The Seoul Free Lunch Referendum was a referendum held on 24 August 2011, on the subject of

free school meal A school meal or school lunch (also known as hot lunch, a school dinner, or school breakfast) is a meal provided to students and sometimes teachers at a school, typically in the middle or beginning of the school day. Countries around the world ...

s in the schools around the

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 of ...

Metropolitan Area. Then-mayor of Seoul,

Oh Se-hoon Oh Se-hoon ( Korean: 오세훈, Hanja: 吳世勳; born January 4, 1961) is a South Korean politician who is currently the serving Mayor of Seoul since 8 April 2021. He also previously served as a member of the National Assembly of South Kore ...

, proposed to provide a limited free meal service to the 30% of the impoverished children in Seoul, but the

Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...

proposed to make the free meal service to every child in Seoul starting from younger elementary school children and gradually to middle school children. This has become the cause of Oh Se-hoon's action to make the final decision of the policy through a referendum. The referendum was later rejected due to the low

voter turnout In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate (often defined as those who cast a ballot) of a given election. This can be the percentage of registered voters, eligible voters, or all voting-age people. According to Stanford Univ ...

of 25.7%, significantly lower than the required turnout of 33.3%. The low voting rate contributed Oh Se-hoon's resignation from the mayoralty of Seoul.

Issues

* The Democratic Party called the referendum and Oh Se-hoon's action unjust because the free school lunch in Seoul for a year costs 69.5 billion won while the referendum costs around 12 billion won. * The

Grand National Party The Liberty Korea Party () was a conservative political party in South Korea that was described variously as right-wing, right-wing populist, or far-right. Until February 2017, it was known as the Saenuri Party (), and before that as the Hanna ...

, Oh Se-hoon's political party of affiliation, considered Oh's defeat in a different perspective. The Chairperson of the GNP, Hong Jun-pyo, expressed his personal opinion that over 25% of the voting rate is enough to support the GNP for the 2012 presidential election.

References

External links

Official website of the referendum
{{in lang, ko Lee Myung-bak Government 2011 in South Korea 2011 referendums 2011 2010s in Seoul August 2011 events in South Korea

Issues

See also

References

External links