The Marmot’s Hole

5:50 Time for the fun. I have YTN on the TV and two web pages open, so I should be able to figure out something pretty quick once the polls close. I won’t be able to post much tonight. I have to write on a KT piece this evening.

Of course, other writers on the blog are more than welcome to play through with their own election posts (not that you need my permission). Also, forgive the spelling mistakes. I won’t be running the spell check tonight.

Here are some background pieces for your reading pleasure while you wait for the rest of my post.

• My recent KT piece on the parties with some general background
• KT’s Kim Sue-young has a good piece on some of the major players in today’s election and what the results might mean for them.
• Here is a good piecefrom Bruce Klingner which gives a lot of background on the election.

5:54Turnout is light. The Chosun reports that it was only 42% at five o’clock.

5:56Although I know that one of my favorite former K-bloggers will strongly disagree with me. I am cheering for Park Jin in Jongno in his race against Sohn Hak-Kyu, if for no other reason than to reward his wife for putting up with this indignity:

Jo Yoon-hui, 52, introducing herself as the “significant other half” of Park Jin, bowed deeply every time she saw a passerby. The violinist, who studied at Korea’s top university, Seoul National, stayed out until 2 a.m. in sneakers to help her husband.

At a pub in Gugi-dong, she was greeted by a group of drunken men insisting they would only vote for Park if she sang to them. She hesitated, then sang Park’s campaign song.

Back to the turnout: I would assume that a low turnout would benefit the conservative parties since the base voters of convervative parties around the world tend to be more reliable about showing up.

6:00 Countdown…..

YTN calls it 160-184 seats for the GNP and 72-88 for the UND. Most other parties have won at least a few seats, although the New Progressive Party (which broke from the Democratic Labor Party last month) might get shut out.

6:05 Chosun: 한나라 154~178 : 민주 67~89 : 선진당 13~18: 친박연대 5~7 (numbers in article subject to change)

Those are pretty disappointing numbers for the Pro-Park Geun-hye group. On the other hand, the Lee Hoi-chang’s Liberty Forward party did OK, although far from spectacular, in getting the thrid largest share of votes.

6:15 The GNP will fall short of a constitutional majority of 200 seats. However, it is still possible for the conservative parties to collectively reach that number.

6:21Official returns (via YTN): GNP 114, UND 30, LFP 8, PPA (Pro-Park Geun-hye alliance) 1, Independents 9

6:26Here is the Chosun’s sight for the Park Jin v. Sohn Hak-kyu race. No results there yet, but another part of their web page has Park up 49-45.

6:27Here is the Chosun’s board for a host of races.

6:32Why having a regional base is important: The LFP is projected to get 13-18 seats on 4.3% of the vote while the Pro-Park Geun-hye Alliance is expected to win 5-7 seats on 8.3% of the vote.

6:35 That’s it for me (at least for a while). I have to start work on my KT piece. All you need to know right now is the the GNP won big.

7:00Okay, one more. YTN has called Jongno for Park Jin. I guess his wife has a good singing voice.

UPDATE(by Robert Koehler): If you’re a left-leaning Korean, or a foreign sympathizer of the Korean left, things are looking really, really ugly. The headlines at Naver.com say it all:

[통합민주당] 충격에 빠진 민주당…”이럴 수가”
[한나라당] 한, 탄성.환호..잔칫집 분위기
[자유선진당] 자유선진당, “교섭단체 불확실” 출구조사에 ‘초조’
[민주노동당] 민노 “최악의 선거, 최대 피해자는 국민”
[창조한국당] 창조한국, 문대표 선두에 `환호’
[친박연대] 친박연대, 기대이하 성적에 `침울’
[진보신당] 진보신당, “원내진출 좌절되나”…침울

NoCut News reports that Korean conservative parties will likely get over 200 seats, giving them the two-thirds majority needed to ram home constitutional changes. Interestingly, though, Creative Korea Party chairman Moon Kook-hyun looks like he’ll beet LMB right-hand man Lee Jae-oh, while DLP lawmaker Kang Ki-kap looks like he’ll win in Sacheon, so we’ll get to see the hanboka bit longer. On, and if anyone cares, Hong Sa-deok — the former GNP floor leader who got booted out in the backlash against then-President Roh Moo-hyun’s impeachment — is back in, this time with the pro-Park Geun-hye possie, beating a GNP guy quite decisively in Daegu’s Seo-gu district.

UPDATE 2(Andy)  I have heard from the Korean Office of  Undead and Demonic Studies in Mungyeong, North Gyeongsang Province and it is official; Rhee In-jae is the devil.  The Chosun says that Rhee has won in his district as an independent with only 28.2% of the vote, which will probably stand as the lowest vote total for any winning candidate this election.  Click on the “논산시계룡시금산군” part of the 충남 section of this map to see the results.

It took a perfect storm of major party candidates playing off each other for Rhee to make it.  As you may recall, the UDP gave Rhee the boot in the run-up to this election. 

11:37  Andy’s final update: 

Here are YTN’s projections as of 11:30:

1. Grand National Party - 151
2. United Democratic Party - 82
3. Liberty Forward Party - 19
4. Pro-Park Geun-hye Alliance - 14
5. Democratic Labor Party - 5
6. Creative Korea Party -  3
7. independents - 25

If these numbers hold up (there are still 15-20 races that are too close to call as of 11:30), there are several implications.

• The GNP’s victory, while solid, was not as strong as indicated by exit polls.  I remember the Lee Myung-bak’s exit poll numbers where also higher than the final result.  I suspect that the variance can be explained at least in party by response acquiescence as voters tell pollsters that they support the popular candidate while they actually voted from someone else.
• The GNP only got 21 of 54* proportional representation seats.  While I can’t be sure, I suspect that some voters treated the PR ballot as a ‘throw away’ vote after voting for the GNP candidate in their local race.  Such ticket splitting was the subject of a study on the previous National Assembly election in 2004.  *As a side note, I had said the their were 56 PR seats in my previous KT article.  I had based that number on what I read at the Nation Election Commission’s web page.  That number turned out to be inaccurate.
• According to an article that I can’t find the link to right now, the magic number for controlling all National Assembly committees is 168, which means that the GNP will need Park Geun-hye’s 30 renegades afte all.  (BTW, I really hope they don’t print my article at the Times since it was based on the 9:00 results, which changed quit a bit in two hours.)
• On the other hand, conservatives (including a little over half of indepdendents) now combine for about 200 seats, which is a constitutional majority.

OK, I’m really done now.