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.
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