Korea: Big victory for
impeached President Roh
By David Scofield

SEOUL - Impeached South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun won big in the national elections considered a referendum on his vastly unpopular ouster. His de facto party, Our Open Party (OOP, also known as the Uri Party), on Thursday defeated conservative, mainstream old-guard rivals to win very big, securing a 152-seat majority in the 299-seat National Assembly.

About 60 percent of South Korea's eligible 35.6 million voters cast ballots in the nation of 48.9 million. Despite last-minute appeals and rites of repentance by Roh's rivals - in the parties that spearheaded his March 12 impeachment - and powerful conservative support by Korea's senior citizens and legions of Christians, OOP, Roh's de facto progressive party, became the driving force in the new 17th National Assembly.

The big losers - devastated, in fact - were the previously dominant Grand National Party (GNP), which had held 137 seats and now holds 121, and the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP), its ally in Roh's impeachment, which had held 61 seats and now holds just nine. The Democratic Labor Party (DLP), which held no seats, gained 10; the United Liberal Democrats, which held 10 seats, dropped to four. Other parties held 14 seats, now reduced to three.

The GNP and MDP were out to get Roh, a poor farm boy who became a labor-rights lawyer and champion for the underdog and new politics in Korea. He also was considered "softer" on North Korea and more assertive of Korean identity, less willing to take orders from the United States, which has at least 37,000 troops stationed in South Korea.

The election demonstrated that age-old regional rivalries are still alive and well in South Korea, but with a twist. The OOP not only dominated in non-GNP strongholds, it also won strong backing from Korea's younger progressives. This showing by the OOP is expected to put tremendous pressure on the Constitutional Court, which is hearing Roh's impeachment case, to overturn the

National Assembly seats after ballot counting Party Before After OOP (Our Open Party) 49 152* (129+23) Grand National 137 121 (100+21) Millennium Democratic 61 9 (5+4) Democratic Labor 0 10 (2+8) United Liberal Democrats 10 4 (4+0) Others 14 3 (3+0) Total 299 (243+56)  *Contested plus proportional seats  Source: Korea Times

impeachment. A ruling is expected by the end of May and if Roh is restored to office, as many analysts believe, South Korea will for the first time in 16 years have a National Assembly controlled by the president's party. The nation's first democratic elections were held in 1987.

The OOP majority win came as a surprise to many. Though it had commanded a tremendous majority in opinion polls in the immediate aftermath of the impeachment, statements by party leader Chung Dong-young suggesting that Korea's elders need not participate in the election, since they represented a bygone era, galvanized older conservatives and seemed to have shifted the popular vote back in favor of the GNP. Indeed, Chung stepped down from running for one of the assembly's newly formed proportional seats and is, at least for now, not a sitting member of the National Assembly. Chung is still party leader, however, and soon after the polls closed he stated, "If the exit polls are true, the people saved democracy, the people saved the president."

The OOP decimated the MDP, the party of former president Kim Dae-jung, the party that gave rise to the OOP six months ago, securing almost all the seats in the MDP's former regional stronghold of Cholla province. The OOP also delivered a virtual death blow to the United Liberal Democrats (ULD), the party of nine-term lawmaker Kim Jong-pil, sweeping his traditional stronghold of Daejeon, the country's fourth-largest city and the much-rumored relocation of the nation's capital if Roh's promises of capital relocation ever come to fruition.

But the OOP was not the only party to defy the pundits. The DLP, the self-styled "true progressives", surprisingly won 10 seats, making it the third-largest party in the nation, surpassing the devastated MDP, a particularly remarkable showing considering the DLP fielded only 18 candidates.

The election was not without its illegalities, however, and the National Election Commission reported more than 5,938 cases of illegal pre-election campaigning, almost 50 percent of which was distributing pamphlets, making phone calls or sending e-mails in violation of election laws. NEC officials have pointed out that though the number of such cases has risen two and half times over violations in the general election four years ago, the numbers do not necessarily represent an increase in illegal behavior. Instead, they said, these reflect a zero-tolerance policy by the NEC and an increasingly vigilant public, tired of the corrupt political system of the past, and more willing to report election wrongdoing.

The NEC has referred 130 candidates to the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office for further investigation. Local news reports say as many as 56 elected lawmakers have been booked so far by prosecutors for illegal electioneering, and this number is expected to rise. Of course all of them will not lose their seats in the assembly, but some of the newly elected will be forced to step down, ensuring a number of by-elections in the near future. This bodes well for Chung Dong-young, the vindicated but seatless leader of the OOP - who benightedly told seniors to stay home - as he will probably run in one of the by-elections.

A change in policy?
The OOP's new dominance of the National Assembly is grounded on a very slim popular vote margin. Less than 4 percent of the popular vote separates the OOP and the conservative GNP, as a majority of seats were won through very close races. The OOP has secured the seats it needs to push through legislation, but its rise to prominence will probably not prompt a radical rethink in the country's domestic and international agenda.

The OOP has been careful to say all the right things, articulating its belief in policies designed to improve transparency in business and maintain sound microeconomic fundamentals. It maintains support for troop deployment to Iraq, though the focus will likely be on reconstruction and not security, much to the disappointment of the United States, which has been pressing South Korea to accept a larger security mandate. And engagement policies aimed at curbing and reforming North Korean behavior will continue in much the same unilateral way they have since the summit talks of June 2000.

In short, though the nation's conservatives went to great lengths to portray the OOP as dangerous, radical supporters of the North's Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, the election of the OOP - and its implications for restoration of President Roh and the continuation of his policies - will probably not mean radical vacillations in policy. It will, however, ensure a continuation of policy that, as Roh stated, is designed to create a more "independent" foreign policy, one that primarily addresses South Korea's agenda of peaceful unification, predicated on policies of engagement that are, for all intents and purposes, increasingly incongruent with US strategies concerning North Korea.

Of course, this is not new. South Korea-US divergence on North Korea strategy has become obvious to all but the most myopic, and while the election of the OOP will certainly not close the gap, those at the party's helm will continue to move carefully in the same direction.

For Roh and his supporters, this is an unqualified victory. The question remains, though, whether the OOP can refrain from infighting and factionalism and offer a blueprint for law and order, and fundamental economic and social stability that will ultimately lead to integration and national unity. There exists the possibility for construction and development through this vote. Roh and the OOP have spent months promising the great, positive steps toward national and peninsular reconciliation that would be possible if only they were given the political mandate necessary to do so. Now very likely is their chance - the nation is waiting.

David Scofield, former lecturer at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University, is currently conducting post-graduate research at the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield.

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