Or wait, you probably don’t. And not just because I’m talking about Korean elections. If you’re like the majority of Americans, even the mention of the words ‘public elections’ makes you uneasy. Come November, when you’re pulling up to the drive through after work--between thoughts of what’s happening on Lost and whether you’ve made the right decision between Wendy’s or McDonalds—you can’t help but be plagued by a vague sense of unfulfilled duty…some lingering obligation that you’re usually able to suppress for the rest of the year. And its not until MTV tells you to Vote or Die, or you start seeing that damn blue rectangle bumper sticker on everyone’s car, that you realize---that feeling of guilt and bewilderment bubbling up at the back of your throat lately is your sense of patriotic duty.
Even if you do manage to get your butt out of the office chair, easy chair, driver’s seat for long enough to see if you’re on the registry at the local school, many of us still feel ill informed or downright bullied into our decisions by the nasty mudslinging campaigns on T.V.
Being a political science major, I often felt that I had to defend the American political system against some of its worst critics—my peers, the university students. Walking around, the sunshine of our youth glinting prettily off the windows of the humanities building, we’d suck down our Starbucks Frapuccinos and talk about serious political issues. Inevitably one rebellious soul would say something like “The electoral college, goddammit. Our country’s shit.” Of course, being the well-informed and wise political science undergrad that I was (and feeling like I had so went through this phase last year), I felt it was my duty to inform the ignorant of their mistakes.
I think Ben Franklin said it best when he said, “Democracy is a terrible form of government—but it’s better than the rest of them.”
So when I walked down the street on my way to work last Monday morning and was confronted with dozens of Korean women chanting and dancing in the streets, shouting out names of candidates between shuffle steps, I was immediately intrigued. Here is a country who shares our democratic values, but who had to fight for them much more recently than Americans and whose population is much smaller and more homogeneous.
I guess I felt it was my chance to observe the political process of a different country, especially in regards to campaign style (since I don’t care to do any serious digging into the nature of the Korean political machine itself…hey I’m only American after all).
To being, my first observation is that I have yet to see a campaign ad run on T.V. Instead, I’m bombarded twice a day by women in semi-uniform (they wear some sort of matching colored shift and sashes like girl scouts) and multiple times a day by these small motorized carts in which people are sometimes standing at a podium and waving and music is playing.
Now this music. This music is often a popular song (ranging from Mary Had a Little Lamb to current K-pop hits) in which the candidates have dubbed in their names at strategic intervals. Its kind of ridiculous.
Other forms of campaigning include posters at subway stations and other crowded public places. There are often Koreans standing in front of them reading the posters I guess in an effort to choose a candidate. The posters look like giant pictures of the candidates with a short list of their attributes. There are about 8 mayoral candidates for Seoul in this upcoming election.
I had a conversation with my co-teacher about elections. I asked her if she was voting, and her response was ‘of course.’ I also asked her if most Koreans voted and she said, ‘at least more than half.’ Indeed, in Seoul it seems like Koreans are taking an interest in the campaigns. And I can kind of see why. Instead of staring at semi-famous, somewhat removed men and women in suits through the medium of a TV screen, Koreans get face to face contact with the canidates’ campaign. I’m not sure how elections for the Mayor in major cities like NY and LA go, but my experience with senatorial candidates and gubernatorial candidates in my state does not afford me much personalized contact.
I find this more personalized approach a bit odd in Korea. I would have expected the opposite mostly because of the increased distance between those in power and those without power. Let me explain. A smaller scale example of the power distance index is my principal and the teachers (his minions). As I’ve mentioned before, we are required to do anything and everything he demands of us regardless of whether or not the request is reasonable or timely.
It’s not just at schools either. My coteacher used to work as a secretary at a bank. She told me that their official closing time at work was somewhere around four or five in the afternoon. But her boss (I guess the bank manager) would stay until seven or eight at night. Even though she was done working (and her pay only covered until closing time) she had to stay until the boss left because it was the ‘right thing to do.’ If she didn’t, the boss would ask her why she left. Guilt, guilt, guilt.
All this to say that those people with power, even a little bit, are uber respected and not your friends. My teachers don’t want to sit with the administrators at lunch because they are separated from us by an invisible boundary of respect and power-- much more so than in America.
That’s why I found the personalized, man-on-the-street campaign approach for the mayoral candidates of one of the world’s biggest cities so fascinating. It seems so much more personal than the TV campaign ads are at home. I’m not sure whether one is better than the other.
What do you think?
I also think it would be interesting to learn how different these candidates really are. Koreans, as a society, hold mostly the same values and ideals. And while Americans do too(the ideals of individual freedom, voting rights, equal opportunity) it seems to me that the Koreans' political debates would probably be much more mild in comparison. The areas of mass political disagreement, in my opinion, are likely to be much fewer than in America. Its in the definition of a collectivist society. Collectivism means coming together as one for the good of the whole group. Koreans are more likely to fall in line for the sake of societal harmony than Americans simply because that lies at the core of their beliefs. Look at collectivist japan. They have had a democracy for decades now and the same party has been in power for the entire time save for a few years in the 1990s.
Major political disagreements, i think, probably center around North Korea and South Korea's official policy on reunification. The older generation generally wants it, and the younger generation generally doesn't.
On a side note, the increased violence at the DMZ has become somewhat of an issue in the campaigns (or so I’ve heard through the grapevine). One of my South African friends’ mom called him concerned because the international news was saying Korea was at war. My own mother has asked about what’s going on in the country right now. Well, it doesn’t feel like we’re on the brink of war, that’s for sure. The Koreans aren’t talking about it. I haven’t seen an increased military presence. No one is buying tickets to flee the country. I guess its hard to tell whether or not this time the crazy N. Koreans really mean business or if they’re just blowing off some more steam.
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