S Korea's Assembly elections are on April 15! Let's pick a district that seems interesting from the replies to the QT below.

District of the day: Seoul Yongsan-gu. Several requests for this one, likely because it is such an expat-heavy area. https://twitter.com/AskAKorean/status/1245531066611503105

Here is where Yongsan is in relation to Seoul.

Yongsan is an interesting district - it contains the big US base, the expat-hangout Itaewon, as well as the super-rich Hannam-dong and Ichon-dong.

I'm tempted to call Yongsan the "Parasite District", after the movie. The Hannam-dong neighborhood is in the running for the richest neighborhood in Seoul. (The Samsung founding family lives there.) But the NW neighborhoods like Huam-dong or Yongmun-dong are a bit run down.

Yongsan is currently represented by a Dem 4-term rep Jin Yeong, who is not running this time. Jin is more of a local chief than a partisan - he won the district three times as a conservative party member and won the last election as a liberal party member.

Here are your candidates:

Dem Kang Tae-woong (blue) is a former vice mayor of Seoul. This is his first shot at an elected position.

UFP Kwon Yeong-se (pink) is a former 3-term Assm member from the neighboring Yeongdeungpo-2 district. He's basically a career election-runner.

The biggest local issue for Yongsan is (like many districts) development. This is especially important because the US base is about to move out, freeing up lots of valuable real estate to be developed. Both KTW and KYS are appealing that he is the right person to bring projects.

Yongsan is an important district. Conservatives do poorly in cities and they generally lose most of Seoul. Yongsan is one of the few places where the conservative UFP can flip a Dem district. No poll there yet, but generally it seems like Kwon is slightly ahead. /end

Continuing this series, here is today's District of the Day: Chuncheon [춘천시].

Chuncheon is a mid-sized city w/ about 280k people, located 1.5 hour drive northeast of Seoul. https://twitter.com/AskAKorean/status/1245531066611503105

Chuncheon is a mix of rural and urban. It has farmland, but also has lots of beautiful lakes, which makes tourism big business here. Well-to-do Seoul people often retire here or have vacation homes. Dakgalbi [닭갈비] originated from this city.

Politically, Chuncheon is interesting for two reasons: (1) Its electoral district got re-drawn severely for this election. S Korea doesn't have partisan gerrymandering like US, but that doesn't mean people take every re-draw in a stride.

Chuncheon's population increased recently, which made people there hope that the city would have two Assembly members. Instead, the re-draw just took the northern half of the city and stuck it with the surrounding rural areas of Hwacheon, Yanggu and Cheolwon.

This makes Chuncheon-1 the city's downtown (small yellow area in the map below), and Chuncheon-2 the city's suburb plus the massive outlying farmlands (in red.) This made Chuncheon-1 more liberal while the city residents falling in Chuncheon-2 kinda got screwed.

(2) The other reason why Chuncheon is interesting politically is because - the incumbent for Chuncheon (now Chuncheon-1) is a conservative named Kim Jin-tae, who might be one of the top 3 most odious people in S Korean politics.

KJT is a former prosecutor running for his third term. He is also the worst kind of red-baiting motherfucker and chief defender of the impeached Park Geun-hye. He defended spy agencies framing people for being N Korean spies. He claimed evidence of PGH's corruption was fake.

KJT is running against Heo Yeong, who lost to KJT in the previous election. But the re-districting helped HY, and people are also pretty sick of KJT. This time around, HY is leading KJT by a small margin. /end

S Korean National Assembly election time!

The district(s) of the day are: Incheon Seogu-1 and 2. https://twitter.com/AskAKorean/status/1245531066611503105

If you ever visited S Korea from abroad, it's highly likely that the first place in S Korea you visited was Incheon - because that's where the airport is. Purple area in the map below is Seogu, which is split into two districts.

Incheon to Seoul is like Baltimore to Washington DC - a legitimate city in its own right, but increasingly becoming an exburb of the larger city nearby. Seogu is more directly affected by this trend, because much of the "new city" - planned commuter towns - is located here.

Seogu-1 has a 3-term conservative rep Lee Hak-jae (right) running against liberal Kim Gyo-heung. LHJ and KGH faced off four times in the same district - KGH won once in 2004, then LHJ won three in a row thereafter. But this time, LHJ is leading by 10%-plus margin in the polls.

Seogu-2 has the first term Democrat (liberal) Shin Dong-geun (left), running against UFP (conservative) Park Jong-jin. SDG is pretty comfortably leading PJJ in the polls here as well. All the Seoul-commuting liberals are poised to deliver both Seogu districts to the Dems.

Speaking of commuting, the bed-town nature of Seogu makes for a strange situation where the candidates campaign across districts. Regardless of parties, all the Seogu-1 candidates promise a new subway extension going thru their district, and same with Seogu-2.