IMHO, neither Lee or Park has the ingenuity to remake themselves as true leaders instead of being shaped by circumstances (and outside influences) into symbols of “too little” and “too late”.

Anyway, this just in:
Park said she blames GNP ’sojangpa’(reformist) politicians for Sohn’s departure. Sohn was one of sojangpa, and the majority of sojangpa promised to back Sohn’s bid for presidency last year. But as Lee’s popularity soared they turned away from Sohn and began supporting Lee. Sounds plausible, eh?

Meh, I though Sohn’s departure would make Lee and Park unite. Instead, they seem to see it as just another opportunity to point finger at each other.

For GNP this is an alarming situation. Sohn’s departure from GNP will probably make a large chunk of center-right voters turn away from GNP and seek more moderate alternatives like Sohn or Jeong Wun-Chan. In the past months Park and Lee kept iterating their ‘centerness’ to gain votes, but it seems all these efforts have been rendered useless by Sohn’s thoughtless move.

One thing that disappoints me about Sohn is that he doesn’t seem to have much of a reason to leave GNP other than the fact that he was not popular enough to get through the GNP primary. In the short term leaving GNP and joining the Uri scumbags may seem like an attract option because with them he is not an underdog anymore. But, like Lee In-Jae, he may end up just as a posterboy for center-left primary and end up losing to some Roh Mu-Hyun-like populist candidate. Even worse, if GNP happens to loses the election, he will be remember as a major obstacle for Korea’s chance to turn rightward (i.e less anti-US, less populist, less Commie).

The ideal scenario now would be that Lee and Park end their pointless bickering about their private lives. That will serve as a litmus test on whether or not GNP is as hopeless as I fear it is.