• 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.