9
(Table
1
about
here)
In 1997, Lee Hoi Chang, the presidential candidate of the ruling party which had
been believed to represent the southeast (Youngnam) region of the country was defeated
by Kim Dae-Jung, who had been viewed as the leader representing the southwest (Honam)
region. Lee’s defeat is largely due to two factors: (1) the competition with Lee In-je, who
walked
out of the ruling party’s nomination and became a third party candidate who was
supported by significant proportions of the voters and (2) Kim Dae-Jung’s strategic
coalition with Kim Jong-Pil’s United Liberal Democratic Party. In the 2002 presidential
election, the winning candidate, Rho Moo-hyun, who came originally from the
Youngnam region, but represented Kim Dae-Jung’s party, won 93.2% of the votes in the
Honam region while only 25.8% of the votes in the Youngnam region.
Korean electoral regionalism is different from regional division in the Western
European plural societies where it usually reflects religious, ethnic or class conflicts.
Regional division in Korea is hard to be explained by the mere differences in the socio-
demographic characteristics of the regions. Basically, Korean electoral regionalism is
viewed by extant studies as regional disparity between the southeastern (Youngnam)
region and the southwestern (Honam) region. The most common argument is that
president Park’s policies discriminating the Honam region and practicing pork barrel
politics for his native region (Youngnam) in the 1970’s caused the emergence of
regionalism in Korea. This discrimination against the Honam region has made the people
of Honam feel alienated socially and politically as well as economically, leading the
people of Honam to be more resistant to the ruling forces. Moreover, their experience in
the early 1980s, when the democratization movement in Gwangju (the capital city of the
Convention