SEOUL (AFP): South Korea's left-leaning ruling party has won a landslide election victory, partial results showed Thursday (Apri; 16), after the coronavirus pandemic turned the political tide in President Moon Jae-in's favour.
His Democratic party secured an absolute majority in the National Assembly, its first for 12 years, on a turnout of 66.2 per cent -- the highest at a parliamentary election since 1992.
Koreans' confidence in Moon's administration was boosted by his so-called"coronavirus diplomacy", such as recent bilateral phone calls with at least 20 state leaders, said Minseon Ku, a politics scholar at Ohio State University in the US. South Korea was among the first countries to hold a national election during the pandemic, with citizens still being asked to maintain social distancing after enduring one of the worst early outbreaks of Covid-19.
The main conservative opposition United Future Party and its satellite party were forecast to secure a total of 103 seats. Former North Korean diplomat Thae Yong Ho, who defected in 2016 and stood for the conservative UFP, won in the wealthy Gangnam district in Seoul -- becoming the first former Northern official ever to be directly elected to the South's parliament.
The conservative party had"failed to rebrand" itself after the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye, which"limited the boundary of support to older generations and core support regions", Ji Yeon Hong, a professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, told AFP.
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