South Korea’s conservative ruling party might have lost its parliamentary majority in yesterday’s general election, exit polls by three major TV channels showed.
The polls said the Saenuri Party was forecast to win between 118 and 147 seats in the 300-member National Assembly.
The main opposition Minjoo Party was expected to secure between 97 and 128, while the splinter opposition People’s Party to win between 31 and 43 seats.
Photo: AP
“Obviously, we’re worried about the exit poll results, but we will calmly wait until the final ballot counting results are returned,” Saenuri’s parliamentary floor leader Won Yoo-chul said on national KBS TV.
The elections were clouded by North Korean nuclear threats and the multiple challenges facing Asia’s fourth-largest economy, as South Korean President Park Geun-hye enters the final stretch of her term in office.
Political power in South Korea is firmly concentrated in the presidency and elections to the single-chamber national assembly are traditionally dominated by local issues.
It was expected to become clear at about 11pm last night if Saenuri had lost its majority.
However, observers cautioned that exit polls have been wrong in the past five parliamentary elections.
If the ruling party, which won 152 parliamentary seats four years ago, fails to hold a majority it would be forced to rely on independent lawmakers to retain power.
Rising unemployment, plunging exports and worryingly high levels of household debt have led to criticisms of Park’s handling of the economy and, by extension, of the Saenuri Party.
Dissatisfaction is especially high among young people, with the unemployment rate among those aged 15 to 29 at record levels.
The left-wing opposition has sought to frame the vote as a referendum on Park’s economic policies, but has suffered from factional infighting and breakaways that threatened to split the liberal vote to Saenuri’s advantage.
Kate Kim, an unemployed 25-year-old college graduate, said that crippling levels of unemployment had persuaded her and many of her previously apathetic friends to vote.
“This is the first time I have voted ... our country desperately needs change, especially for young and jobless people like me,” Kim said.
All 300 seats in the legislature were up for grabs, with 253 chosen in first-past-the-post constituency elections and the remaining 47 elected on a separate ballot via proportional representation.
Analysts had predicted Saenuri’s chances would receive a boost from surging military tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula, but the exit polls indicated that threats from North Korea might have failed to aid the ruling party, traditionally regarded as hawkish on security issues.
The North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, followed a month later by a long-range rocket launch that was widely seen as a disguised ballistic missile test.
However, Chung Hae-young, a businessman in Seoul, said he had voted for the ruling conservatives, hailing their hard-line stance toward Pyongyang.
“I like how the party handled the North, although it honestly hasn’t done a good job with the economy,” the 60-year-old said.
However, the conservatives have also suffered from internal bickering, particularly over the process for nominating candidates, which led to a number of defections by lawmakers running as independents.
“During the nomination process, we failed and disappointed the people. It is entirely our fault,” Saenuri Party leader Kim Moo-sung said last week.
The outcome of yesterday’s vote could have a significant impact on Park, who has less than two years left to serve of her five-year single term.
A strong Saenuri showing would give her more leverage in pushing bills through the assembly, while a dwindling of conservative support would leave her very much a lame duck.
Park has fallen short on most of her key economic promises, a failure she puts down to legislative inaction, but which critics say owes more to skewed priorities, poor decisionmaking and Park’s authoritarian style of leadership.
Under her presidency, annual economic growth has averaged about 2.9 percent, compared with 3.2 percent under her predecessor, former South Korean president Lee Myung-bak.
Exports, which account for more than half of GDP, have fallen for 14 consecutive months, while household debt has soared to a record US$1 trillion.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion