Does the youth member represent the youth?: Focusing on the 21st National Assembly

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze whether youth lawmakers represent young people in the 21st National Assembly. In other words, it was intended to check whether the increase in the nominal representation of young people in the National Assembly leads to an increase in substansive representation. To this end, a total of 275 youth-related bills proposed from the opening of the 21st National Assembly(May 30, 2020) to August 31, 2022 were thoroughly investigated with quantitative and qualitative analysis conducted simultaneously. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the younger members of the legislature are more likely to initiate youth-related bills. In addition, it was confirmed that party membership and seniority have impacts on bill initiation. The results of the qualitative analysis of the youth-related bills showed that the 21st National Assembly members wanted to effectively represent the youth, particularly focusing on the issues of job(28.36%, 78 cases) and politics(23.63%, 65 cases). Although the number of youth lawmakers is small, they were found to make efforts to guarantee the political, social, cultural, and economic rights of young people and to represent the youth group by proposing bills that are different from non-youth members.