The Korean campaign that the verdict opened

The campaign for the presidential election took shape in the final week of April, with the parties settling their candidates and the issues that the year’s events had set, and the campaign’s shape was the one that the winter’s politics had prepared. The removal of the previous president, delivered by the constitutional court in the first days of the month, had set the calendar and the field: the election within sixty days, the interim government conducting the state’s business, and the parties reconfiguring around the candidates who would contest the office. The election in early June will be the country’s answer to the winter’s question, and the answer is being written, week by week, by the campaigns that the verdict opened.

The field that has taken shape is the part of the story that the coverage has been mapping with the care that the stakes require. The opposition, the coalition that had carried the impeachment, has rallied around the candidate who has led the polls since the verdict, the former minister whose campaign has been built on the restoration of the normal politics and the management of the economy; the ruling party, the party of the removed president, has settled on the candidate who has sought to distance the campaign from the night and to appeal to the voters who have judged the removal less harshly than the court did. The two candidates represent the two readings of the winter: the reading that the night was the exception that the law corrected, and the reading that the correction was the political act that the country must now move beyond.

The issues of the campaign are the ones that the year’s events have made unavoidable. The economy leads the agenda, with the trade conflict that the new American administration has opened weighing on the country’s export model, and the candidates offering the competing programmes for the adjustment, the diversification, the innovation, the social protection; the security follows, with the neighbour to the north and the alliances in the region providing the questions that the candidates must answer without the answers that the voters want to hear; and the night itself, the martial law declaration that removed the president, provides the background against which all the other issues are weighed. The campaign’s issues are the year’s issues, and the year’s issues are the ones that the winter’s crisis has made visible.

The dynamics of the campaign, as the first weeks have shown, are the dynamics of the short race. The calendar, the sixty days that the constitution requires, compresses the campaigning into the weeks of the spring, and the compression favours the candidates who enter with the recognition that the polls have already measured; the debates, scheduled for the weeks ahead, will provide the moments when the recognition can be tested, and the television appearances and the rallies will fill the compressed calendar with the performances that the campaigns have prepared. The short campaign is the particular challenge of the Korean system, and the challenge is being met, the commentators note, with the particular intensity that the compressed schedules produce.

The election’s outcome, in early June, will determine the government that the country will have for the remainder of the term, and the determination will be conducted in the full presence of the winter’s memory. The candidate who wins will have to govern the country that the crisis has divided, to manage the economy that the trade conflict is testing, and to answer the questions that the night raised and the election will not fully settle; the candidate who loses will lead the opposition through the term that follows, with the argument about the winter continuing in the politics that the election will not conclude. The campaign that the verdict opened is the country’s attempt to turn the page, and the turning will be the work of the June election and the years that follow it; the answer is being written, and the writing is the spring’s most important politics.