This review article deals with a book written by Cho Ki-Sook. Though her book includes various issues in the 2000 National Assembly election such as impact of the historic inter-Korea summit on electoral results, she focuses on activities of a civil movement during the campaign, and its effects on voters' turnout. She intends to refute a claim that the campaign against some ‘tarnished’ candidates led to widespread discontent with politics, which consequently caused a low turnout. She provides some empirical evidence to deny the relationship between public discontent and turnout rates. She instead argues that relatively high turnout rates were traced in constituencies where such a campaign was conducted.
However, her argument could not necessarily negate the claim that a civil movement led to a low turnout. Even though such a No-campaign attracted voters' attention where it was conducted, the argument seems to still hold good that the campaign effectively removed major policy issues from voters' attention in other places, resulting in a low turnout. It is obvious that this book provides very useful explanations about many aspects in the 2000 National Assembly election. At the same time it also shows that it is not still easy in political science to give logical explanations about why vote or not to vote.