Elite Polarization in South Korea: Evidence from a Natural Language Processing Model

Seungwoo Han

doi:10.1017/jea.2021.36

Abstract

AbstractThis study analyzes political polarization among the South Korean elite by examining 17 years’ worth of subcommittee meeting minutes from the South Korean National Assembly's standing committees. Its analysis applies various natural language processing techniques and the bidirectional encoder representations from the transformers model to measure and analyze polarization in the language used during these meetings. Its findings indicate that the degree of political polarization increased and decreased at various times over the study period but has risen sharply since the second half of 2016 and remained high throughout 2020. This result suggests that partisan political gaps between members of the South Korean National Assembly increase substantially.

Highlights

South Korea has experienced economic development and democratization in a relatively short period of time
The South Korean situation meets the definition of political polarization, which can be defined as loss of the capacity for inter-party dialog and compromise and the recurrence of hostile confrontations and deadlock (McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006)
The current study aims to present empirical evidence of the polarization of South Korean political elites by analyzing subcommittee meeting minutes that reflect the legislative process, rather than the result of votes on the floor

Summary

Introduction

South Korea has experienced economic development and democratization in a relatively short period of time. Koreans are concerned about what they perceive as a growing polarization between liberal and conservative political parties This perception has been verified by previous studies, which have shown that South Korea’s two major political parties are characterized by high levels of internal ideological homogeneity and have increasingly diverged from one another over time (Ka 2014; Park et al 2016). In this way, the South Korean situation meets the definition of political polarization, which can be defined as loss of the capacity for inter-party dialog and compromise and the recurrence of hostile confrontations and deadlock (McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006). This is because political parties do not resolve but rather amplify social conflicts in Korean society

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Discussion

Conclusion