Electoral Rights beyond Territory and beyond Citizenship? The Case of South Korea

Current world migration is disrupting conceptual boundaries of national democratic polities. One area where the traditional sense of political community is being challenged concerns electoral rights for non-resident citizens and non-citizen residents. With the right to vote being an ultimate expression of political membership in a democratic nation-state, any debates about these two groups' suffrage rights constitute a critical source of empirical insights into how democracies re-imagine themselves away from fixed identities under the pressure of globalization. In view of this, this paper examines the understudied case of South Korea, utilizing the most systematic theoretical framework currently available: one developed by Rainer Baubock. It provides direct empirical evidence that undermines the conventional wisdom that Koreans define their polity purely on the basis of their ethnicity. Contrary to our expectations, a close scrutiny of the Korean debates in question reveals ample references to the civic ideals of political community. The line of reasoning that emphasizes duties towards the welfare of the polity has produced powerful justifications for denying political franchise to overseas compatriots, while granting limited electoral rights to qualified resident foreigners. A broader implication of this empirical finding is that it highlights a fundamental limitation of Baubock's theoretical framework: it conceives political franchise only as an expression of people's rights in regard to law-making. The case of South Korea, thus, suggests that Baubock's scheme should be modified to address both the rights-based logics and the somewhat obsolete duty-based logic of franchise extension.