Park Trails Lee in Presidential Poll

Former Grand National Party chairwoman Park Geun-hye is campaigning in earnest since the approval rate gap between her and former Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak is not getting narrowed, according to polls conducted during the Chuseok holiday.

According to polls that were conducted to select the most likely candidate to win the next presidential election, Lee took the lead with a 10 percent higher support rate than Park.

Meanwhile, boosted by his current increasing support, Lee plans to consolidate his commanding position by spreading this mood across the nation from early next year.

From this week, Park will attend events two or three every day. “So far, five special lectures, four or five social gatherings, and three interviews with local newspaper companies are confirmed as official events. Park practically has no time to take rest,” said one official from Park’s campaign.

The most interesting challenge for Park is gaining votes in Yeongnam area. On Tuesday, Park is delivering a special lecture in Pusan National University and participating in the Busan Vision Forum. On Thursday and Friday, Park is visiting Daegu in which she is attending seven or eight unofficial events including delivering celebratory massages at a Korean Society of Automotive Engineers event.

Park plans to leave for China on November 27 and stay for five days. In the past, Park didn’t enjoy going out to take part such events. Now, however, she sets aside as much as time as she can to meet people and accepts almost all of schedules that her assistants give her.

Meanwhile, regarding her widening gap with Lee, Park stated, “Since we have enough time, we don’t need to jump to conclusions now. “We have kept silence because we have prepared ourselves so far. Now that the competition starts, Lee had better strain every nerve to avoid being the loser,” said one official from Park’s campaign.

“Park seems to openly check Lee’s campaign strategy under which Lee stresses his admiration of former president Park Chung-hee and presents an inland waterway construction plan, which shows how much Lee’s fast move is irritating Park now,” said one junior lawmaker.

Lee camp has set up a plan to widen the current 10 to 13 percent gap to 15 percent until the end of this year.

As a reason for such an increase, Lee’s camp cited reversed support in Gyeongnam and Busan, which have been evaluated as relative weak supporting ground to Lee’s camp.

“When it comes to Busan, in which Park has enjoyed a dominating position, people are divided in supporting Lee and Park, and junior lawmakers in Gyeongnam are also leaning toward the Lee camp now,” said one lawmaker.

The Lee camp is making an effort to gain further support now because the ruling Uri Party’s presidential candidate scheduled to be selected next February is very likely to erode his support share and the ruling party campaigns starting around this time are likely to target the leading candidate. Therefore, the Lee camp views that before next February comes, consolidating the current lead is important.

For this, the Lee camp plans to intensively advertise its inland waterway construction plan and announce the second and third policy plans to public in order to intensify Lee’s image as the next president who focuses on economy and policy matters. Regarding this, the camp is scheduled to launch the third overseas investigation of China, India, and Dubai.

Besides, while avoiding appearing in mass media, Lee plans to concentrate on economic issues and political policies. During this week, Lee will focus on appealing to young people by delivering special lectures in Kunsan National University and attending gatherings with college students organized by Herald Media.

taylor55@donga.com mhpark@donga.com