With the 9th nationwide local elections set for the 3rd of next month, it is time for a sober reflection on the current state of local autonomy in Korea. Local elections involve a complex ballot with many positions to fill, and they typically draw lower turnout than presidential or general elections due to relatively weaker public interest. The 2018 local elections recorded a turnout above 60%, but that figure plunged to 50.9% in the 2022 election, raising concerns. As the first nationwide election following a series of major political upheavals — the Dec. 3 emergency martial law incident, the subsequent presidential impeachment, and the early presidential election in 2025 — public attention is focused on how many voters will turn out to the polls.
The political parties have been busy in recent weeks. The Democratic Party of Korea is highlighting the recovery of the people's livelihoods and balanced regional development, emphasizing policies tailored to daily life and housing stability. The People Power Party has placed its focus on realizing a "regional era," attracting investment through deregulation, and establishing security and law and order. The Rebuilding Korea Party is calling for the dismantling of "prosecutorial dictatorship" and substantive decentralization, while the Reform Party strongly advocates rational conservatism and a generational shift grounded in science and technology. In some political circles, aggressive framing tactics — such as labeling opponents an "insurrection party" or accusing them of providing a "shield for Lee Jae-myung" — continue to circulate. Voters are expected to wrestle deeply with the choice between the "ruling party premium" — the ability to mobilize central government administrative power to channel resources into the regions — and the opposition's "check on power" argument calling for restraint on a dominant ruling party.
Korea's election cycle, with general and local elections every four years intersecting with presidential elections every five years, brings campaigns around very frequently. Within these constraints, local elections have tended to be subordinated to currents in national politics rather than serving their original purpose of selecting local representatives. The 2018 local elections are recorded as one of the most overwhelming victories ever achieved by a ruling party in Korean political history. That outcome was an extension of the previous year's presidential election and the peak of the "Democratic Party advantage" that carried into the 2020 general election. By contrast, the 2022 local elections, held just three months after a razor-thin presidential race, ended in a sweeping victory for the People Power Party, then the ruling party. This year's local elections, taking place one year after President Lee Jae-myung's presidential victory, will likewise find it difficult to escape the influence of national politics.
Yet for local elections to fulfill their inherent purpose of realizing local autonomy, they must break free from the excessive influence of national politics. To that end, voters themselves must take a deeper interest in local elections and exercise sound judgment. Local politics, which determines the direction of regional communities, in fact has a more direct and significant impact on individual daily life than other elections. The essence of local autonomy lies in "self-government" itself — residents identifying and resolving issues closely tied to their lives, including education, transportation, public safety, the residential environment, the protection of children and the elderly, and support for vulnerable groups. The discussions about abolishing party nominations for metropolitan mayors and superintendents of education, or about establishing region-based local parties, can be understood in the same context — as efforts to strengthen decentralization and autonomy. Civil society has also been continuously pressing for institutional reforms to secure representation and diversity, including expanding electoral districts for basic-level councils, raising the proportion of proportional representation seats, introducing runoff voting, and establishing nomination criteria to advance gender equality.
Just as important as institutional reform is the discernment to identify the true representatives of local communities. Genuine resident self-governance is realized when residents move beyond being passive "consumers" of administrative services and become active "agents" who participate in the local communities where they live. Direct democracy mechanisms such as the resident ordinance proposal system, the participatory budgeting system, and the resident recall system are already in place, but their use on the ground remains minimal. What is now urgently needed are participation mechanisms based on digital and artificial intelligence (AI) technology that help residents grasp local council agendas and municipal issues in real time and take part directly in decision-making. Local councils and municipal governments must also work more closely with their residents to avoid being captured by particular interest groups.
Only when local elections shed the worn-out guise of being proxy battles in national politics and are reborn as tools for realizing genuine local autonomy can democracy in our neighborhoods be completed. I earnestly hope that this election will move beyond simply gauging each party's approval ratings and become a true festival of grassroots democracy.
