinized the policy decision from a long-term perspective, doing so by way of discourse analysis in order to obtain a grounded understanding of the dynamics behind it and to provide insights for further theoretical inquiry and possible practical application.

The results of the 2016 general elections in South Korea were of surprise to most observers. Contrary to the expectation that the conservative ruling party, New Frontier Party (NFP), of President Park Geun Hye would again win the supermajority in parliament, it was in fact the main opposition party, the liberal Together Democratic Party (TDP), that won - beating the NFP by one seat, and in the process becoming the new majority party with 123 MPs in the 300 seat-strong national assembly. It is obvious that the voters did not suddenly favor the fairly incompetent TDP, but rather that the Korean people taught their government a lesson and showed through their voting their discontent with President Park's way of handling state affairs. In addition the very recently established Citizens' Party (CP), led by self-made IT businessman Ahn Cheol Soo, won 38 seats, and will nowform an independent negotiation group in the national chamber. The CP markets itself as a moderate and rational conservative party. Its success is the result of voters' discontent with the TDP's shift to the right due to the recruitment as party leader of Kim Chong In, who previously worked for several of the country's authoritarian governments; regionalistic sentiment in the Honam region also translated into altered voting behavior. However it remains to be seen, at least until the upcoming presidential election in 2017, whether this constellation of a divided government will indeed continue or not.

This article deals with the recent conventions (held in August 2016) of South Korea's ruling New Frontier Party (NFP) and the major oppositional Together Democratic Party (TDP), including explanations of the respective electoral procedures and their particularities. In both cases the main agenda was to elect new leadership, against the backdrop of the upcoming presidential election of December 2017. Naturally the party's nomination of the presidential candidate depends to a large extend on who is currently in power. Interestingly, both parties elected a leadership almost exclusively consisting of functionaries belonging to the currently dominant faction within each party - the pro-Park Geun-hye camp in the case of the NFP, and the pro-Mun Jae-in camp in that of the TDP. It remains to be seen whether it was a smart strategy to stick with the established powerholders so as to be nominating a competitive presidential candidate, or whether they should have opted instead for a political makeover. Both parties have been recent recipients of criticism for their poor performance, which even led to the emergence of a third party - the Peoples' Party (PP) - at the general election last year.

What are the characteristics of President Moon Jae-in's policy toward North Korea, and what lessons can be drawn for the future? More than 70 years have passed since the establishment of the two republics in 1948, during which continuous attempts have been made to achieve reconciliation, peace, and prosperity on the Korean peninsula. Even though the Korean War (1950-53) as well as the last authoritarian government in South Korea (until 1987) belong to the ever more distant past, neither, obviously, have the conflicts between the two Koreas ceased, nor has South Korea found a reasonable and effective way of addressing the conundrum. Against this backdrop of more than half a century of contentious inter-Korean relations, the paper examines the foreign policy (efforts) by the Moon administration (2017-2022) toward North Korea in order to shed light on challenges and opportunities for the future regarding the region of East Asia as well as inter-regional policy implications.

Memory politics, or the politics of memory, is about "who wants whom to remember what, and why" (Confino 1997: 1393). This struggle over memory is, besides directly writing and teaching history in publications and educational institutions, fought by way of (repetitive) performative acts at the site ofstatues, monuments, and memorials taking the form of rituals — such as holding commemorative speeches, worshipping, and mourning. Of course, "[the] remaking of the past is not the monopoly of modernity" (Kim 2010: 578), and thus political remembrance does not exhaust itself in those macropolitical commemorations referring to Korea's contemporary history alone. It can also be found in activities maintaining traditions, in practices of historiography, and in everyday culture — which extends much further into the past. Against this backdrop, this special issue draws together fivepapers that explore multiple different forms of political remembrance in Korea over the centuries, at diverse memory sites, and regarding various ways of performing them.

This article explores the Seoul National Cemetery's (SNC) characteristics as a memory space that is used to reproduce the official state narrative of South Korea history. A place for mainly commemorating the dead of the Korean War, the SNC would be used to promote an anticommunist Cold War frame. Hence, it has been useful for conservative forces to maintain hegemony in the ideological discourse forming part of the "remembrance war" with progressives in South Korea's increasingly liberal and pluralistic society. This analysis sheds light on discrepancies regarding who and what are remembered, how they are remembered, and why they are remembered. These discrepancies are represented in the contradicting deeds of the dead commemorated at the site, tensions in the symbolic vocabulary and architectural design of the SNC, and in competing deeds of those who are buried there and at other cemeteries.

The paper analyzes the 2018 local elections in South Korea. It starts off by explaining the country's election system, which besides separate presidential and general elections also features local ones too. After discussing the evolution of the local election system since its introduction in 1987, and the political background to its somewhat late fully fledged realization in the middle of the 1990s, the paper continues by explaining details of the various offices that are elected at two different regional levels. After briefly describing central aspects of the given voting rights, and discussing the characteristics and current developments of political parties, the text then turns to the analysis of the election results. In the beginning, basic parameters are given – such as voter turnout rate as well as the overall distribution of votes – in a historical comparison, pointing out in the process the landslide victory of the government party of the newly (May 2017) elected liberal president Moon Jae-in. This is followed by a discussion of participation by and outcomes for female candidates in the election. Finally, the results of the simultaneously held by-elections and the reelection of twelve National Assembly members are explained and put into context. The third section of the paper addresses the reasons behind the observed outcomes, in particular against the backdrop of the last two rightist-conservative governments and the new liberal one too. The paper is summed up by a conclusion that takes a brief look into the near future, and tries to make sense of the regional elections' results — in particular regarding the Moon-administration's likely subsequent performance, as well as forecasts for the upcoming general elections in 2020.

This article explores the Seoul National Cemetery's (SNC) characteristics as a memory space that is used to reproduce the official state narrative of South Korea history. A place for mainly commemorating the dead of the Korean War, the SNC would be used to promote an anticommunist Cold War frame. Hence, it has been useful for conservative forces to maintain hegemony in the ideological discourse forming part of the "remembrance war" with progressives in South Korea's increasingly liberal and pluralistic society. This analysis sheds light on discrepancies regarding who and what are remembered, how they are remembered, and why they are remembered. These discrepancies are represented in the contradicting deeds of the dead commemorated at the site, tensions in the symbolic vocabulary and architectural design of the SNC, and in competing deeds of those who are buried there and at other cemeteries. (Asien/GIGA)

The paper analyzes the 2018 local elections in South Korea. It starts off by explaining the country's election system, which besides separate presidential and general elections also features local ones too. After discussing the evolution of the local election system since its introduction in 1987, and the political background to its somewhat late fully fledged realization in the middle of the 1990s, the paper continues by explaining details of the various offices that are elected at two different regional levels. After briefly describing central aspects of the given voting rights, and discussing the characteristics and current developments of political parties, the text then turns to the analysis of the election results. In the beginning, basic parameters are given – such as voter turnout rate as well as the overall distribution of votes – in a historical comparison, pointing out in the process the landslide victory of the government party of the newly (May 2017) elected liberal president Moon Jae-in. This is followed by a discussion of participation by and outcomes for female candidates in the election. Finally, the results of the simultaneously held by-elections and the reelection of twelve National Assembly members are explained and put into context. The third section of the paper addresses the reasons behind the observed outcomes, in particular against the backdrop of the last two rightist-conservative governments and the new liberal one too. The paper is summed up by a conclusion that takes a brief look into the near future, and tries to make sense of the regional elections' results — in particular regarding the Moon-administration's likely subsequent performance, as well as forecasts for the upcoming general elections in 2020. (Asien/GIGA)