First-term district mayors who misread their communities face growing opposition — scrutinized by district office staff, influential residents, and a layered network of ward, city and national lawmakers alike
Politics, it is often said, is the process of resolving conflict.
Yet the state of politics today suggests the opposite has become the norm — conflict is not resolved so much as amplified, and that is a troubling trend.
This is not a problem confined to national politics. In Seoul's autonomous districts, the fault lines opened by elections rarely close after the votes are counted, and friction continues to surface across the city.
Elections produce winners and losers. The trouble is that the conflict does not end when the balloting does.
When a new district mayor takes office, it is common for policies championed by the predecessor to be revised or scrapped. From the successor's perspective, resetting policy priorities may seem entirely reasonable.
But dismissing a carefully built initiative as simply a relic of the previous administration is where things go wrong.
Former allies and those who worked to advance those policies push back, and the resulting political skirmishing can drag on for months.
No matter how sound a policy may be, it does not always look that way through a successor's eyes.
When policy disputes spill over into personal animosity, the situation grows more serious still. If complaints escalate to criminal accusations, the psychological and social toll on those involved can be considerable.
Elections are another starting point for conflict.
Key local figures often back a particular candidate during a campaign, and once that candidate wins, the nature of those relationships frequently shifts.
When someone who believed they had helped a candidate to victory feels ignored or kept at arm's length afterward, the sense of betrayal can run deep.
Tensions deepen further when heavy-handed methods are used to exclude certain individuals from appointments to affiliated agency posts or key positions.
In local political circles, remarks such as "I can no longer support this person" or "I will make sure they lose the next election" are not unheard of.
For those who lent their support during the campaign, the feeling is one of having been betrayed.
Public assessments of district mayors' conduct are also growing sharper.
One recurring criticism is that a district mayor is "just out pulling weeds around the neighborhood" — a jab at leaders seen as attending to minor cosmetic tasks rather than governing.
Tending to the everyday environment is, of course, a legitimate part of the job. But what residents often want is not simply a mayor who makes the rounds, but one who can articulate a vision for the district's future.
Benchmarking policies from other districts has its place, but if the result is little more than imitation, residents will inevitably ask whether their district has any vision of its own.
When internal management problems emerge within the district office, unflattering rumors spread even faster.
"The newly elected district mayor has no idea how local politics actually works," one resident said. "Is it any wonder that bad stories keep leaking out when the district office can't even be managed properly?"
In this sense, local politics may actually be harder than national politics. National politics plays out across the entire country; local politics is compressed into a small, tightly connected community.
People know one another, and past relationships are tangled in ways that rarely untangle. Who the district mayor dined with, who they met, who they favored in appointments, who they clashed with — all of it can reach the community almost instantly.
District mayors with a relatively weak political base in their area are especially vulnerable: opposition voices tend to grow louder in proportion to that weakness.
The ward council is usually where that opposition first makes itself heard.
The conditions supporting ward council members' legislative work have also improved. With dedicated staff now assigned to assist members on policy and legislative matters, council members can prepare their administrative audits and policy questions more rigorously than before.
For district mayors and their executive teams, that means operating in an environment of heightened scrutiny.
Sharp criticism aired in the ward council quickly finds its way into news coverage, and a controversy that begins at the district level can spread across all of Seoul.
Seoul's autonomous districts are vast administrative units, each home to anywhere from roughly 300,000 to nearly 700,000 residents.
Leading such a unit is no easy task.
District mayors are judged by their own staff. They are judged by influential residents with deep roots in the community. And the scrutiny of local politicians — ward council members, city council members and National Assembly lawmakers alike — is formidable.
Once a negative assessment of a district mayor takes hold among the community's most vocal opinion-shapers, the fallout spreads faster than most expect.
Rumors of corruption, misconduct or heavy-handed personnel decisions can be particularly damaging.
Even before the facts are established, the rumors themselves become a political liability. In a tight-knit community, word travels at remarkable speed.
Elected officials are therefore expected, above all else, to act with care and to communicate openly.
Being chosen by voters does not justify everything that follows.
"Being elected by residents does not mean everything is permitted," one Seoul district resident said. "District mayors must never forget that residents are watching closely — from their conduct and integrity to their policies and achievements."
Ultimately, good local governance is not about accumulating allies. It is about minimizing conflict and persuading even those on the other side.
If winners and losers continue to treat each other as enemies long after election day, the community will remain in a state of perpetual division.
A district mayor is not the mayor only of those who voted for them.
Embracing residents who did not support them at the ballot box is the inescapable obligation of any elected official.
That is precisely why local politics can be harder than national politics: in a small community, everyone is connected to everyone else.
A district mayor's true political skill, in the end, is not measured by winning an election. It is measured by what they do afterward — and whether they can bring even those who opposed them into the fold.
seouldream01@heraldcorp.com
