Jan. 25, 2000

Jongwoo Han

The unveiling of a blacklist of "unfit candidates" for the upcoming April 13th general election for the National Assembly, civic activism is fueling a hot debate in Korean politics. The Citizens' Council for Economic Justice (CCEJ, Kyung-shil-lyun in Korean), the nation's largest civic organization, has released a list of 164 politicians. It is joined by another civic organization, the Citizens' Commission for a Fair Election in motivating citizen participation. Several web sites such as www.ngokorea.org, www.naksun.co.kr, and www.emocracy.co.kr have been created to defeat the named politcal figures based on evidence of crimes such as corruption or embezzlement related to past elections, political record such as involvement in past authoritarian regimes, votes against reforms, or change of party affiliation, and personal defects such as unethical behavior and vulgar or discriminatory statements. This movement is the first of its kind in that country's history.

With tthe Citizens' Coalition for the 2000 General Election's home page (www.ngokorea.org) recording 50,000 visitors since its opening 5 days ago, the Internet has already made its mark as the most influential medium in contemporary Korean politics. The list, which singles out reform-resistant lawmakers, exploiters of regional antagonism, and 'low-quality' politicians, includes 128 members of the National Assembly, 42 percent of the incumbents, out of a total of 299 seats. The Assembly is composed of three major parties, the ruling National Congress for New Politics, its coalition partner the United Liberal Democracy and the opposition Grand National Party.

Further, the Citizens' Coalition for Economic Justice intends to file complaints from potential candidates who would be excluded from parties' official nomination and file cases charging constitutional violations against party leaders. Conventionally, the party nomination process has been obscured in back-room deals between party leaders and candidates. The old practices in the selection of party candidates were based more on personal relationships with party leaders or on the scale of funds contributed to political parties than on objective evaluations of candidates' qualifications and electoral popularity.

 Contrasting with advanced democratic countries, where civic groups such as Americans for Democratic Action (http://adaction.org) legally rate the activities of their representatives and other elected officials, current Korean election law prohibits all except individuals and labor unions from engaging in political campaigns supporting specific candidates and makes such activities punishable by law. Reflecting the interests of incumbents, the Constitutional Court and the Central Election Management Commission upheld the current law on the grounds that it keeps elections fair. Activists argue that this 'election defeat movement' is fair because it makes relevant information available to voters and helps them make reasonable choices.Reacting to the denunciation of political institutions and politicians, and supported by the public, civic organizations have launched a national campaign to revise the election law. On January 19, the twentieth day after the release of the blacklist, the ruling and opposition parties bowed to citizen activism and respectively promised to "refer to" or "respect" the blacklist in the nominating process for the April general election. Also, they cautiously suggested that the current election law needs to be revised to allow rating activities by civic organizations.

Korea has drastically expanded its investment in information technology and information infrastructure. According to Alexa statistics (www.alexa.com), Korean yahoo ranks second among the world's internet companies in terms of access time. One fourth of the total population, around 40 million, enjoys Internet access. Fifty percent of Koreans use cellular phones. There are fifteen thousand commercialized personal computer shops doing business. Even the impatient national character moves Korea to be among the leading countries in the Information Age. Empowered by the wide deployment of information technology, such government information policy reverses the traditional superiority of the state and political institutions over civil society and citizens. It is the power of information technology, the Internet, that swiftly formed the alliance of over 300 civic organizations, enabling them to establish a political dialogue, "a strategic conversation"across diverse communities. The power of anonymity in virtual space has allowed such a negative political campaign for the first time in Korean political history. With a more transparent political system, information on each politician becomes available, making the party nominating process more objective, and dismantling the absolute power of a handful of party leaders. The information society, thus, is beginning to erode existing political systems and ideology, bringing about the devolution of traditional political authority.

Virtual space allows citizens to avoid the nation-state's conventional jurisdiction over political activities. The national government has no established legal authority to restrict the flow of information if the web site is opened overseas. It is not subject to Korean election laws. This Korean case clearly indicates that the dispersed availability of information and communications technologies can be far more relevant than levels of income for predicting a nation's degree of democratization. The Information revolution will lead us to a different kind of political system ,accelerating democratization, especially in areas where authoritarian rule has prevailed.