Women assail male bastion in S Korean election

More women than ever before are expected to win seats in polls elections as voters tire of S Korea's male-dominated political order.

More women than ever before are expected to win seats in Thursday's parliamentary elections as voters tire of South Korea's male-dominated political order.

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Women have emerged as leaders of two major parties in a historic shift at the same time as women outnumber men among eligible voters for the National Assembly poll.

Traditionally, women have been sidelined from politics in a country that remains fundamentally Confucian despite swift social change that has seen divorce rates rocket to among the highest in the world and the advent of a new phenomenon, the Korean career woman.

Scholars and feminists welcome the change but some question whether it represents real progress and whether women are being empowered, or simply used.

Traditional male-dominated South Korean politics was exposed as corrupt this year with revelations of a massive campaign fundraising scandal linked to the 2002 presidential elections.

All parties were implicated, in particular the conservative Grand National Party, the majority party in parliament. Supporters have since abandoned the GNP in droves.

But women emerged with clean hands and are seen as an alternative to the sordid business of corruption-as-usual.

"The change in our patriarchal society is epochal, although the employment of women by parties is part of tactics aimed at using their clean and gentle image for campaigning," said Cho Ki-Sook, a political science professor at Ewha University.

The shift is being led by Park Geun-Hye, who took over last month as head of the GNP, and Choo Mi-Aa, the campaign manager of the number two opposition Millennium Democratic Party (MDP).

Choo, 46, staged a gruelling 17-kilometer (10 mile), Buddhist-style prayer march to apologize for her party's role in the impeachment of President Roh Moo-Hyun last month and to revive her party's waning support from regional loyalists.

Park, 52, whose father ruled South Korea for 18 years since his coup in 1960, brought a quick makeover to the party soiled by corruption scandals.

Support for the GNP plummeted after it joined other opposition parties to impeach Roh.

The GNP, however, has been recovering as voters respond to the smiling Park, who earned her political spurs as first lady to her father following her mother's assassination in 1974.

Park's rising popularity suggests female political leaders are effective in grabbing the spotlight in campaigning.

The top three parties all have spokeswomen, rather than men -- Chun Yu-Ok of the GNP, Lee Seung-Hee from the MDP and Park Young-Sun of the Uri Party, who share similarities in their careers.

Chun, 45, and Park, served as TV news anchors, while Lee has appeared often on television as a commentator.

"The development is a demonstration of advances in democracy, and voters appear to be embracing women as a fresh political force," said Korea University's political science professor Im Hyung-Baek.

Of 299 seats at stake, 243 will be elected on the first-past-the-post system in each constituency, and 56 will be alloted among parties on proportional representation lines in accordance with popular votes they gain nationwide.

The new system ensures about 10 percent of total seats in the next legislature will be filled by women because each party is required to give half its list of proportional seats to women.

Four years ago, only 26 women were elected onto the single-chamber legislature -- five from electoral districts and 11 through the proportional system.

Pollsters predict the final number of women legislators will be well over 30 this year as women candidates are locked in a close race in dozens of constituencies.

With women accounting for 51 percent of 35.6 million voters, the rise of women political leaders will prod more women to visit ballot boxes this year, analysts say.