The Marmot’s Hole

The United New Democratic Party has started its primaries and a clear front-runner has emerged.

Who is it? I’ll give you a hint: It ain’t Sohn Hak-kyu (JoongAng):

Chung Dong-young is currently leading the United New Democratic Party primary to select the liberal bloc’s presidential candidate, after a second round of primary voting held in Jeju/Ulsan and Gangwon/North Chungcheong provinces over the weekend. There will be a total of eight rounds to select a nominee.

Chung, a former unification minister who has become sharply critical of President Roh Moo-hyun, received 13,910 votes, with Sohn Hak-kyu, the former Gyeonggi governor, trailing him with 9,368 votes. Lee Hae-chan, a former prime minister who remains supportive of Roh, is in third place with 8,925 votes.

Sohn failed to win in any of the areas up for grabs as Lee won in Gangwondo and Chung won in Ulsan, Jeju-do and Chung-buk. He was absolutely hammered in Ulsan, which is not a surprise. He is an economic conservative. Ulsan is heavily unionized and is the base of the socialist Democratic Labor Party.

This thing is going to get even more interesting as all three candidates will probably win in their home regions (Chung in Jeollabuk-do/Gwangju, Sohn in Gyeonggi-do/Seoul and Lee in Chung-nam).

Ryu Si-min has joined Han Myeong-sook in dropping out of the race and endorsing Lee, which means there is only one backer of President Roh Moo-hyun left in the running. Roh is only running 20% in the polls, but it is a pretty safe bet that most of that 20% is is the Uri Party UNDP.

The interestingness of the race also means that turnout should go up in later rounds and that the winner should get a pretty good bump in the polls, perhaps getting up to the low 30s.

One troubling sign for the UNDP is that turnout in the early primaries was less than 20%, which is a sign of either disinterest by party members or poor organization (they either didn’t care to vote or didn’t know how to vote). Of course, poor weather over the weekend could explain some of the poor turnout, especially in Jeju. Sohn is going to need a higher turnout in later primaries if he is to take advantage of his higher poll numbers.

In other news, the Democratic Labor Party nominated Kwon Young-ghil for president in a surprisingly close race.

Headline of the week: Ex-woman PM quits race

I guess Korea is not ready for a transgender president, even if the media is queer-friendly.