Thirty Years Efforts to Delve into Korean Voters Hearts and Minds: Achievements and Limitations

South Korea made a democratic transition and adopted new electoral systems on the presidential and National Assembly election in 1987. The paper provides an overview of the studies on Korean voter behavior in the last thirty years. We begin our discussion with the works on two salient electoral cleavages and their changes: region and ideology. Then we discuss the generation and gender as two increasingly important explanatory variables on vote choice. Next, we canvass the works that focus on party identification, issue voting, political psychology of Korean voters. We conclude with a brief discussion on the agenda for future research.