How Voting Selfies Brought Down South Korea’s Conservative Majority

Social Media Campaigns Are Boosting Youth Turnout and Curbing the Influence of Elderly Voters

Korean elections are no longer driven by the old.

For more than 16 years, older voters in Korea dominated politics, giving the conservatives a big advantage—and a majority in the national parliament.

Then, in the April elections this year, conservatives unexpectedly lost their majority. The reason: Younger voters turned out at ballot stations like never before. They had been mobilized by new uses of social media in the campaigns.

Why did this change take so long? Korea has been in economic recession for many years. It has long been plagued by high …