The meaning of conflict in the Korean National Assembly

This paper investigates the nature of policy conflict in the Korean National Assembly via a spatial analysis of its members’ voting. We discover the main dimensions of conflict and look at the impact of institutions and members’ preferences on their reveal spatial locations. We find that Korean politics is both similar and unique compared to most developed democracies. Like other democracies, voting in the KNA is policy based, yet constrained by strong parties and the strategic context of a presidential system. Unlike most other democracies, however, voting in the KNA is dominated by a geo-political security dimension rather than the classic socio-economic (left-right) dimension.