By Andy Jackson
Korean politics is dominated by two cliches on regionalism and voting.
The first of those cliches is that presidential elections are contests between southeastern Yeongnam and the southwestern Homan regions. The second is that the central Chungcheong provinces are the crucial swing-vote areas where the presidential election is decided.
The first is apparent enough. All but one of the presidents elected since 1987, when direct presidential elections were restored, hailed from Yeongnam (as did dictators Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan). The one exception was Kim Dae-jung, who hailed from Honam.
The Yeongnam-Honam divide also extends to legislative races, with the conservative Grand National Party (GNP) strong in the southeast while progressives dominate in the southwest.
The political conflict between the regions has been so strong and persistent that casual observers could be forgiven for believing it is a remnant of the Silla-Baekje rivalry during Korea's three kingdoms period from 57 to 668 AD.
However, it stems primarily from policies of successive governments between 1960 and 1987, which concentrated development along a corridor between Seoul and Busan. Those policies left the Honam region as a relative backwater, which fueled a rivalry with the more rapidly developing Yeongnam region.
The political importance of the Chungcheong provinces as a source of swing votes has long been accepted as gospel by Korea's political class.
In 1997 and 2002, progressive candidates managed to overcome the region's previous support of conservatives, first by making a deal with a local kingmaker, then with the promise of massive government development funding in the form of a relocation of the capital from Seoul.
In that context, the region's support of Lee Myung-bak and the even more conservative Lee Hoi-chang can be seen as a return to form.
However, the 2007 presidential election marks a new phase of Korea's regional politics; the rise of the capital area as a political force asserting its own interests.
The capital region, which includes Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi Province, has almost half of Korea's population and more than half of Korea's wealth, so it would be logical to assume that it would dominate Korean politics.
That assumption would be wrong.
Despite its size, the capital region has been almost an afterthought to the ongoing Honam-Yeongnam conflict and the struggle for support in the Chungcheong provinces.
One reason for the capital region's relatively low political importance in presidential elections was its demographics.
Large portions of the region's residents are migrants from other parts of Korea who came seeking better work and educational opportunities. Those migrants largely maintained the voting patterns of their home regions. Those voting patterns meant that the capital region was not the most productive place for either persuasive campaigning or get-out-the-vote efforts.
That started to change in 2006, when Oh Se-hoon crushed Kang Kum-sil in the Seoul mayoral election with over 60 percent of the vote. Kang had been considered a rising start among progressives but there was little she could do to overcome Seoulites' resentment of President Roh's policy of limiting new development in Seoul as part of an effort to balance development throughout the country.
An increasing number of voters in the region were born and raised there and they are beginning to break away from the voting patterns of their parents. That change in voting patterns made itself felt in this year's presidential election.
Lee Myung-bak's vote total over Chung Dong-young of the pro-government United New Democratic Party (UNDP) was almost as impressive in the capital region (1,040,209 votes) as his was in Yeongnam (1,658,136). The capital region is an equal partner in Lee Myung-bak's coalition.
Lee's victory over Park Geun-hye for the GNP nomination over Park Geun-hye is another sign of a shift in power toward the capital region. Support from Park's political base in Daegu, in the heart of the GNP's traditional Yeongnam stronghold, was not enough for her to prevail over the former Seoul mayor.
The new electoral calculus means that current Seoul Mayor Oh se-hoon and Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Moon-soo must be included with Park in the short list of likely successors to Lee in the 2012 presidential race.
The next test of the GNP's power in the capital region is legislative elections in April. The party hopes to reverse the results of the 2004 elections when the then-governing Uri party captured twice as many seats in the region as the GNP managed to take. If they succeed, there will be more GNP legislators from the capital region than from Yeongnam.
This shift does not mean that the capital region will permanently support the GNP, but it does mean that it will dominate the parties' political calculations like never before.
Andy Jackson teaches American government in the Lakeland College bridge program at Ansan College, Gyeonggi Province. He can be reached at andyinrok@yahoo.com.