Tag Archives: south korea

South Korea

The incredibly shrinking Lee Myung-bak

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South Korea’s presidential elections never feature incumbents — the president is limited to a single five-year term — but that doesn’t mean incumbents don’t feature prominently in presidential elections.

In 2007, Chung Dong-young suffered from his ties to president Roh Moo-hyun, under whose administration Chung served as unification minister, and to some degree, Moon Jae-in, the presidential candidate of the liberal Democratic United Party (민주통합당, or the ‘Minju Tonghap-dang’) and Roh’s former chief of staff.

But given that incumbent president Lee Myung-bak, who will leave office as one of South Korea’s most unpopular presidents, garners approval ratings of around 20%, you’d expect that the candidate of Lee’s Saenuri Party (새누리당 or the ‘Saenuri-dang’), formerly the Grand National Party, would be suffering even more, right?

Wrong.  In South Korea’s presidential race this year, one of the reasons that Park Geun-hye has consistently held a lead over Moon has been her successful distancing from the Lee administration (although that lead is narrowing fast, especially after Park made a gaffe in the second presidential debate Monday indicating she wanted to ‘invigorate’ the underground economy).

Moon has consistently attacked Park for her party’s economic record, but the charges have not (so far) erased Moon’s deficit, even after posters surfaced trying to tie the two together as ‘Lee Myung Park Geun-hye.’

If anything, Park has been more successful by hammering away at lingering doubt about the Roh administration and Moon’s ties to it as Roh’s chief of staff.

That’s in part because while Park has attacked Roh’s administration, she’s also shown no compunction in attacking Lee’s record as well:

“The Roh Moo-hyun government wasted a period of prosperity in the world economy by indulging in ideological debates and power struggles, leading to the erosion in working-class living standards. The Lee Myung-bak government put growth before everything and failed to make lives better. I will not be a leader who will repeat the mistakes of previous governments,” Park said at a rally in Seogwipo, Jeju Island.

During the campaign, Park has attacked Lee’s administration for having failed middle class people and for exacerbating income inequality — an issue that both Park and Moon had pledged to make a top priority if elected.  Despite the rhetoric, there’s really no indication that Park’s administration would mark a vast policy difference from Lee’s administration.  If anything, Korean conservatives are incredibly united behind Park’s candidacy — more so than at any other time since the 1987 election.

But Park has long been known as an intraparty rival of Lee — no one would ever accuse Park of harboring secret affection for Lee or his accomplishments. Continue reading The incredibly shrinking Lee Myung-bak →

South Korea

Ahn’s exit clears way for competitive Moon presidential campaign against Park in South Korea

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Last Friday, independent presidential candidate Ahn Cheol-soo dropped out of the South Korean presidential race.

Without a doubt, his decision has transformed the race from a three-way contest between one conservative and two liberals, which was destined to favor the conservative candidate, Park Geen-hye of the Saenuri Party (새누리당 or the ‘Saenuri-dang’) into a direct showdown between the two dominant brands of politics in South Korea over the past half-century.

Before his withdrawal, Ahn was splitting the support of liberal voters with Moon Jae-in of the Democratic United Party (민주통합당, or the ‘Minju Tonghap-dang’).

Now Moon and Park are in a much closer race, although the latest polls give Park a slight edge (the latest Realmeter poll from Nov. 30 shows Park with 49.9% support and Moon with just 44.2%).  Polls routinely showed that before his withdrawal, Ahn, if anything, was the stronger candidate against Park (not Moon).

It’s still unclear why Ahn dropped out so suddenly — in an interview last week prior to his withdrawal, he indicated he had no intentions of bowing out.  But by falling on his own sword, Ahn has made himself even more popular by apparently putting the cause of defeating Park ahead of his own personal ambitions.  Now in the position of a potential kingmaker, Ahn can trade his vigorous support for Moon (Ahn has already somewhat gracefully called on his supporters to vote for Moon) for a role in a potential Moon administration, which could give Ahn governmental experience in advance of the 2017 election.

For such a liberal candidate, it’s a little shocking to see polls that show only 50.7% of Ahn’s former backers are committed to Moon with less than three weeks to go until the election, even though over 70% of Ahn’s supporters want to see a change in administration from the current Saenuri Party.  Fully 26.4% of Ahn backers apparently support Park and 21.9% remain undecided — Moon cannot win unless he (with or without Ahn’s help) can migrate more of Ahn’s former supporters into his own camp.

Ahn’s popularity has been somewhat of a phenomenon in South Korea since he first flirted with running in Seoul’s mayoral race in October 2011 — although he failed to enter that race, which polls showed he could have won, he backed Park Won-soon, another liberal independent, who ultimately won the Seoul election.  Ahn spent the better part of 2012 teasing a presidential campaign that he announced only in September of this year.

Ahn, himself, is a businessman by background — he founded AhnLab, Inc. in March 1995 (think of it as South Korea’s version of McAfee or any other anti-virus software company).  Until he launched his now-aborted presidential campaign, Ahn was a graduate school dean at Seoul National University.   Continue reading Ahn’s exit clears way for competitive Moon presidential campaign against Park in South Korea →

South Korea

Park’s apology marks milestone in Korean presidential race

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It’s hard to understate just how important (if inevitable) it was for South Korean presidential candidate Park Geun-hye to make the following statement earlier this week:

“Behind our history of miraculous growth, there were the sacrifices of workers who suffered under harsh working environments, and behind our guarding of national security against North Korea there were violations of human rights by public authorities.”

“I once again offer my sincere apologies to the people who suffered wounds and hardship as a result, and to their family members.”

Those words come in relation to the legacy of Park’s father, Park Chung-hee, who took power in a coup in 1961 and held power until his assassination in 1979.  Park Chung-hee is credited with lifting South Korea out of poverty in the wake of the Korean War and transforming the South Korean economy into one of the most efficient and developed in Asia.  The South Korean economy is today one of the world’s most productive and developed, and it’s certain that Park Chung-hee’s administration deserves credit for that.

But his legacy remains tarnished by authoritarian rule that did not tolerate free speech or dissent of any kind.  His regime engaged in political arrests and torture, and his rule morphed into a dictatorship despite promises of making South Korea more democratic.  South Koreans, to this day, have incredibly mixed feelings about Park Chung-hee.

As such, the legacy of Park Chung-hee is invariably at the heart of his daughter’s campaign — when Park Guen-hye’s mother was assassinated in 1974, Park Guen-hye essentially took on the role of first lady in lieu of her late mother.  Indeed, much of her success comes from a sense of nostalgia among those who see the 1960s and 1970s as a time of unparalleled growth for South Korea.  There’s no question of South Korea turning back from democracy, which has been entrenched in South Korea since the 1980s, but there is a sense that South Korean voters have wanted Park Guen-hye to acknowledge and transcend the darker aspects of Park Chung-hee’s legacy.

In the past, as recently as earlier this month, Park Geun-hye has been both dismissive and defensive over the less noble aspects of her father’s regime.  In making the apology, Park Geun-hye, also showed a rare emotional side:

“I’m sure all of you know how difficult it is in this country for a child to judge his or her parents, and especially to make a public statement about their misdeeds. I do not think that the people of Korea really want me, a daughter, to spit on her father’s grave,” she said.

East Asian politics is not known for its “I feel your pain” politicking, but Park Guen-hye has a particularly formal and stiff image even by East Asian standards. Continue reading Park’s apology marks milestone in Korean presidential race →

South Korea

Moon, Ahn candidacies officially set South Korean presidential field

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Moon Jae-in (pictured above, top), a former chief of staff to president Roh Moo-hyun, won the presidential nomination on Sunday of the main opposition party in South Korea, the Democratic United Party (민주통합당, or the ‘Minju Tonghap-dang’), and today, Ahn Cheol-soo (pictured above, below), a popular doctor-turned-entrepreneur launched an independent bid for the presidency.

Both are, somewhat, novices to electoral politics in South Korea.  Moon is the former chief of staff to the late former president, Roh Moo-hyun, and Ahn is a complete outsider to South Korean politics.

Both pull support from the same pool of generally liberal and moderate voters — meaning that if neither drops out before the December 19 election, neither currently would stand much of a chance against the frontrunner, Park Geun-hye of the Saenuri Party (새누리당 or the ‘Saenuri-dang’ / New Frontier Party).

The essential fact of the South Korean presidential race is that if neither Moon nor Ahn steps down in favor of the other, Park will win the election.  Every poll, including the latest one from Real Meter, conducted Sept. 17-18, demonstrates this glaring threshold truth: Park leads with around 39%, Moon follows with 26% and Ahn wins 22.5%.  Although over the course of the month, Moon has moved from 15% and third place (drawing support from both Park and Ahn) into a stronger second place, arithmetic is arithmetic.  Moon and Ahn may seesaw as the favorite challenger to Park, but Moon, having easily won DUP’s primary, now faces another sort of primary — with Ahn — to consolidate the liberal and moderate vote.

Furthermore, even if one candidate bows out soon enough to allow for a unified challenge to Park, the road that either Moon or Ahn faces ahead is tricky.

Even in a one-on-one race with Park remains competitive against either Moon or Ahn.  So the longer it takes for either Moon or Ahn to back down as the chief alternative to Park means that the race will focus less on Park and more on the Moon vs. Ahn aspect.

Park, as I’ve written before, is virtually defying gravity in that she’s run nearly a flawless campaign — after rebranding her party from the ‘Grand National Party’ to the Saenuri Party late last year, she led her party from a bit behind to win South Korea’s parliamentary elections in April, notwithstanding the incredible unpopularity of the incumbent, Lee Myung-bak (who Park challenged for the then-GNP presidential nomination in 2006).  Since then, she’s essentially been running victory laps through South Korea, and co-opting the message of the opposition by championing issues that are the traditional turf of the left in South Korea — strengthening the social welfare system and reducing income inequality.  Until either Moon or Ahn drops out, the storyline will be Moon and Ahn, while Park glides, rather presidentially, above the din. Continue reading Moon, Ahn candidacies officially set South Korean presidential field →

South Korea

Five reasons why Park’s frontrunning South Korean presidential race is defying gravity

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In many ways, it is astounding that the politician with the most momentum in South Korea, the world’s 12th largest economy, is Park Geun-hye, who announced her candidacy for president earlier this week.

Her party’s been in power for the past four years — having won an election on a promise to boost South Koreans’ wealth, it has presided over a tepid economy that follows decades of nearly phenomenal, nation-transforming economic growth.  Even worse, her party’s incumbent, Lee Myung-bak, is massively unpopular and is so implicated in corruption scandals — 19 members of his administration, including his brother, are currently implicated in scandals — that he’s popularly known as “President Rat.”  He’s also taken hits for improperly spying on domestic rivals.

Park herself is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, essentially South Korea’s dictator from 1961 until his assassination in 1979, a figure about whom, it’s safe to say, 21st century South Koreans have mixed feelings. (More on that below).

So how is it that Park not only has a chance to win South Korea’s December 19 presidential election, but dominates polls in that election as well? Continue reading Five reasons why Park’s frontrunning South Korean presidential race is defying gravity →

South Korea

Park Geun-hye: ready for the Blue House?

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With South Korean elections for the National Assembly now complete, and with the Saenuri Party (새누리당) holding on to its majority in the National Assembly, it is in many ways now the first day of South Korea’s presidential campaign.

No one emerges from the election with more of a boost than the Saenuri Party’s leader, who shepherded the Saenuri Party from the control of its unpopular and scandal-ridden old guard and rechristened it from the Grand National Party: Park Geun-hye, who also happens to be the daughter of former South Korean leader Park Chung-hee.

It seems clear that Park is ready to launch a campaign — she visited a national cemetery in Seoul Thursday morning and wrote in the visitors book at the front gate that she would create a new Republic of Korea.

Indeed, the Korea Times has a piece today setting the stage for Park’s emergence as presidential frontrunner:

Before the elections, few campaign watchers expected the Saenuri Party would receive such wide support from the general public after a series of scandals and corruption cases involving President Lee Myung-bak’s aides and relatives tarnished its image.

Park was called upon to assume the interim leadership last December when party support hit rock bottom.

The Korea Herald also hails her triumph, noting that Saeunri is rallying around Park in the aftermath of their win. Continue reading Park Geun-hye: ready for the Blue House? →

South Korea

South Korean national assembly elections — final results

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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.

Continue reading South Korean national assembly elections — final results →

South Korea

Of Ahn and Angry Birds: the political culture that is South Korea

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This video comes to us from Ahn Chul-soo, who is emerging as a potential independent presidential candidate in the South Korean election in December of this year.

Ahn comes to politics from the business world — he founded AhnLab, Inc., an antivirus software company, and he now serves as the dean of the Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology at Seoul National University.

In the clip above, Ahn uses Angry Birds to make a point to South Korean voters to turn out to today’s (now completed) legislative election:

“Bad pigs are hiding behind the castle, the solid establishment. These good birds are throwing themselves to break the castle,” Mr. Ahn said.

Then a voice asks him what he would do if the election turnout is over 70%, and he answers he would sing. “Since I can’t sing, it is a big sacrifice,” he said.

But the voice insists he dance as well. He laughs and reluctantly agrees. The voice then wraps up the interview by declaring “Mr. Ahn will sing and dance in mini-skirt!” Mr. Ahn looks clearly embarrassed and throws the Angry Bird stuffed animal he was holding towards the camera. Then a message appears on screen, “Angry?? Just Vote!”

Ahn rose to political prominence last year with a series of appearances and commentaries on South Korean politics.  He currently garners significant support in pre-election polls as a credible, if not leading, presidential candidate.  Ahn met with Microsoft founder Bill Gates in Seattle earlier this year, furthering speculation that the one-time IT entrepreneur will make a run at the Blue House (the ROK’s presidential home).

South Korea

Upset win for Saenuri Party in South Korea

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With just over half of the ballots counted, Korean news sources are projecting that the governing Saenuri Party (새누리당 or the ‘Saenuri-dang’) will win, however slightly, more seats than the opposition in South Korea’s April 11 parliamentary elections.

The Saenuri Party is forecast to win about 144 seats in the South Korea national assembly — it currently holds 165 under current leader and likely future presidential candidate Park Geun-hye, daughter of the former ROK leader.

The victory is also good news — or at least a reprieve — for embattled president Lee Myung-bak, whose one-time popularity has plummeted due to the stagnant economy, high unemployment and scandals over illegal internal surveillance.  Analysts, however, cautioned a rough road ahead for Lee, who will be a convenient punching bag ahead of December’s presidential election.

Prior to today’s election, the Democratic United Party (민주통합당, or the ‘Minju Tonghap-dang’) faced skepticism over the troubles it had in formalizing an alliance with the Unified Progressive Party, but looked to have an odds-on even chance at worst of winning the election.

Although the DUP will add seats to the 80 seats it held prior to the election, its inability to win outright will be seen as somewhat of a disappointment on expectations, given the current president’s unpopularity — so much so that the Saenuri Party only earlier this year, under Park’s leadership, rebranded itself from is previous “Grand National Party” moniker.

As of 11:30 pm South Korean time, the Saenuri Party had won or was leading in 127 out of a total of 246 constituencies with the DUP carrying 107, according to the National Election Commission. The United Progress Party (UPP), the DUP’s ally, had won or was leading in six.

Park will now almost certainly be the Saenuri presidential candidate in the December election (although Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Moon-soo remains a potential alternative).  Although the DUP’s potential candidate is less clear following the result, the leading contender remains former Roh administration chief of staff Moon Jae-in, who won election today in a district in Busan.  In addition, IT entrepreneur and Seoul National University professor Ahn Chul-soo has also been seen as a popular potential independent candidate.

The Korea Times highlights some of the winners and losers in individual races — the losers include a former Saenuri Party leader, Hong Joon-pyo.  Among the highlights are more representation among the so-called ‘486 generation’ — those who were born in the 1960s and were student activists in the fight for democracy in the 1980s (the ‘4’ notes that they are in their 40s — the original term was ‘386’ generation when coined in the 1980s).

Also among the new National Assembly members will be Cho Myung-chul, the first North Korean defector to be elected in South Korea (Cho was listed fourth on Saenuri’s list of proportional representation candidates).

South Korea

North Korea’s vote is anti-Lee, anti-Park

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There are few world relationships trickier than the politics between North Korea and South Korea.

But two flavors of news from North Korea have shaped the upcoming South Korean legislative elections:

  • North Korea has announced its intention to launch a satellite and long-range rocket into orbit between April 12 and 16 in honor of Kim Il-Sung.
  • North Korea is not being shy about its hope that President Lee Myung-bak’s Saenuri Party (새누리당 or the ‘Saenuri-dang’) loses next Wednesday’s legislative elections.

It is difficult to know just what impact the North Korean issue will have on the election, the main focus of which has been the South Korean economy.  Lee has reversed the “sunshine policy” of his predecessors that marked the 2000s, where South Korea pushed comparatively more aid to North Korea — instead, he has taken a harder-line stance against Pyongyang.  At the same time, Cho Myung-chul, who defected from the North in 1994, is running on the Saenuri Party ticket to become the first defector to stand in the South Korean parliament.

At the same time, Pyongyang is increasing that rhetoric in none too subtle ways against Lee and the current leader of the Saenuri Party, Park Geun-hye.  Pyongyang’s Korean Council for Reconciliation today called Park a “dictator’s daughter” (Park is the daughter of former South Korean president Park Chung-hee, who was South Korea’s leader from 1961 to 1979 whose commitment to economic progress was somewhat greater than his commitment to political liberalization):

“A dictator’s bloodline cannot change away from its viciousness…all walks of life in the South must not be deceived by Park and her clique, and must judge the conservative traitors through the elections,” it said.

“We, along with all the Korean people, will never allow the ghosts of the dictatorship to make a comeback,” it said in a statement carried by the official news agency.

The North Korean government newspaper christened Park as a “Judas” with an “unlimited greed for power”.

Park met North Korea’s leader, the late Kim Jong-il, in Pyongyang in 2002 — they are pictured above in, um, happier times.  Kim died in December 2011 and his son, Kim Jong-un, has succeeded him, although the extent of Kim Jong-un’s power and the direction he’ll try to take North Korea remains murky.

I’m not sure how that is going to play with South Korean voters — most likely, they will probably just ignore the North’s clumsy attempts at political interference, just as they seem to ignore South Korean politicians who try to gain political advantage from any perceived threat from the North:

“Voters see any North Korean action more as Pyongyang strengthening its rhetoric to escalate tensions rather than a real national security threat or an actual move to attack the South,” said Lee Taek Soo, president of Seoul-based polling service Realmeter. “Parties have also abused the threat of North Korea in past elections, so voters have learned their lesson.”

The latest poll from Realmeter, conducted from March 27 to 30, shows the Saenuri Party with a slight uptick in support at 39.8%.  The chief opposition party, the Democratic United Party (민주통합당, or the ‘Minju Tonghap-dang’) garners 30.5% and its coalition partner, the Unified Progressive Party wins 8.1%.

South Korea

One week until South Korean elections

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It is difficult to believe, but South Korea came to democracy only in 1988 with the election of Roh Tae-woo as president — its democratic institutions are really newer there than in places like post-Franco Spain or post-Pinochet Chile, and akin to the gradual opening of democracies in which were effectively one-party states, such as post-war Italy under the Christian Democrats and post-war Japan under the Liberal Democratic Party.

With that in mind, South Korea goes to the polls a week from today to elect its legislature — a competitive election that will serve as a precursor to next year’s presidential race.

The two main parties are the Saenuri Party (새누리당 or the ‘Saenuri-dang’), the conservative party, renamed from the Grand National Party only in February, and the Democratic United Party (민주통합당, or the ‘Minju Tonghap-dang’), the chief liberal party.  Two smaller parties include the Liberty Forward Party, a second conservative party, and the Unified Progressive Party, a leftish party. Continue reading One week until South Korean elections →