Yeilim Cheong

Yeilim Cheong is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at UC San Diego. Her main research interests lie at the intersection of political parties and the consequences of authoritarian rule in new democracies, with a regional focus on Korea and the Asia Pacific. In her dissertation, she uses an original party election-level dataset to study how some leading pro-democracy figures, political parties, or movements that previously opposed authoritarian rule succeed in building durable political parties and winning nationwide elections, while others dissolve or decline shortly after a country’s democratic transition. She also studies whether and under what conditions the electoral success of these surviving opposition successor parties (OSPs) is likely to contribute to the resilience of the country’s democracy as well as political polarization. In other works, she uses longitudinal surveys to analyze trends of political polarization and micro-level data to study factors that shape various forms of political opposition under autocratic rule. She holds a B.A. in political science & international relations and economics and an M.A. in political science and international relations from Korea University.