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China-Japan-Koreas

South Korean party boss quits after opposition wins

2006-06-01

Edited to the new stuff; see Dan's article below for more.

South Korea's main conservative party scored a landslide win in local elections, official results showed on Thursday, dealing a blow to the president that prompted the resignation of a party boss tipped as his possible successor.

The drubbing for President Roh Moo-hyun's liberal Uri Party leaves him in a weak position to advance his agenda of economic reforms and closer ties with North Korea for the little under two years he has left in his term, analysts said. It also puts the conservative opposition Grand National Party (GNP) in the driver's seat ahead of the December 2007 presidential election and parliamentary polls the following year.

Uri party leader Chung Dong-young, a possible presidential contender, told reporters he was quitting to take responsibility for the loss.

The GNP, riding a wave of sympathy for its leader who was slashed in the face during the campaign, and disenchantment over the economy, won 12 of 16 major races for mayors and provincial governors in Wednesday's elections. The GNP won the biggest race, that for mayor of Seoul, where about one in five South Koreans live.

Uri, which translates as "us". picked up just one seat, the National Election Commission reported. The smaller Democratic Party won two of the major regional races and an independent won the final race, it said.

Posted by:ryuge

#6 There's another little issue that scares many in the South: what is going to happen when, post-collapse, the North Korean intelligence files get opened and Kimmie's spies in the South get outed. That's going to be really embarrassing for a lot of people, some of whom were and are in positions of serious power. It's just one more reason for the South to want the status quo ante to continue.

Posted by: mac 2006-06-02 00:03

#5 Asians can indeed be quite good at ignoring the unnacceptable, mac, like the Germans who lived near Nazi concentration camps. Or even elsewhere -- I've a friend who was a schoolboy during the war, and he told me that at the time even he was aware essentially what had happened to his Jewish classmates. So much the worse for the South Koreans -- when the time finally comes (and it will) their children will look at them with the same disgust we reserve for the Nazis and Stalinists... and it will be deserved. The North Korean people will march them through Kim's concentration camps until they are sick unto death of seeing the evil they connived to allow...and the weight of it will be on their souls until the day they die.

Posted by: trailing wife 2006-06-01 19:28

#4 I agree with you, TW, but it appears that most of the South Koreans simply refuse to acknowledge the North and its problems. They don't wanna know. You truly do hear more about NK in the States than you do here. As I said earlier, things are just beginning to get good for them here in the South and they don't want anything to upset the apple cart. Iblis has a point about the German unions and reunification; note, though, that the South Korean unions are pretty strong as well. I'd say they easily pull more weight here than the AFL-CIO does at home.

Posted by: mac 2006-06-01 18:29

#3 Biggest problem Germany faced with reunification was the labor unions forcing western pay rates on the East. Seems like a pretty easy mistake to avoid.

Posted by: Iblis 2006-06-01 15:34

#2 I don't see that South Korea has a choice, mac. It's their country that was split in half by the communists, after all, and their -- literal -- brothers and mothers and cousins who are being systematically starved and tortured to support Kimmie's war machine. The longer they put it off, the more painful it will be in the end, like it or not. Their beef with the international finance community and the IMF is legitimate, as far as I can understand it, but they weren't the only victims in the region of financial ignorance, enthusiasm, and bullying by the well-heeled. Hopefully the new government understands this.

Posted by: trailing wife 2006-06-01 12:32

#1 The number one concern about the North here in South Korea is that Kimmie's lot will collapse into the arms of a South Korea that can't economically afford reunification. SK is just beginning to taste the benefits of an industrialized society and they don't want any part of having to pay for rebuilding the disaster in the North. They saw what Germany went through over reunification, and what it is still paying, and they don't intend to have the same thing happen to them. They haven't forgotten having the IMF give them their marching orders in the late 90's either. Much as I hate to admit it, that's probably good thinking because trying to afford reunification might sink South Korea as well.

Posted by: mac 2006-06-01 09:55

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