Election Day (yawn…)

Despite being a national holiday (”Festival of Democracy” and all that), I’m actually quite busy today, so I won’t be posting as much as you’d expect. I do expect, however, that Andy one of our other bloggers will take up the slack.

Anyway, to start the links:

  • As expected, voter turnout has been piss poor. How poor? We’re looking at the lowest ever, with only 36.7% showing up as of 1 pm. Assuming this keeps up, this election will be the first time voter participation has sunk into the 60% range. For comparison’s sake — 1987: 89.2%, 1992: 81.9%, 1997: 80.7%, 2002: 70.8%. Oddly enough, given how popular LMB was as governor, Seoul voter turnout has been the lowest so far, while Gyeongsangbuk-do (which could help or hurt LMB, depending on how many break for Lee Hoi-chang) and the Jeolla provinces (definitely helps Chung Dong-young) have recorded the highest levels.

This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on December 19, 2007 at 1:48 pm, filed under South Korean Politics. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

6 Comments

  1. littlebrownasian your flag
    Posted December 19, 2007 at 2:05 pm | Permalink

    I’m not surprised. About a third of my colleagues in the office said they don’t intend to vote, instead they had other plans for today.

  2. Andy Jackson your flag
    Posted December 19, 2007 at 2:10 pm | Permalink

    I don’t think I will be doing much more than posting the exit poll results at 6:00 and the declaration of a winner circa 10:30. It’s a church night and I will be taking care of my daughter will mommy is out.

  3. littlebrownasian your flag
    Posted December 19, 2007 at 2:45 pm | Permalink

    Andy,

    Nice! Maybe you should check out that Blade Runner Director’s Cut Nomad’s been gloating about on his blog. Have you seen it? :)

    Now, since the turnout for the voters in Seoul were low, I wonder how this will affect LMB’s chances of winning…

  4. JiMong your flag
    Posted December 19, 2007 at 3:54 pm | Permalink

    I can’t get rid of revised “Saemaeul Undong” campaign song by #8 Huh Kyung Young from my head since I accidentally heard via SBS internet radio days ago. I wonder how many votes he would get.

  5. maui your flag
    Posted December 19, 2007 at 4:08 pm | Permalink

    Well at least the drive into work was quick this morning, granted with people on holiday schedule it’s like a ghost town on USAG-Y down where my office is.
    So had to put some thing together since I got here early.
    Here another song for ya, to help clear your head. :-)

    http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1543566101

  6. Nomad your flag
    Posted December 19, 2007 at 6:44 pm | Permalink

    No wonder voter turnout was so low:

    http://joongangdaily.joins.com.....id=2884096

    One good thing about it being a “holiday” though; there was plenty of parking on Osan Air Base today.

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