In concert with earlier reports from Seoul, the Saenuri Party has won yesterday’s elections to fill the seats of the National Assembly.

According to the Republic of Korea’s National Election Commission, Saenuri will take 152 seats to just 127 seats for the Democratic United Party and 13 seats for the DUP’s ally, the Unified Progressive Party.  The conservative Liberal Forward Party has won five seats.

UPDATE (April 13): See after the jump an election map showing the regional results in the legislative elections.  As is the key to much of Korean politics — six of the country’s eight presidents have come from North Gyeongsang province in the southeast of the country; the two most recent, Roh Moo-hyun and Lee Myung-bak, hail from South Gyeongsang province.  During Park Chung-hee’s regime from 1961 to 1979, Gyeongsang — which was historically the strongest of South Korea’s historical kingdoms — reaped beneficial treatment from the national government, which only furthered social stigma against Koreans from Jeolla province, which today remains a DUP strongold.  The DUP also performed well in Seoul, another traditional DUP stronghold.