고령화 저성장 양극화 시대의 청년정치 부상 가능성

Abstract

Various socio-economic problems, such as aging population, low growth and economic polarization, are giving rise to serious conflicts in many areas and dimensions among the South Korean people. In recent days, a new kind of social conflict, namely, ‘generational conflicts’ attracts more and more attention in and outside the Korean society. As the sensitivity of all the age groups to the (re)distribution policies heightens, the party preferences among them come to split sharper and sharper. The so-called ‘generation politics’ is about to emerge in this country, too, in a full-fledged fashion. It seems to be the younger generation that leads the emergence of the generation politics. Perhaps, that is because the number of young men and women, who consider the national wealth to be excessively (re)distributed in favor of the older generation, is increasing as time goes on. Most of them share the view that the problem of inter-generational inequality should be and could be solved only by the politics. In fact, the inequality is mostly the result of the so-called ‘gerontocracy’, which promotes making the (re)distribution policies favorable for the aged. Therefore, it is reasonable for the young people to oppose to the policies and resist against the government or the politics that produces such policies. In Italy and Spain for examples, strong opposition of the young generation to the established politics invited youth politics and eventually yielded a meaningful change of the political party system. What could we expect of the South Korean youth politics? Would that be possible for the Korean young generation to reform the party system? In other words, could they form an influential political party that represent their own preferences and interests? To tell the conclusion first, even though it is true that the demand for youth politics has been increasing in recent days, the possibility for the increase to develop into a birth of a powerful party for the young generation is very low. This article points out the South Korean electoral system, which is notorious for the disproportionality, as the key reason.