Political Knowledge and Voter Turnout in South Korea

We empirically analyze the effects of political knowledge on voter turnout and investigate the causal mechanism between them. We analyze the 19th National Assembly Election Survey conducted by the Korea Social Science Data Center and find that political knowledge motivates people to participate in voting. We find that political knowledge is not related to voters’ jobs, incomes, or other assets but rather to education level, ideological inclination, and media access. We also find that voters with more political knowledge easily distinguish among parties’ ideological positions and have distinctive preferences for them. Together, our results suggest that greater political participation among knowledgeable voters contributes to improving democracy in Korea.