Election Updates

If my math is any good — and if it were, I suppose I’d have found another line of work — Koreans are already voting in local elections. Here are a few last-minute posts before exit polls and results come in:

Park Geun Hye is already up and out of her hospital bed campaigning in the wake a failed throat-slashing attack.

Also yesterday, the Seoul West District Court dismissed an appeal by her admitted attacker, Ji Chung-ho, against his detention. He probably did not help his case by repeating his contention that his target was not Ms. Park but the party’s candidate for mayor of Seoul, Oh Se-hoon, who was with Ms. Park on the night of the attack.

“Mr. Oh moved too fast to the campaign platform, so I changed the target to Ms. Park,” Mr. Ji said, contending that he was aiming for her arm.

You know, it was just last week that I told my wife that the most important words in a lawyer’s vocabulary are “shut up and let me do the talking.”

Ms. Park is no doubt buoyed by the final round of polls, which shows that her party continued to gain in local elections.

Personally, my only dog in this fight is that I’m hoping for a big win for Kim Moon Soo, probably the only major candidate in this election with a demonstrated commitment to liberal democracy as we know it. First, the good news. A major Uri defeat is apparently imminent, and that’s likely to mean that Uri will cease to exist as a major political force. The vultures are already circling:

Senior Uri Party official Kim Du-kwan attacked his own chairman yesterday, saying those who push for a coalition should leave the party. Uri Party Chairman Chung Dong-young has been proposing to form a coalition with the Democratic Party.
Referring to Mr. Chung, Mr. Kim said the idea of a coalition should not be used in a bid to hang onto one’s own political career.

Mr. Chung’s proposal came amid growing concerns inside the party that the party could face a landslide defeat in upcoming local elections.

Analysts have speculated a major defeat by the ruling party could become a catalyst to alter the political landscape in Korea.

Now the bad news — by default or otherwise, the GNP is headed for a big win. That will likely lead the GNP to believe that its platform has the voters’ support and that all is hunky-dory for the presidential race in ’07. It will also strengthen Park Geun-Hye to an even greater extent than last week’s failed attack, which I do in fact believe to have been attempted murder. Whether this really signals strong GNP support depends on the GNP actually having a defined agenda, its success in communicating it to the voters, and that agenda’s appeal with them. On all three points, I’m skeptical.