The Seoul Free Lunch Referendum was a
referendum
A referendum, plebiscite, or ballot measure is a Direct democracy, direct vote by the Constituency, electorate (rather than their Representative democracy, representatives) on a proposal, law, or political issue. A referendum may be either bin ...
held on 24 August 2011, on the subject of
free school meal
A school meal (whether it is a breakfast, lunch, or evening meal) is a meal provided to students and sometimes teachers at a school, typically in the middle or beginning of the school day. Countries around the world offer various kinds of schoo ...
s in the schools around the
Seoul
Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...
Metropolitan Area. Then-mayor of Seoul,
Oh Se-hoon
Oh Se-hoon (; born 4 January 1961) is a South Korean politician and lawyer who has served as the mayor of Seoul since 2021, an office he previously held from 2006 to 2011. A member of the People Power Party, he served as a member of the Nat ...
, proposed to provide a limited free meal service to the 30% of the impoverished children in Seoul, but the
Democratic Party proposed to make the free meal service to every child in Seoul starting from younger elementary school children and gradually to middle school children. This has become the cause of Oh Se-hoon's action to make the final decision of the policy through a referendum. The referendum was later rejected due to the low
voter turnout
In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate (often defined as those who cast a ballot) of a given election. This is typically either the percentage of Voter registration, registered voters, Suffrage, eligible voters, or all Voti ...
of 25.7%, significantly lower than the required turnout of 33.3%. The low voting rate contributed to Oh Se-hoon's resignation from the mayoralty of Seoul.
Issues
* The Democratic Party called the referendum and Oh Se-hoon's action unjust because the free school lunch in Seoul for a year costs 69.5 billion won while the referendum costs around 12 billion won.
* The
Grand National Party
The Liberty Korea Party () was a conservative political party in South Korea that was described variously as right-wing, right-wing populist, or far-right. Until February 2017, it was known as the Saenuri Party (), and before that as the Han ...
, Oh Se-hoon's political party of affiliation, considered Oh's defeat in a different perspective. The Chairperson of the GNP, Hong Jun-pyo, expressed his personal opinion that over 25% of the voting rate is enough to support the GNP for the 2012 presidential election.
See also
*
2011 South Korean by-elections
The two South Korean 2011 by-elections took place on April 27, 2011 in 38 electoral districts across the country and on October 26, 2011 in Seoul after Oh Se-hoon resigned due to his failure in the Seoul Free Lunch Referendum.
October 26
The mai ...
References
External links
Official website of the referendum{{in lang, ko
Presidency of Lee Myung-bak
2011 in South Korea
2011 referendums
2011
The year marked the start of a Arab Spring, series of protests and revolutions throughout the Arab world advocating for democracy, reform, and economic recovery, later leading to the depositions of world leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen ...
2010s in Seoul
August 2011 in South Korea