SEOUL: Cast political credentials, scandal-free, and a very good debater: Sim Sang-jung is one in all South Korea’s maximum established girl politicians. However as a left-wing feminist from a minor social gathering, she doesn’t stand a possibility of turning into president as of late. In socially conservative South Korea, each and every president aside from one has been male and are available from probably the most nation’s two primary events. The following president may also be a man-the entrance runners are each male.

As a four-time parliamentarian and seasoned labour and ladies’s rights activist with now not a whiff of scandal about her, Sim is a stark distinction to her gaffe-prone rivals-Yoon Suk-yeol from the opposition Other folks Energy Birthday party, and Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Democratic Birthday party. From Yoon’s suspected hyperlinks to dodgy shamans to extensively reported allegations in opposition to Lee of mafia ties, the main applicants have thrown such a lot dust at each and every different at the marketing campaign path that some native media have branded it the “election of the unfavourables”.

Nonetheless, Sim doesn’t stand a possibility of winning-her approval ranking hasn’t ever left the one digits. As a self-identified feminist, Sim is the antithesis of the PPP’s Yoon, who has vowed to abolish the ministry of gender equality-claiming, in spite of the proof, that girls don’t face systemic discrimination. “Sexism obviously exists in South Korean society,” Sim informed AFP by way of e mail. Yoon’s said goals possibility fanning bad misogynistic sentiment and can, in the long run, injury South Korean democracy, she stated. “We already know the historic penalties of election marketing campaign methods that inspire hate,” she added.

‘Patriarchal society’

Regardless of its financial and technological advances, South Korea stays socially conventional and patriarchal, and has probably the most global’s thickest glass ceilings for girls. It has the best gender salary hole within the OECD membership of advanced economies and simplest 3.6 p.c of board contributors on the nation’s conglomerates are feminine. In a similar fashion in politics, ladies dangle simply 18.6 p.c of meeting seats in parliament-putting South Korea in one hundred and twenty fifth place in a world score maintained by way of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, only a few seats forward of North Korea in a hundred and thirtieth position.

“Korea continues to be a patriarchal society, and it is vitally arduous for any feminine flesh presser to upward thrust to the highest,” Gi-Wook Shin, a sociology professor at Stanford College, informed AFP. The rustic’s sole girl president, Park Geun-hye, in place of work from 2013 to 2017, “used to be an exception, who rode at the legacy of her father”, the overdue dictator Park Chung-hee, he stated. Sim’s 2d key handicap as a viable candidate is that she hails from the small, left-wing Justice Birthday party, which holds six seats within the Nationwide Meeting. South Korea, which makes use of a first-past-the-post election fashion, has a powerful two-party device, and each and every president has come from that duopoly.

The Justice Birthday party campaigns on problems similar to local weather justice, in addition to LGBT and labour rights-all thought to be radical in South Korea. Sim entered politics after spending greater than twenty years at the entrance strains of South Korea’s turbulent labour rights motion, going underground as a manufacturing unit employee to organise unions whilst a pupil. In 1985 she helped lead a groundbreaking strike and used to be rewarded by way of being put at the “maximum sought after” checklist of the rustic’s then authoritarian executive. Her key coverage as a presidential candidate displays this background: she proposes a four-day paintings week, a modern concept in a rustic the place staff undergo notoriously lengthy hours.

Polling suggests her most powerful beef up is amongst ladies of their 20s, however her total approval rankings hover woefully low at round two to 3 p.c. She’s a hero to a couple more youthful ladies for managing to “articulate the ladies’s rights time table” within the male-dominated labour motion, Vladimir Tikhonov, professor of Korean research on the College of Oslo, informed AFP.

Lengthy sport

However Sim has made expensive errors: she didn’t discuss out when a key corruption case hit incumbent President Moon Jae-in’s management, which made her social gathering glance complicit, analysts say. Other folks assumed her social gathering used to be “a coalition spouse of the Democratic Birthday party, relatively than a extra reform-oriented left-wing choice,” stated Yesola Kweon, a politics professor at Sungkyunkwan College in Seoul.

Sim herself blames her low approval rankings on her incapability to persuade South Koreans to peer past the slim coverage possible choices presented by way of the 2 primary events. “We couldn’t persuade folks to imagine in probabilities,” she informed AFP. However even though Sim has no probability of successful, it’s an “essential symbolic stance” that she is at the poll on Wednesday, stated Sharon Yoon, a Korean research professor on the College of Notre Dame. She’s looking for to modify Seoul’s “two-party device that runs on character politics and regional loyalties relatively than coverage pursuits,” she informed AFP. “She is taking part in a protracted sport.” – AFP