Former South Korean minister of labor Kim Moon-soo, 73, won the presidential nomination of South Korea’s main conservative party, the People Power Party (PPP), and is facing an uphill battle against liberal front-runner, Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung, for the June 3 election.
Observers say Kim would likely try to align with other conservative forces, such as former South Korean prime minister Han Duck-soo, to prevent a split in conservative votes in a bid to boost prospects for a conservative win against Lee.
In a party primary that ended yesterday, Kim won 56.5 percent of the votes cast, beating his sole competitor, former PPP leader Han Dong-hun, the party said in a televised announcement. Other contenders have been eliminated in earlier rounds.
Photo: AFP
“I’ll form a strong alliance with anyone to prevent a rule by Lee Jae-myung and his Democratic Party forces. I’ll push for that in a procedure and method that our people and members accept, and I’ll ultimately win,” Kim said in his victory speech.
Kim served as a governor of Gyeonggi province and a member of the National Assembly for three terms. Kim was originally a pro-democracy and labor activist, but joined a conservative party in the 1990s.
The June 3 election is meant to find a successor to former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol, a PPP member who was impeached and removed from office early last month over his ill-fated Dec. 3 imposition of martial law.
Kim has opposed parliament’s impeachment of Yoon, although he said he respects a South Korean Constitutional Court ruling that formally dismissed Yoon as president.
Yoon’s impeachment is a major source of feuding at the PPP and a hot topic at the party’s primary.
Han served as Yoon’s first minister of justice. He leads a reformist yet minority faction at the PPP that joined the liberal opposition in voting to overturn Yoon’s martial law decree and later impeach him. Without the support of Han’s faction members, an opposition-led impeachment motion on Yoon could not have passed through the National Assembly, because opposition parties were eight votes short of a two-thirds majority to approve it.
Lee is the clear favorite to win the election, but he stands a total of five criminal trials over corruption and other charges. If Lee becomes president, those trials would likely stop, as he would enjoy presidential immunity from most criminal prosecutions.
Lee’s campaign experienced a setback due to a recent South Korean Supreme Court decision to order a new trial on his election law charges. It is unclear if he will face a court sentence that requires the suspension of his campaign before the June 3 vote, but he would likely grapple with an intense political offensive by his election rivals.
A ship that appears to be taking on the identity of a scrapped gas carrier exited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, showing how strategies to get through the waterway are evolving as the Middle East war progresses. The vessel identifying as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Jamal left the Strait on Friday morning, ship-tracking data show. However, the same tanker was also recorded as having beached at an Indian demolition yard in October last year, where it is being broken up, according to market participants and port agent’s reports. The ship claiming to be Jamal is likely a zombie vessel that
Cannabis-based medicines have shown little evidence of effectiveness for treating most mental health and substance-use disorders, according to a large review of past studies published in a major medical journal on Monday. Medical use of cannabinoids has been expanding, including in the US, Canada and Australia, where many patients report using cannabis products to manage conditions such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and sleep problems. Researchers reviewed data from 54 randomized clinical trials conducted between 1980 and May last year involving 2,477 participants for their analysis published in The Lancet. The studies assessed cannabinoids as a primary treatment for mental disorders or substance-use
NATIONWIDE BLACKOUT: US President Donald Trump cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba, strangling the Caribbean island’s already antiquated grid Cuba’s national electric grid collapsed on Monday, the nation’s grid operator said, leaving about 10 million people without power amid a US-imposed oil blockade that has crippled the already obsolete generation system. Grid operator UNE on social media said that it is investigating the causes of the blackout, the latest in a series of widespread outages that last for hours or days and that this weekend sparked a rare violent protest in the communist-run nation. Officials ruled out a major power plant failure, but had still not pinpointed the root cause of the grid collapse, suggesting a problem with transmission. Officials said that
‘HEALTH ISSUE’: More than 250 women are hospitalized every day due to complications from unsafe abortions, and about three die, a study showed Jane had been bleeding heavily for days before finally seeking help, not from a hospital, but from the man who sold her the pills meant to end her six-week pregnancy. Abortions are strictly outlawed in the mainly Catholic Philippines, forcing women to turn to a patchwork of providers operating in the online shadows. While rare in practice, Philippine law allows for prison terms of up to six years for abortion patients and providers, leaving thousands of Filipinas to search for solutions in online forums where unlicensed sellers promote abortifacients. “It was very painful, as if my abdomen was being twisted,” said Jane, whose
RSS