All major parties in S. Korea except LKP move to change official voting age from 19 to 18
Kang Min-jin, head of a youth activist group, calls for the extension of voting rights to people aged 18 years with two teenagers in front of National Assembly Station on Apr. 9, 2018. The three demonstrators were accosted by an older man during their demonstration. (Baek So-ah, staff photographer)
SEOUL, Mar 20, 2019, Hankyoreh. A draft version of a revision to the South Korean election system tentatively agreed upon by four major political parties (the Democratic Party, Bareunmirae Party, Party for Democracy and Peace and Justice Party) includes terms lowering the voting age for public elections to “at least 18 years” from its current “no younger than 19 years”, reported the Hankyoreh.
“Through the lowering of the voting age, we have addressed the problem of [South Korea] being the only country the OECD not to have designated 18 years [as the legal voting age] to expand voting rights for the public,” National Assembly Special Committee on Political Reform Chair Sim Sang-jeung said in a Mar. 18 press conference on the electoral reform plan developed by the four parties the day before.
Critics have consistently called for amendment of the current law, noting that it permits people to join the military, become government employees, and marry by the age of 18 but sets a higher age limit of 19 years for voting rights alone. The new agreement among the four parties potentially paves the expansion of voting rights.
Following a 2013 National Human Rights Commission of Korea recommendation to lower the voting age, the need for an adjustment has been consistently raised, with presidential candidates from the Democratic Party, People’s Party, Bareunmirae Party and Justice Party all including voting rights for 18-year-olds as pledges during the May 2017 election. But discussions were stymied by objections from the Liberty Korea Party (LKP), who contended that young people were “immature” and criticized the “politicization of schools.”
The LKP, which opposes the election system revisions, expressed clear objections to the agreement extending voting rights to 18-year-olds, repeating its previous claims that “ideology and politics have been entering high school classrooms.”
“Since the revision of the school system, the LKP has been calling for lowering the voting age,” said LKP floor leader in a joint meeting of lawmakers and party bargaining group committee chairs at the National Assembly that day on the “railroading of leftist dictatorship legislation ignoring the economic catastrophe.”
The “school system” position was mentioned last year by then-LKP floor leader Kim Sung-tae, who called for lowering the minimum schooling age by one year from its current seven years. Na’s remarks read a rebuttal to criticisms that the party’s calls to extend voting rights after high school graduation by allowing the early enrollment of children who are not currently in public school signaled its lack of commitment to allowing voting rights for 18-year-olds.
By Lee Jung-ae and Kim Mi-na, staff reporters
Share it
| 
| 
| 
| 
|