Their long national nightmare is over (Updated)

[Updated and Bumped — scroll down — original post 19 Dec 07]

Following record low voter turnout, Yonhap has Lee Myung Bak winning by a landslide with over just under 50%. This is unbad news to me; I always root for a lying stock manipulator over a lying abettor of genocide with untamed abandon. I can hear the celebratory gunfire all the way out in Centreville. I’m also pleasantly surprised that the last-second leak of a video proving that Lee fibbed his way through the BBK scandal didn’t mush up the prospect of any one candidate getting a mandate.

The best news of the election? Comrade Chung, the poster-boy for propping up Kim Jong Il and slamming the furnace door on his wretched subjects, has now led two leftist parties to record-breaking beat-downs. He drew just 26% of the vote. Chung also led the Uri Party to defeat in the summer of 2006, and that defeat eventually destroyed Uri. There’s a good chance that this lopsided defeat will destroy its successor, the United New Democratic Party. Chung had a well deserved reputation for shallowness, but let’s not forget that he was also a conniving, black-hearted, anti-American demagogue (three links) whose mouth emitted words of breathtaking stupidity whenever it wasn’t otherwise occupied in fellating Kim Jong Il.

At least it’s possible to say that for now, appeasing North Korea and bashing Uncle Sam don’t have the voter appeal they did five years ago. I am not too cynical to deny that one thing will improve, which is the volume of Yankee-baiting cheap shots from the Blue House.

The worst news of the election? South Korea missed its chance to have a national conversation about The Big Issue, unification. The campaign was really about which candidate was the most repellent, and with the abundance of such exquisite material on that question, there wasn’t much time to talk about when, how, and on what terms Korea should resolve that nation’s most fundamental question. There wasn’t even much discussion about the smaller issues that devolve from The Big Issue: refugees, concentration camps, nuclear disarmament, defense policy, conventional disarmament, reconstruction planning, or humanitarian aid policy.

Flashback: The Lee Myung Bak Dossier, from September 2005; Much, much more: Andy Jackson, bless his heart, semi-live-blogged this.

Update 1: A reader was kind enough to pass along a scan of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s letter of congratulations to Lee.

Update 2: The official results have Lee falling just short of 50%. Here are the final results.

Lee Myung Bak, Grand National Party (Conservative), 48.7%

Chung Dong Young, United New Democratic Party (Nationalist-Left), 26.1%

Lee Hoi-chang, Independent (Conservative), 15.1%

Moon Kook-hyun, Create Korea Party (Center Left), 5.8%

Kwon Young-ghil, Democratic Labor Party (Socialist), 3%

Rhee In-je, Democratic Party (Center Left), 0.7%

This means that conservative candidates’ combined support totaled 64%, nearly two thirds. That’s a very significant shift since 2002. So what will that mean as far as South Korea’s policies toward North Korea and the United States? Lee used his first press conference to say some encouraging words:

The president-elect is expected to tie aid to continued compliance with international demands in the atomic dispute in line with Washington’s wishes, but was not expected to make any dramatic change in assistance while the North remains on the path to disarmament.

“The North’s abandonment of its nuclear programs is the way for the North to develop” its economy, Lee said in his comments to reporters Thursday.

Lee said he would not shy away from raising the North’s shortcomings. “I think unconditionally avoiding criticism toward North Korea would not be appropriate.”

On relations with Seoul’s key Washington ally, Lee said he would “renew the common values and peace based on trust.” [AP, Burt Herman; emphasis mine]

Can we assume he refers to human rights? Lee is also saying he will conduct a review of the soft-line policy toward Kim Jong Il’s regime.

All of this got me to wondering how this is going over in Pyongyang, but KCNA is uncharacteristically at a loss for words today. They found time to congratulate the President-Elect of Switzerland and to get in one last dig against Lee Hoi Chang, but not a word on Lee Myung Bak’s victory. I can see why. In a place where saying the wrong thing can easily get you killed, I can see why nobody is volunteering to write the official reaction. Still, you’d expect at least some kind of terse reaction. I wouldn’t want to be serving the drinks here tonight.

Lastly, it bears notice that Roh was a charter member of a group of faux allies who found it politically profitable to exploit anti-Americanism in the post-9/11 era. Iraq is frequently cited as the cause for this by the American left, but Roh’s use of this tactic preceded Iraq, and was primarily about domestic quarrels with the U.S. military that had protected Korea for 50 years. Now, he and his most recognized political ally have gone the way of Schroeder and Chirac, only they’ve been much more roundly discredited at the polls.

We bid them good riddance, though for uncounted numbers of North Koreans who are dead instead of free today, it comes too late