Late Agreement on Electoral District Delimitation Imminent... Minimal Changes Expected

3 PM Haenganwi Secretary and 5 PM Floor Leader Sequential Meetings

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyemin] An agreement on the 4.15 general election district delimitation is imminent. On the 2nd, the ruling and opposition parties will sequentially hold meetings with the Administrative and Security Committee secretaries at 3 p.m. and the floor leaders at 5 p.m. to attempt a last-minute agreement on the number of lawmakers by province.

The floor leaders of both parties met the previous day to coordinate the district delimitation but failed to reach a final agreement. However, since they stated that they significantly narrowed their differences, it is expected that the district delimitation plan could be finalized as early as that day.

Earlier, the National Assembly passed an election law amendment centered on the mixed-member proportional representation system, deciding to maintain 253 constituencies. Since there is little room for change and only about a month remains until the election, both parties agreed to minimize changes such as splitting or merging electoral districts.

There is no disagreement between the ruling and opposition parties on dividing Sejong, the constituency with the largest population, into two districts. However, it is reported that no agreement was reached regarding the splitting of Suncheon and Chuncheon, which have the next largest populations. Whether these areas are split depends on the population lower limit set. If the lower limit rises to 140,500 people, Chuncheon and Suncheon will be excluded from the list of districts to be split.

How to handle districts with insufficient population is a more difficult issue. Initially, both parties considered merging underpopulated districts by splitting parts of neighboring districts’ eup, myeon, and dong (town, township, and neighborhood), but the National Election Commission interpreted that such separation is legally impossible.

Because of this, it is known that both parties are also considering amending the Public Official Election Act to allow fine adjustments of eup, myeon, and dong boundaries for district delimitation only for this election.

On the day, both parties plan to review additional simulation results from the district delimitation committee based on upper and lower population limits and finalize the delimitation criteria, including population thresholds and the number of seats per province. If a conclusion is reached that day, the district delimitation plan is expected to pass the plenary session on the 5th. However, even if passed, criticism for missing the legal deadline and processing the plan about a year late is unlikely to be avoided.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.