Conservatives rally against the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol, with some holding signs such as "Anti-China, Crush Communism" near the Chinese Embassy in Seoul, Feb. 27. Ruling party lawmakers recently proposed a bill aimed to take away the right to vote from all foreign permanent residents amid anti-China sentiment increasingly shared among Korean conservatives. Newsis

Ruling party lawmakers seek to take away the right to vote from all foreign permanent residents through legislation, a move apparently targeting Chinese residents here amid anti-China sentiment increasingly shared among Korean conservatives.

According to the office of Rep. Kang Dae-sik, Thursday, he and nine other lawmakers of the People Power Party (PPP) recently proposed a bill to revise the Public Official Election Act, under which noncitizens who have held permanent resident visas here for three years or longer can vote to elect local officials such as governors and mayors.

"The law is not aligned with the principle of reciprocity, given that most of our citizens who live in other countries as permanent residents do not have the right to vote there," the legislators said in the proposal. "Also, the number of foreign residents here has been rising and many live in certain areas together, which poses the risk of distorting citizens' political opinions."

Particularly, they raised concerns that there is a risk of foreign intervention in local elections as around 80 percent of foreign nationals with voting rights are from China.

Data released the same day by Rep. Kim Mi-ae of the PPP shows that Chinese account for 81 percent of 140,100 such noncitizen voters in Korea, followed by Taiwanese (6.9 percent), Japanese (4.8 percent) and Vietnamese (1.1 percent).

This revelation comes as the nation is scheduled to hold by-elections on April 2 for positions including the superintendent of the Busan education office as well as mayors of Geoje, Asan and Gimcheon.

"The right to vote belongs to citizens, the owners of the country," Kang's aide told The Korea Times. "Concerns about the risks of giving that right to foreigners are widely shared among party members."

Yet the bill cannot be passed without the approval of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, which holds a majority in the National Assembly. All previous similar attempts were frustrated by liberal lawmakers.

But as the number of foreign residents rises, including those with permanent residency, and the country becomes ever more polarized politically, their political opinions have become more important. In the 2022 local elections, for example, Kim Dong-yeon won by just 8,900 votes to become the governor of the Gyeonggi Province, where there were 50,000 permanent residents of foreign nationality, mostly Chinese.

Conservatives worry that noncitizens will increasingly play a bigger role in elections both as candidates and voters amid projected demographic changes driven by the nation's low birthrate.

This legislation move comes as some right-wing activists use anti-China slogans in rallies as a means of uniting people against the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is now awaiting the Constitutional Court's ruling on his fate following his Dec. 3 martial law declaration.

One of Yoon's reasons to declare martial law was China's alleged interference in Korea's elections and his need to investigate the suspicion. The allegations of Chinese interference in elections were spread among conservative YouTubers.

Amid the political turmoil following the martial law, some popular conservative YouTubers have claimed that Chinese people joined the protests against Yoon, who aligned his country more closely with the United States over the past three years while in office.

This sentiment has been fueled by some ruling party politicians who like to paint their rivals in liberal parties as "pro-China."

Outside of the countries of the European Union and the Commonwealth of Nations, Korea is one of the few that guarantee noncitizens the right to vote. The bill granting noncitizens the right to vote was passed in 2005 by the Assembly as a means of pressing the government in Japan to give the same right to Zainichi Koreans. After World War II, ethnic Koreans living in Japan lost their Japanese citizenship, but were given the right to live there — without voting rights. They still do not have the right to vote.