By Andy Jackson

In most presidential systems, the all-or-nothing struggle to capture the executive branch results in the dominance of two relatively moderate parties and the withering away of smaller parties.

Since there is no runoff election in South Korea, whoever receives the single largest block of votes wins the Blue House. When one side of the political spectrum is split, it allows the other side to win; even if it has less total support.

That most famously happened in 1987, when both Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung refused to step aside in favor of the other, which resulted in the election of Roh Tae-woo.

The split of the conservative vote between Lee Hoi-chang and Rhee In-je similarly cost the conservatives a win and allowed Kim Dae-jung to become president after two decades of trying.

So parties in a presidential system are encouraged to maintain broad regional and ideological coalitions and nominate relatively moderate candidates who can appeal both to the party's base voters as well as independents and members of other parties.

The fact that 245 of the National Assembly's 299 seats are filled by single-member district races, which are shaped by the same tendencies as the presidential races, reinforces that trend.

The Korean experience is generally in keeping with that rule. Both the right and the left are dominated by a single and relatively moderate party, which contains members from a wide spectrum of regions and ideologies.

However, the recent National Assembly races saw the election of four minor parties as well as about two-dozen independents.

There are several factors in the Korean political system that allow those parties to survive in an environment that is otherwise hostile to minor parties.

Regionalism

Korean politics has long been noted for its regional voting patterns, most famously the tendency for voters in the southeast Yeongnam region to vote for the major conservative party and those in the southwestern Honam region to support the leading progressive party.

Indeed, one of the problems that had plagued the Uri Party (forerunner of the United Democratic Party) in the 2006 local elections was its inability to unite the Homan region under its banner, which resulted in wasted energy spent campaigning in an area that should have been safe territory.

That lack of unity continued through last December's presidential election.

Lee Hoi-chang's Liberty Forward Party benefited from its position as being a party specifically for the central part of the nation.

Of the 14 seats it picked up in single-member districts, 13 came from South Chungcheong Province and the neighboring city of Daejeon.

The Pro-Park Geun-hye Alliance also clearly benefited from her popularity in the southeast and picked up three seats in her political base of Daegu.

Split Ticket Voting

While a large majority of seats in the National Assembly are chosen in single-member districts, 54 are picked by proportional representation, in which the parties are assigned seats in proportion to the votes they receive on a national ballot as long as they gain at least 3 percent of that vote.

When Korean voters went to the polls last Wednesday, they were handed two ballots; one for their district and another for proportional representation.

The results indicate that many voters chose to exercise ``split ticket'' voting by voting for different parties on their two ballots.

The biggest beneficiary of split-ticket voting was the Pro Park-Geun-hye Alliance, which gained more votes among the 54 proportional representation seats (8) than it did from the 245 single-member districts (6).

That performance (13.1 percent of the proportional representation vote), along with the Grand National Party's disappointing 37.4 percent, is a strong indication that the GNP was a victim of vote splitting.

Politics of Personality

While the two largest parties have become more institutionalized, the personality-centered politics of Korea's recent past can still be found among the minor parties.

The strangest and most obvious example in the recent election was the Pro-Park Geun-hye Alliance, which used her name as its own despite the fact that she remains a member of the GNP.

It was her name and implied support (through her refusal to campaign for GNP candidates) for their cause that allowed the group to get the fourth-largest vote total in the National Assembly.

Moon Kook-hyun's Creative Korea Party is another clear example. Moon was the only CKP member to win in a district race and only the gaining of 2 proportional representation seats (the minimum possible number) saved him from being a party of one.

While the Korean system will continue to encourage the dominance of two large relatively moderate parties, however, there are enough niches in the system to allow minor parties to survive, if not exactly thrive.

Andy Jackson teaches American government in the Lakeland College bridge program at Ansan College, Gyeonggi Province. He can be reached at andyinrok@lycos.com.