The Influence of Local-Tie and School-Tie Groups on Congressional Network: Division in the Leading Opposition Party in South Korea in 2015-16

Abstract

Power derived from personal relationships especially based on school ties and local ties has become accepted as a source of human capital, and has been shown since the 1960s to be an effective tool for attaining upward social mobility in South Korea. Many researchers have largely focused on public behavior or the role of political elites, not individual members in the National Assembly. Since social network analysis is an effective research tool for examining influence of relational attributes, it has the potential to be very helpful in understanding the behavior of members in the National Assembly. This study maps relationships among members of the leading opposition party in South Korea to determine whether they affected political events occurring in early 2016—specifically the split of the leading opposition party, NPAD, into two parties, MPK and PP. Mapping a network could be helpful to find a new way to analyze actions of political leaders in a certain political event as well. I used personal information about members of the opposition parties, including their hometowns, educational institutions attended, and previous achievements to map their social networks extant at the time of the split. I used values of centralities to determine who was the hub of the network and what relationships exist between and among its members. Examining the network connecting members of the opposition parties shows that, contrary to expectations, Chun Jung-bae was the hub not Ahn Chul-soo or Moon Jae-in unlike many expectations. Determining the relationships based on school ties and local ties between members can provide researchers with new perspectives on their research into political events in South Korea.