Chung Dong-young Gets United New Democratic Party Nomination

The 65-day race for the 17th president of Korea began yesterday after Chung Dong-young, the former chairman of the Uri Party, was elected the United New Democratic Party’s (UNDP) presidential candidate.

In UNDP primary results released October 15, Chung won 216,984 (43.8%) of all physical, mobile phone, and poll votes, followed by Sohn Hak-gyu (168,799, 34%) and Lee Hae-chan (110,128, 22.2%).

Chung won with 130,996 party member physical votes compared to Sohn with 81,243 and Lee with 54,628. Chung also took the lead in opinion poll votes with 21,859 (44.06%), compared to Sohn with 17,525 (35.3%) and Lee with 10,216 (20.60%).

However, Chung was second in the mobile phone vote with 62,138, while Sohn won 70,031.

In his acceptance speech, Chung said, “We should move toward healing and integration. We can have a chance of winning only when we are united as one.” He added, “We should make every effort to create a new “Integrated government,” following the people’s and the current participatory governments.”

Previously, Rhee In-je was elected as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party on October 14, and Mun Guk-hyeon, former CEO of Yuhan Kimberly, made it official in an inauguration event of the “Creative Korea Party” that he would run for the presidential election. Thus the field of presidential hopefuls includes one strong candidate (the Grand National Party’s Lee Myung-bak), one average candidate (Chung), and three weak candidates (Rhee In-je, Kwon Young-gil, and Mun).

The biggest variable in the presidential election is whether Chung, Rhee, and Mun will be consolidated into a single “pan-ruling party candidate.” But there are various issues regarding the specific time schedules of making one candidate, conflicts over shares for the party nominations in the general elections next year, establishing rules to boil down to one candidate considering that the UNDP has 141 seats in the National Assembly, the Democratic Party has nine seats, and the status of “independent candidate” Mun.

Even if they succeed in selecting one candidate, a survey by this newspaper and the Korea Research Center on October 7 said that the selected candidate, whose combined approval rating could be less than 30%, will not be able to beat Lee Myung-bak, whose approval rate is over 50%.

It is also not clear whether Sohn and Lee will cooperate with Chung and President Roh.

Grand National Party’s spokesperson Na Gyeong-won said, “Chung is a traitor-politician who has repeatedly betrayed his party and who is the main culprit of illegal and irregular practices in the primary.” She criticized him, saying, “He was elected as the candidate through betrayal. But his reputation as the person responsible for the failure of the current administration, will remain with him.”

phark@donga.com mhpark@donga.com