Saenuri Party loses its majority in the National Assembly
This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by YoshidaYui (a host of the Asian Group group).
Dealing a blow to President Bak Geun-hye, the ruling conservative Saenuri Party took a slight beating in last nights elections.
The Saenuri Party which currently holds a majority of 146 seats and rules in coalition with small independents. The Main Opposition Minjoo Party has 102 seats and the People's Party has 20 with the remainder belonging to small parties, like the far-left New Justice and independent politicians
The Saenuri Party will have 122 seats, the main opposition Minjoo will have 123, the People's Party (which nearly swept the province in which I live) will have 38, the New Justice will have 6 and various Independents will get 11.
Most of the Independents appear to be people who lost their party nominating contest and won anyway. Depending on who they are, they will still likely join with their former party in the National Assembly.
It is most likely that the People's Party will form a coalition with the Minjoo Party. Both parties are left-of-center, but they had a falling out last winter over control. In the end, it's possible this worked well for both since there was some dissatisfaction among voters about how immature, silly and totally lacking in presenting any coherent policies.
Under the combined leadership of Ahn and Kim, the Party lurched from tragedy to tragedy, like the Saewol ship sinking trying to get the public behind them without offering any political platform. Part of the problem (IMO) was that Ahn is a technocrat, while the Minjoo is supposed to be a worker's party. They didn't blend together well.
Ahn's People's Party took the Honam region of Korea (North and South Jeolla), which had been a Minjoo stronghold and the most liberal region in Korea.
The Minjoo made up for that by taking most of Seoul and much of Gyeonggi-do. Gyeonggi-do is traditionally pretty fertile territory for the conservatives. It has at least some fairly prominent U.S. military bases/posts within it's boundaries and provides a lot of jobs and money to the area (Camp Casey/Hovey/Castle - Dongducheon, Uijeongbu, DMZ employs over 3,000 civilians, many of whom are Koreans; USAG Garrison Seoul, also called Yongsan Garrison ;and the Osan Airbase in Songtan) pumping millions into the local economies of the areas buying souvenirs, eating in restaurants, using facilities, etc.
The conservatives also benefit from this area being within easy striking distance of North Korea. People in this region tend to vote for the conservatives because they see them as better nationally for the economy and security. Provocations like what is happening now tend to get them out in droves to vote conservative.
Not this time, with the exception of Hannam and 1 of 2 Uijeongbu districts, they lost every district that bordered Seoul, got wiped out in Bucheon, lost in Suwon and lost Paju among others.
Hani has a nice map to see how everything fared
Considering the Saenuri were expected to hold onto power easily, it was a good night
http://hani.co.kr/
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