Well, the votes are still being counted, but it’s already apparent that the Uri Party is going to have a very good evening, even if the voting in the Yeongnam region may not have been to their liking. Anyway, according to KBS’s exit polls, the Uri Party should take a combined 172 seats — easily surpassing the 150 needed to become a parliamentary majority — while the GNP is looking at 101 (and former party whip Hong Sa-duk looks like he’s going down in his district). The Democratic Labor Party goes from nothing to the nation’s third largest party with eleven seats (two districts and nine proportional representation seats), prompting what appears to be a party-like atmosphere at their headquarters. The MDP looks like it will drop from number two to number four with nine seats, and even more interestingly, exit polls have election committee head Choo Mi-ae down in her race against the Uri Party’s Lim Hyeong-ju out in Seoul’s Gwangjin B district. Party head Chough Soon-hyung is going down against the GNP’s Lee Han-gu in Daegu’s Suseong-gu A district, too. Meanwhile, the United Liberal Democrats will pick up three seats — all district seats from South Chungcheong Province, which means part head Kim Jong-pil (who’s running as a proportional voting candidate) will not get a seat. On the other hand, Rhee In-je looks like he will win his race in the Nonsan-Gyeryong-Keumsan district, which convinces me that the man has made a pact with Satan.
It should also be pointed out that it regionalism raised its ugly head in a major sort of way — last time I looked at the map, North Gyeongsang Province was being swept by the GNP with the exception of, strangely enough, Mungyeong-Yecheon, where polls had independent Shin Guk-hwan ahead. South Gyeongsang Province was much the same, although both seats from Gimhae went to the Uri Party (Gimhae is President Roh’s hometown, after all) and Changwon put DLP head Gwon Yeong-il into the National Assembly (one of the Ulsan districts also put a DLP candidate into the Assembly). It also appears that the MDP has been relegated to a South Jeolla Provincial party, and a minor one at that — the Uri Party swept Gwangju much as it did North Jeolla Province.
Also interesting, in the chick battle that went on in Pusan’s Yeonje-gu district, the GNP’s Kim Hee-jeong looks like she’ll take out Uri’s Noh Hye-gyeong. I mention this because Kim’s a) only 33 and b) pretty damn cute for a lawmaker.
2 Comments
When has an election in Korea NOT been a regional vote? I can’t think of a single one.
Never trust exit polls.
Uri still one but it looks like they will pick up about 150 seats and th GNP about 120. The GNP always underpolls a little bit and they might have underpolled even more than usual becasue voting for Uri was seen as the trendy thing to do.
BTW, you are right. Uri is not a Cholla party. It’s a Cholla-Chungcheong party. Gyeonggi was the swing area as usual. Look for them to swing again in 2008 (if not before in the 100+ by-elections coming up).