Headline, July 20 2022/ ''' '' OOH -19 YEARS- OLD '' ''' : SOUTH KOREA

''' '' OOH -19 YEARS-

 OLD '' ''' : SOUTH KOREA

FOR EXAMPLE IN PROUD PAKISTAN - THE WORLD STUDENTS SOCIETY, grew a nursery of future leaders both for the national level and for the global stage. 'Welcome to !WOW!''.

Engineer Founder Framer Rabo and Darkshan are both natural leaders. And so is lawyer Ms. Zainab Khan [Kings College], Sahar Khan [Kings College], Shahrayar Khan [US], Hafsa [Quaid-e-Azam University], Engineer Hussain Ali, Zaeem Khan [ Bahria University ], Student Ibrahim Basit [LUMS]. 

Let's see and have all of you face up to some real West Indian pace attack!

Engineer Founder Framer Hussain Ali is 28. Barrister Hamza Manzoor is 27 plus. Zaeem Khan is going past 23 plus. In Proud South Korea the youngest election winner in the country's history, a 19-years-old.

The age limit for national political candidates is 25 in much of Asia, including Japan, India, the Philippines and Thailand. In Hong Kong and Singapore the limit is 21, and in Taiwan it is 23.

In the United States, a person must be 30 or older to be a Senator and 25 or older to be a representative. Only a few teenagers have been elected to American state legislatures or have run for seats in City Councils. A handful of countries, including Germany, allow 18-years-old to run for a national legislative chamber.

SEOUL : YOUNG POLITICAL VOICES ARISE AND SHINE IN SOUTH KOREA. Fresh candidates are elected to local offices, but they still face cultural hurdles.

Jung Seong-boon, 22 shared the frustrations of young South Koreans looking at a bleak future : Jobs are scarce, rent is high, and debt is climbing. So last month, he ran for a spot on his local city legislature and won.

Mr.Jung exemplifies the young blood entering South Korean politics in droves after lawmakers this year lowered the minimum age limit for political office to 18 from 25.

That led to a record number of people under 40 running in local elections in June - 416 candidates, up from 238 in 2018. Among the 4,131 people who won their races, 11 were under 24 years old, including the youngest election winner in the country's history, a 19-year-old.

But even before their terms began on Friday, they encountered problems as old as politics itself. They say they face a political ecosystem dominated by politicians in their 50s and 60s who are out of touch, a prohibitively high bar for fund raising and an opaque network of party officials whose favor they must curry to stand a chance.

They must negotiate strict cultural barriers {one's social standing is determined in large part one's age} and deal with an older electorate that sometimes dismisses them as ''inexperienced'' and ''gullible,'' some explain.

''There is an expectation that young people will contribute to bettering the world, but a lot of people raise concerns about our young age,'' said Lee Jahyung, 23, who was elected to the assembly in Gyeonggi Province near Seoul.

''They're concerned that our sense of judgment hasn't been fully developed and we might be too easily swayed by people around us.''

That makes it harder for the young hopefuls to receive the nomination of a major political party, which often requires them to be personally acquainted with party officials.

In the conservative People Power Party, local council chairs hold the power to nominate a candidate. In the Liberal Democratic Party, candidates must not only be nominated, but also win in primaries to stand in the election.

''There was a fixed idea that politics is for adults, according to a long-established Confucian culture,'' said Noh Woong rae, 64, a amember of the National Assembly.

In South Korea, Mr. Noh was among the lawmakers who campaigned to lower the minimum age limit for candidates, arguing that the candidacy age should match the voting age, which had been 20 since 1960. Others wanted to remove age limits altogether.

The movement to change the law was tied to the student-led democratic protests of 1987. Activists said they wanted to dispel the notion that political participation should be reserved for the elite, an idea dating to the military dictatorship of Park Chung-hee.

The effort succeeded in stages : The voting age was lowered to 19 in 2005. In 2019, the National Assembly approved lowering it again to 18. Then this year, lawmakers lowered the age to run for office.

''It's nice to have some experience or knowledge, but I don't think politics necessarily required a huge level of it,'' said Park Joo-min, 48, another assembly-man.

Despite the change, Mr. Jung, the 22-year-old elected to the Yangsan city assembly in South Gyeongsang Province, said that speaking to a party official to try to get nominated ''felt like beating my head against the wall. [He campaigned on a promise to help strengthen the city's transportation infrastructure].

Fund-raising is also challenging, with some candidates saying they had come up with about 20 million South Korean won [about $15,400] to run successful campaigns.

FOR CHEON SEUNG-AH, 19, the youngest elected politician winning came at a price. She had been nominated by her local party council's chair, Kim Hyun-ah, 52, amid a push to get more young women involved with the People Power Party.

In an interview, Mr. Cheon had described hopes for expanding enrichment programs for the city's children and improving the municipal transit system.

Then, after she won, members of her own party council, including some women who had been vying for a nomination to her seat, launched an attack.

According to a complaint signed by six members of the council, she had claimed on her resume a nonexistent title on the country's young adult committee.

On Friday, Ms. Cheon began her term as the youngest assembly woman in Goyang. As of Monday, the prosecutors had assigned a police department to investigate her case.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on World and Wonders, continues. The World Students Society thanks author John Yoon.

With respectful dedication to the Grandparents, Parents, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society :  wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

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