[Opinion] Thumb Club

“When writing this book, Geum-shil was suffering from a lingering illness. Now that she is freed from her keyboard, I’d like her to return to being a vigorous ‘sister in 50s’,” wrote journalist Goh Jong-seok when former Minister of Justice Kang Geum-shil released her book “For You in Your Thirties” last year after losing in the Seoul mayoral election.

It seems Kang Geum-shil is a character that many people hoped would return some day. When the mayoral election was over, many of her supporters asked her to do just that.

Kang Geum-shil is back. Yesterday, together with assemblymen Woo Won-shik, Kim Yong-chun, and Choi Jae-seong of the United New Democratic Party, she held a press meeting that announced the launch of the Thumb Club. This time, she returned as a full-fledged “eomji-eonni” (thumb sister). It was revealed that the new party even had to organize a group of volunteers for publicity and fundraising because its participation rate in the mobile-voting system, the last card of the party, was too poor.

The new party wants to raise the number of participants in the Electoral College to one million. But so far, only 40,000 people have registered. Kang Geum-shil, the No. 1 member of the Thumb Club, appealed for participation, saying, “There is still hope. Please press your mobile phone buttons with your thumbs to select a presidential candidate.”

Why has Kang Geum-shil come back? It’s doesn’t seem enough to say that, “She is a member of the party.” When the word spread that she would run in a competitive election again, she shook her head, saying, “I’m not a cheerleader.”

Why is she back, then? Her acquaintances all agree that, “It was her sympathy that made her return; she could not turn away from the administration she once worked for.”

As told by former environment minister Park Seon-suk, who was the director of her election campaign for the Seoul mayoral race, she came back feeling like the “Dutch boy who stepped forward to plug a collapsing dike with his finger.”

I wonder if Kang Geum-shil is possessed by Joan Of Arc Syndrome. During the mayoral election, she dreamed she was “a warrior who would confront the destiny to the last moment of life,” only to die in the battle. This time, Kang Geum-shil is little more than a mere soldier. Moreover, it is a distortion of democracy for Kang, a former minister of justice, to advertise mobile phone voting as the way of the future when even the National Election Commission is worried about it.

Editorial Writer Kim Chang-hyeok, chang@donga.com