3
Introduction
Since the 1987 presidential election, the most distinctive characteristic of voting
in Korea has been regional disparity, particularly between Honam (Southwest) and
Youngnam (Southeast). Almost all voters in the Honam region tend to vote for the
candidates from the major liberal party, while more than two-thirds of the voters make
the same decision in the Youngnam region for the candidates from the major
conservative party.
Previous studies on the regional cleavage in Korea have searched for its origin in
historical, psychological, or strategic-politician reasons. However, few studies have taken
space/geography seriously. In this study, we propose an alternative approach to the
electoral regionalism in Korea by focusing on spatial correlation among neighbors. As we
hypothesize that people in residence of fellow region have mutual influences in voting
behavior, we redefine the electoral region in Korea not simply based on disparities in the
aggregate votes but also by considering interdependence and contagion among
neighborhoods. The measurement of regionalism we suggest in this study is different
from such conventional methods as the mean level analysis like the regression analysis
with dummy variables of regions or the exploration of relative homogeneity of votes
based on the standard deviation. We argue that strong regionalism is associated with a
high level of geographical correlation (spatial autocorrelation). This study examines
whether and how the conventional regional cleavage in Korea is explained by spatial
contagion.
To investigate the effect of neighborhood on vote choice, we employ the method
of spatial econometrics that provides a measurement of the spatial autocorrelation and
Convention