Park Geun-hye, the daughter of South Korea's former president Park Chung-hee, won the presidential elections of 2012 with the majority of the votes. December 2016 she was impeached from her...Show morePark Geun-hye, the daughter of South Korea's former president Park Chung-hee, won the presidential elections of 2012 with the majority of the votes. December 2016 she was impeached from her position as president, and her biggest rival from the 2012 elections, Moon Jae-in, went on to win the 2017 elections by a landslide. This thesis aims to provide an insight on the generational differences in the presidential elections of 2007, 2012, and 2017 by using public opinion surveys and election polls. This thesis finds that a generation gap is highly present in South Korea. In presidential elections older age cohorts are generally on the conservative side, however, younger age cohorts are neither conservative nor progressive. Instead, they should be labelled as swing voters. Whether this will change in the future due to the life-cycle effect is something that needs to be studied further.Show less
