In their race for Seoul mayor, GNP’s Oh Se-hoon and Uri Party’s Kang Kum-sil are working hard to connect with the proletariat (HT to Cathartidae):
Even after the heated arguments in the studio, a seesaw battle of debates on somin continued with Kang, a former justice minister, taking the lead in attacking Oh’s posh image that “represents” Seoul’s rich Kangnam-gu area.
Her election campaign camp said in a statement that Kang is different from the former GNP lawmaker, who “drinks Starbucks coffee, enjoys the best-quality products and acts like a New Yorker.“
Hey, if it makes Oh feel any better, the whole New Yawker-schtick seemed to work for one Japanese city councilman.
This all brings us, of course, to the Chosun Ilbo’s recent piece on the history of the bagel. Which was fun. If you read Korean. And like bagels.
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On my way home from Japan a bit under two years ago I stayed for a week on the campus of HUFS and was happy to find across the street a Dunkin Donuts selling actual bagels! They may be nowhere near as good as the ones I can get around home in NY/NJ, but it’s a damn site better than anything avaliable in Kyoto…
Now, you can actually get a decent (if overpriced) bagel in Taipei. Of course, it’s at the New York Bagels cafe.
I realize that Kang is down about 25% in the polls, but this unrelenting Gangnam bashing is beyond desperate. It will surely cost her a few votes in Gangnam (which was going to go for Oh anyhow), but I don’t see how it will pick up enough votes in Gangbuk. She needs a new theme.
Maybe she needs to start eating bagels and saying “fuck” a lot.
Funny thing is that both partcipants stated that they were “true sOmin” (”small people” or “masses”) and lambasted one another for being rich. However, BOTH have monthly income of some 15 mln. won.
Yeah, but Kang stressed that she is different from Oh because she has massive debts - like that is something to be proud of. Power to the people!
Lankov:
I don’t think they quite had the nerve to claim “seominness” for themselves; wasn’t the question more that who was more able to feel for and know the conditions of the “common people.” This is the very interesting issue (for me at least…) that pops up at every election time. My condensed idea why: because in Korea the number and proportion of self-employed is so high, and they are most often perceived as forming the core of “seomin.”
That article is vague on details, but Kang’s debt may not be a bad thing, depending on the value and form of any assets she controls. That’s not any endorsement for her, but just a suggestion that she could be manipulating the situation with incomplete information.
And, while I’m at it: God save us from another crying politician!
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[...] In Seoul, most polls have the GNP’s Oh se-hoon ahead of Uri’s Kang Kum-sil by between 20 and 30 percent. Kang, who was considered a rising start only a couple of months ago, has lashed out at her party for its poor performance. In my humble opinion, Kang has not helped herself with her Gangnam bashing over the last few weeks. [...]
[...] horse on the left) has moved into second place among prospective Uri candidates. She conducted a horrifically bad* campaign while running for mayor of Seoul last year and was crushed by Oh Se-hoon (despite [...]