Park Geun-hye elected ruling party`s pres. candidate

The ruling Saenuri Party named Park Geun-hye its presidential candidate Monday after she won a landslide victory in the party`s primary held at a convention hall on the outskirts of Seoul.

Park secured 71,167 of 82,494 votes from citizens, of which is 80 percent was reflected in the nomination, and 74.2 percent from opinion polls (20 percent). Combined, she garnered 84 percent or 86,589 votes.

Gyeonggi Province Gov. Kim Moon-soo was a distant second with 16.2 percent in opinion polls, but just 8.7 percent or 8,955 votes. Former South Gyeongsang Province Gov. Kim Tae-ho was third with 3.2 percent, followed by Yim Tae-hee, former chief of staff to President Lee Myung-bak, with 2.6 percent, and former Incheon Mayor Ahn Sang-soo with 1.6 percent.

Park got the highest vote rate in Korea`s history of presidential candidate elections. In 1997, Kim Dae-jung, the standard-bearer of the New Congress for New Politics, got 77.5 percent of the vote, and in 2002, Grand National Party presidential candidate Lee Hoi-chang got 68 percent.

Voter turnout in the latest candidate election, however, was a record low of just a little more than 40 percent.

In her second attempt, Park also became the first woman to be the presidential candidate of a major party in Korea. Leading candidates of opposition parties are all men, meaning the Dec. 19 presidential election will also be a competition between sexes. The eldest daughter of former president Park Chung-hee, Park Geun-hye is also the first child of an ex-chief executive to run for the nation`s top office.

Park must wait until opposition parties select their presidential candidate. From Saturday, the main opposition Democratic United Party will hold its candidate election in 13 areas through Sept. 16. If no candidate gets more than 50 percent of votes, the party will hold a final vote between the top two contenders Sept. 18-23.

The biggest variable in the presidential election will be whether the Democratic United Party wins the support of Ahn Cheol-soo, a former IT guru and now dean of Seoul National University’s Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology.

kimkihy@donga.com