Can Korea produce its own Zohran Mamdani?

A new generation of left-wing politicians in America is enjoying an unusually strong primary ahead of the November midterm elections. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a marginal force nationwide, has propelled a series of candidates through the Democratic primaries. The victory of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was followed by primary wins for younger candidates, including 29-year-old Melat Kiros’ victory against a 15-term incumbent in Colorado and 32-year-old Darializa Avila Chevalier securing her place on the ticket in New York.

Korean American candidate Francesca Hong lost the gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin by a slim margin, but the victory of Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan primary shows that the appeal of younger candidates among Democratic voters is not limited to deep-blue states. El-Sayed is neither a member of nor formally endorsed by DSA, but received an endorsement from Bernie Sanders.

Of course, the rise should not be exaggerated. New York has been fertile terrain for Democrats, but the democratic socialist label on candidates continues to have limited national appeal, according to Pew Research. A recent Brookings report indicated that nearly three-quarters of 282 DSA-backed candidates ran for local or state legislative office rather than at the national level, and their successes were disproportionally concentrated in states and districts that already leaned toward liberal Democrats.

But the lesson for Korea here is less of ideology but organizational. Mamdani did not win the mayoral election just because he was young, or due to his smart social media campaign. Instead, he emerged from an ecosystem in which the DSA, labor organizers, volunteers and notable political figures such as Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were all linked by recognizable issues such as housing and economic inequality. The individual talent of the candidate was paired with an organization capable of transforming public discontent into votes.

Korea does not have a comparable pipeline. The June 3 local elections appear to be encouraging, with 403 candidates aged below 40 were elected out of 810 who ran. However, young politicians continue to remain scarce, with not a single candidate winning a metropolitan, municipal or provincial executive position. The recent Democratic Party of Korea convention demonstrated this problem visibly. Young candidates including Kim Bo-mi, who ran for party leadership, and Supreme Council candidates Kim Hyung-nam and Jeong Min-cheol were all eliminated in the preliminary round. The proposal to establish a designated Supreme Council position for a youth representative also fell through.

The peculiar case of the Reform Party candidate for the Busan mayoral election offers a different warning. His campaign initially appeared to embody the spirit of generational renewal in Korea’s oldest major metropolitan city, but he ended up with just 1.56 percent of the vote. Ultimately, he faces allegations that an attack on himself was self-staged during the election, showing that being young in itself is not a qualification.

Young Koreans' struggles have a structural element. First, turnout among voters in their 20s and 30s has been lower than that of older groups, weakening their leverage inside parties and leaving little incentive for politicians to cater their policies to younger people. The younger generation itself is split between young men and women, eroding the notion of a “unified youth,” while parties compete along that divide.

Young politicians fall short in durable issue-based organizations that can regularly recruit potential candidates, train campaigners, get voters out between elections and support their political activities even after the election. The election law that restricts candidates from using paid online election advertisements and limits political ads in platforms that can reach millions of audiences also constrains the kind of outreach campaigns that young American politicians have utilized. Altogether, youth politics often means a party selecting a promising individual with a special title, expecting their personal appeal to do the rest of the work.

This matters because you cannot represent the youth by making politics look younger, as different generations experience the same country differently.

Domestically, housing and pension reforms are examples. Younger Koreans entered adulthood after housing prices had already skyrocketed, and they are being asked to finance a pension system whose long-term sustainability they question. On foreign policy, division may be part of a living memory of family history for older generations. But both annual unification perception surveys from the Korea Institute of National Unification and the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University show a sharp generational divide, with respondents in their 20s and 30s less likely to view unification as necessary. Policies that are constructed around old assumptions run the risk of losing legitimacy when the generation expected to inherit them is absent from the discussion.

There are promising experiments, including the government’s utilization of the Youth Talent database connecting youth with policy advisory roles, and the new youth fellowship launched by the presidential office to provide internship opportunities. These programs can be entry points for many. However, we should remember that internships and advisory panels do not substitute for political power. Parties must create pathways from local politics to nominations, leadership posts and winnable seats, while the establishment must be willing to welcome the youth to participate in politics even when it will occasionally cost their own seats. To nurture a promising pool of next-generation candidates, such an effort should bring in those involved issue-based organizations rather than personalities only popular enough to survive beyond one election.

Korea does not need its own Mamdani in a literal sense. As I argued in a similar vein two years ago in this newspaper, it instead needs the conditions that made his rise possible — ideas that organize people and institutional bases that sustain them. And a political system willing to let a new generation compete for actual power to change society.

Park Jin-wan is a nonresident fellow at the European Centre for North Korean Studies at the University of Vienna and co-founder of the U.S.-ROK-Japan Trilateral Next-Gen Study Group.