Two North Korean defectors take seats in South Korean parliament

Two North Korean defectors will sit in South Korea’s parliament for the first time ever after scoring a small victory for conservatives in the country’s midterm elections this week, which were otherwise dominated by President Moon Jae-in and his left-leaning Democratic Party.

Overall, Mr. Moon scored a resounding win in the world’s first major national election of the COVID-19 era. The results provide clear evidence that voters will reward incumbents seen as responding effectively to the economic and public health challenge wrought by the pandemic.

Mr. Moon’s popularity was plummeting before the pandemic because of slow economic growth, controversial justice reforms and a stalled policy on North Korea. All that changed with his administration’s rollout of a widely applauded testing system, quarantine measures and a robust economic stimulus package in the past two months.

While the novel coronavirus wreaks havoc, Seoul has made headlines for weeks by “flattening the curve” more effectively than China and most Western-style democracies. Pre-election polls showed growing public approval for the aggressive testing and quarantine program credited with lowering fatality rates. South Korea, with a population of nearly 52 million, has reported around 10,600 infections, 229 confirmed deaths and more than 7,700 recoveries.

“Before the pandemic, Moon’s government faced many negative reviews,” Song Hochang, a former member of the South Korean National Assembly, said Thursday. The Moon government’s victory was directly connected to the perceptions of a successful response to the coronavirus outbreak, Mr. Song said on a videoconference hosted by the Korea Economic Institute of America.

Voter turnout was the highest in nearly three decades despite forced social distancing at polling stations. The big vote favored Mr. Moon’s Democratic Party and a satellite party, resulting in a combined 180 seats in the 300-seat National Assembly.

More than 17 million South Koreans cast ballots, drawing sharp contrasts with upended election cycles in the United States and Europe and setting an early standard for a democratic process during the pandemic.

Implications for Moon

Overall, South Korean conservatives took a drubbing in the election and Mr. Moon enters the final years of his single term with enhanced clout to carry out his agenda. It was the biggest midterm victory for a governing party in more than three decades in South Korea.

Hwang Kyo-ahn stepped down as chairman of the United Future Party after losing in a key Seoul district to Democratic Party candidate Lee Nak-yeon, a former prime minister who emerged as a front-runner for the 2022 presidential race.

Mr. Hwang, also a former prime minister, apologized to supporters for “failing to prevent the country from going in the wrong direction at an important time.”

Mr. Moon’s next steps are objects of considerable speculation. When the ruling bloc controls at least 180 seats, the government will be able to pass most bills. Still, Mr. Moon lacks the supermajority to change the constitution.

U.S.-South Korean relations, which have been strained by a nasty public dispute over President Trump’s demands that Seoul contribute far more money to the joint defense of the peninsula.

Even as Seoul and Washington deal with coronavirus outbreaks, the Pentagon went forward with furloughs of roughly 4,500 South Koreans who work for the U.S. military, underscoring the failure of the two sides to renew an annual spending agreement.

South Korea paid about $800 million into the agreement last year, a significant increase over past years. Mr. Trump at first said he wanted the next annual payment to be $5 billion, but South Korean officials have said that demand would be impossible to meet.

Mr. Moon may have more clout to resist U.S. demands after Wednesday’s vote, but Defense Secretary Mark Esper this week signaled that Washington will still be pushing for more money.

South Korea, he told reporters at the Pentagon, “is a close and trusted ally of ours, but they’re a wealthy country.”

“They can and should pay more to help for our mutual defense and their specific defense,” Mr. Esper said.

Win for defectors

While conservative parties suffered their worst showing in years, the entrance of two North Korean defectors into the parliament made history and signaled potentially rising political influence in Seoul for people who have fled the North’s dictatorship.

Thae Yong-ho, a 58-year-old former North Korean elite who was once second in command at Pyongyang’s embassy in London and who defected in 2016, won a seat in Seoul’s affluent Gangnam district by direct election.

Ji Seong-ho, a 38-year-old defector from an impoverished North Korean family, took a conservative party seat through proportional representation — an appointment based on systemwide vote counts.

It is not unprecedented for a North Korean defector to enter the parliament. Cho Myong-chul became the first back in 2012 on appointment by proportional vote.

But Mr. Thae became the first ever to be elected directly by the voters under South Korea’s system.

Mr. Thae, Mr. Ji and Mr. Cho all embrace conservative political positions that advocate hard-line postures toward the North Korean dictatorship they fled. South Korean liberals, including Mr. Moon’s ruling Democratic Party, generally regard former North Koreans with suspicion and as hindrances to Mr. Moon’s diplomatic outreach to Pyongyang.

Pro-engagement politicians in Seoul are often blamed for trying to silence outspoken North Korea hawks among the population of defectors. The South Korean government says some 30,000 have fled the North since the Korean War was frozen by an armistice in 1953.

Some defectors are viewed as valuable sources by South Korean and American intelligence officials seeking understanding of the black-box machinations of North Korea’s ruling regime. Some have also faced serious security threats, both personally and to their families, from North Korean intelligence.

Mr. Thae is perhaps the highest-profile North Korean official to have defected. South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported Thursday that he ran for office using his new name Thae Gu-min, which means “saving people” in Chinese character, and that he wore a bulletproof vest during his campaign for fear of a terrorist attack.

He reportedly won 58.4% of the votes in Gangnam for the conservative United Future Party.

Mr. Ji, an orphan from a North Korean mining town who lost a hand and a leg in a train accident while trying to steal coal to survive as a boy, was appointed to represent the Future Korea Party, a smaller conservative proxy.

He defected in 2006, reportedly making his way to the South on foot, and has since emerged as a major advocate in Seoul for North Korean human rights.

Scott Snyder, who heads the Council of Foreign Relations’ program on U.S.-Korea policy, said Thursday that it “will be very interesting to see how [Mr. Thae and Mr. Ji] go about representing both their constituents and managing their identities as players at the National Assembly level.”

“The big notable factor is that these two North Korean defectors are part of the opposition,” Mr. Snyder said on the institute’s videoconference. “Essentially, they are now voices that the ruling party will have to contend with because those voices have been amplified.”