[Political X-File] Area is 9 Times Larger than Seoul, but Only 1 Member of the National Assembly

17. Parliamentary Constituencies That Are Too Large
Seoul Area 605㎢, 49 Seats
Hongcheon, Hoengseong, Yeongwol, Pyeongchang Area 5409㎢

Editor's Note‘Political X-Files’ is a serialized project that delivers ‘unprecedented stories’ recorded in the election results and incidents of Korean politics.

There is a super-large National Assembly electoral district with an area nine times that of the entire Seoul. Despite its unimaginably vast size, this district is represented by only one member of the National Assembly. How is this possible?

This raises questions about the rational criteria for allocating National Assembly seats. At first glance, it seems reasonable to allocate more seats to regions with larger populations (number of voters). In fact, Korea’s National Assembly general elections allocate seats based on such criteria.

As a result, areas with many people living in a small space naturally receive many National Assembly seats. A representative example is Seoul. Seoul covers an area of about 605㎢. It consists of 25 districts, and based on the 21st general election in 2020, 49 constituency members of the National Assembly were elected from here.

Out of the total 253 constituency members, 49 represent Seoul alone. Places like Jongno, Gangnam, Yeongdeungpo, Sindorim, Cheongnyangni, and Sinchon in Seoul are bustling with people. While not all of them reside in these areas, there is a large floating population as well as many actual residents.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

One might think that having nearly 50 National Assembly members is justified due to the large population, but the story changes when looking at other regions. Unless the number of constituency seats is significantly increased, the 253 seats must be distributed among all regions.

While Seoul experiences a ‘flood of people’ wherever you look, some areas require long drives through mountains, fields, and rivers, with hardly any people in sight. Even when adding up the sparse households, the population is too small to compare with Seoul.

This is why it is possible for a constituency with an area nine times that of Seoul to have only one National Assembly member. So, where is this constituency? It is the Gangwon-do Hongcheon·Hoengseong·Yeongwol·Pyeongchang constituency. Currently, only one member, Yoo Sang-beom of the People Power Party, has the right to enter the National Assembly plenary hall from this district.

In the 21st general election, the number of voters in the Hongcheon·Hoengseong·Yeongwol·Pyeongchang constituency was 174,692. The area of this district is 5,409㎢, which is 8.94 times the total area of Seoul.

For reference, Seoul’s number of voters reached 8,477,244. The number of voters in the Hongcheon·Hoengseong·Yeongwol·Pyeongchang constituency is even less than that of a single district in Seoul.

Yoo Sang-beom, the secretary of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee of the People Power Party, is leaving after the subcommittee meeting of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee held at the National Assembly on the afternoon of April 26. [Image source=Yonhap News]

The constituency with the smallest area nationwide is Seoul Dongdaemun-gu Eul, with 156,971 voters. The Dongdaemun Gap constituency had 148,982 voters. This means that just one district in Dongdaemun-gu has over 300,000 voters.

The Seoul Dongdaemun Eul constituency includes Jeonnong-dong, Dapsimni-dong, and Jangan-dong. The straight-line distance from Jeonnong 2-dong police station at one end of the constituency to the green area near Gunja Bridge is 3 km, which takes about 45 minutes on foot.

This is like a dream for the National Assembly member of the Hongcheon·Hoengseong·Yeongwol·Pyeongchang constituency, which is nine times the size of Seoul.

It is difficult to visit all towns and townships in the constituency even with days of effort. In fact, candidates running in the Hongcheon·Hoengseong·Yeongwol·Pyeongchang constituency often cannot visit all parts of their district even during the crucial election campaign period.

Visiting the constituency requires crossing mountain ranges and winding rural roads, often consuming all the time on the road. Therefore, during the redistricting period, opinions arise that the area of the constituency should be considered as much as the population.

However, it is impossible to ignore the provisions of the Public Official Election Act when drawing electoral districts. Although candidates running in mammoth constituencies complain every election, the results remain unchanged.

It seems difficult to avoid mammoth constituencies in the 22nd general election scheduled for April 10 next year. Will the situation of assigning only one National Assembly member to a huge area nine times the size of Seoul repeat? Considering the concentration of population in the metropolitan area and the crisis of regional extinction, it is not hard to predict a bleak future.