South Korea’s opposition Democratic Party put on an unexpectedly strong showing in yesterday’s local elections, seen as a barometer of support for President Lee Myung-bak and his ruling Grand National Party (GNP), exit polls showed.
GNP candidates were leading in five of 16 races for large city mayors and provincial governors, while the Democrats were ahead in five, with five races too close to call, exit polls conducted jointly by three major television networks showed.
Voting for nearly 4,000 mayors, governors and local government representatives has been overshadowed by the March sinking of a South Korean naval vessel, which Seoul has blamed on the reclusive North, fueling shrill rhetoric on both sides, including threats of war.
OUTRAGE
Outrage over the sinking, which killed 46 sailors, bolstered support for the GNP ahead of the vote. Voters cast ballots at 13,388 polling stations for the races that include about 9,900 candidates for 3,991 positions nationwide. Late afternoon voter turnout was 43.2 percent of the country’s 38.8 million eligible voters, the nation’s election watchdog said.
Before the ship sank two months ago, Lee struggled with growing controversy over massive infrastructure projects. Fierce infighting threatened to split his party in two.
However, the March 26 downing of the warship has dominated headlines for weeks and has overshadowed other hot-button issues. Security jitters about North Korea deepened after a multinational investigation concluded a torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine tore apart and sank the 1,200-tonne Cheonan warship.
The US and South Korea have decided to hold a massive anti-submarine exercise in the Yellow Sea early next week as part of their punitive measures on the North, the Yonhap news agency said yesterday, citing an unidentified South Korean military official.
Calls to the military and the US command in Seoul were not immediately answered yesterday, a national holiday.
“The Cheonan helped the GNP. Its sinking mustered conservative votes,” said Chung Jin-young, a political scientist at Kyung Hee University in South Korea. “In fact, the GNP hadn’t been in good shape.”
Analyst Park Kie-duk agreed.
“Above all, we still have the bitter memories of the Korean War,” said Park, of the private Sejong Institute near Seoul.
DIFFERING VIEWS
Voter Eom Soo-heum, a 58-year-old construction worker, said he supported the ruling party because he approved of the way the president has handled the ship crisis.
“I assumed that if these candidates shared the same political values with President Lee, they would do a good job,” Eom said.
The Democratic Party has accused the government of exploiting the sinking for the elections, arguing Lee should have announced the investigation results after the polls.
Voter Im Mi-ja, 61, supermarket owner, said her ballots went to the opposition.
“I think the Lee government initiated the Cheonan incident by not being diplomatic enough with North Korea before the ship incident happened,” she said.
North Korea, which has repeatedly denied attacking the ship, has accused the South Korean leader of staging the sinking for election purposes. Pyongyang’s state-run Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday urged voters to oppose ruling party candidates and “deal sledgehammer blows” to the president.
At Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas, North Korean soldiers wore helmets instead of their usual hats as they stood guard, highlighting the tension.
A survey released by the mass-circulation Dong-a Ilbo on Friday said the ruling party would win nine of the 16 races. The telephone survey of 8,600 adults conducted by the Seoul-based Korea Research Center has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points for Seoul and Gyeonggi. The margin of error for the other 14 races was 4.4 percentage points.
In the Seoul race, the ruling party incumbent, Oh Se-hoon, a potential presidential aspirant, was pitted against the Democratic Party’s Han Myung-sook, the nation’s first female prime minister under the government of former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun.
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