JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
South Koreans go to the polls on Tuesday to elect a new president. This is after months of political upheaval. And as NPR's Se Eun Gong reports, the incoming president will find a deeply polarized country.
SE EUN GONG, BYLINE: South Korea has been sharply divided ever since President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in December. After widespread protests, the president was arrested on charges of insurrection, and eventually he was removed from office.
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GONG: Yoon's opponents saw that as a victory for democracy.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Shouting in non-English language).
GONG: But to his supporters, it was an unimaginable defeat. This kind of polarization is not new to South Korea. In 2016, when President Park Geun-hye was impeached, protesters for and against her rallied for months. But back then, the country was mostly united, with around 80% of the public supporting the impeachment. This time, however, only around 60% did, and the demonstrations were more radical this time.
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GONG: In January, when a court issued the arrest warrant for President Yoon, more than a hundred of his supporters smashed the court's windows and stormed inside.
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GONG: Some of Yoon's supporters also threatened law enforcement and clashed with Yoon's opponents, but they are not fighting over ideological differences.
YOO SUNG JIN: (Through interpreter) It's not a matter of positions on an issue or a policy.
GONG: Yoo Sung Jin is a political scientist at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.
YOO: (Through interpreter) People just hate the other side. It's emotional polarization, so it's become a clash between us versus them, the good versus the bad.
GONG: Yoo says the emotional polarization encourages politicians to take extreme positions and use divisive rhetoric. On the campaign trail, the leading candidates from the two opposing parties are representing South Korea's deepening division themselves. Democratic Party's candidate Lee Jae-myung sees the election this way.
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LEE JAE-MYUNG: (Through interpreter) It will be a decision between a return of insurrectionists and a rebirth into a new democratic republic.
GONG: And here's the conservative party candidate, Kim Moon-soo, speaking of his rival.
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KIM MOON-SOO: (Through interpreter) They're trying to turn this great democratic country into something worse than Hitler, Kim Jong Un, Stalin and Xi Jinping's country.
GONG: Kim has opposed the former president's impeachment and refused calls to cut ties with him. Instead, he has echoed the impeached president's accusations of the opposition as pro-communist. This divisive rhetoric is reflected in South Koreans' opinions about democracy. In a recent survey by the Seoul-based think tank East Asia Institute, over 30% of people expressed doubts about election fairness, and 30% of people supporting the ruling party said a dictatorship can be better than democracy.
YOO: (Through interpreter) We're certainly seeing people's trust in the rules of the game operating the system shaking.
GONG: Political scientist Yoo Sung Jin again.
YOO: (Through interpreter) If this situation continues, it can become much more dangerous.
GONG: Whoever is elected on Wednesday, the new president will face the difficult task of unifying the nation in the years to come.
Se Eun Gong, NPR News, Seoul. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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