• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.387-401
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• 2013

Redistricting of National Assembly Election has a significant effect on the results of election because it has a strong tendency to be performed with political intentions rather than the equivalent representativeness of population and region. This paper focuses on proposing an alternative for restricting of National Assembly Election in terms of implementation, that is, an procedural and systematic approach, not allowing for political or arbitrary intervention. A spatial optimization model conforming with criteria for political redistricting such as population equality, contiguity, and spatial compactness is developed and applied to Yongin City where are some controversy over the redistricting of the 19th National Assembly. Modeling results show that it is possible to derive National Assembly Election districts based on the information of basic spatial units without political consideration or arbitrary intervention. In addition, The districts derived from the model improved population equality compared with the existing districts.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.718-734
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• 2012

This study investigates the interference of politics of regional cleavage in the redistricting for national assembly election and its effects on gerrymandering and malapportionment. Since the Constitutional Assembly election, the argument about gerrymandering and malapportionment continues and the single-member election district with simple plurality system in Korea has aggravated the problem of cleavage and unfairness. Especially, redistrictings for national assembly election in 2008 and 2012 are suspected of gerrymandering by Saenuri party and Democratic United party. Yeongnam region where Saenuri party is dominant and Honam region where Democratic United party is, are over-represented compared to population, while the districts in Gyeonggi-do are under-represented and the need for increasing the number of districts has been ignored. These redistrictings might come from unfair and collusive interference of politics of regional cleavage, and consequently malapportionment has been brought about.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.371-389
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• 2014

This study aims to analyze the redistricting problems in non-autonomous Gu. Although non-autonomous Gu is a just local administrative district, it has been regarded as an important and basic spatial unit in electoral redistricting. By the reform of Public Official Election Act in 2012, however, non-autonomous Gu is distinguished from local governments like Si, Gun and autonomous Gu, in boundary delimitation for the 19th National Assembly election, and some are divided into a part of another constituency. About these background, this study points out the following problems. First, in national scale, the reform of Act made the malapportionment in constituencies of non-autonomous Gus, comparing with those of local governments. Second, there was the discriminative application of Act in each non-autonomous Gu and it will make the malapportionment worse in next election, considering the reorganization of local administrative system. Finally, this study propose that it is necessary to select one from a variety of redistricting principles, especially between the prevention of gerrymandering, the representativeness of local government and the apportionment, prior to another amendment of redistricting system and the debate about political reform.