Joining among other places the United States of America, Mexico, France, the Netherlands, Greece, and Serbia, Korea is also holding elections this year and the presidential election is coming up this December 19th.
The conservatives as represented by the New Frontier Party is running Park Geun-Hye as a Presidential candidate. She is the daughter of the late President and dictator of Korea, Park Cheung-Hee and has run for the presidency before.
The liberals are currently split between the Democratic Union Party (the main liberal party in Korea) candidate Moon Jae-In and the independent Anh Cheol-Soo who was a professor and ran an anti-virus software company. There have been negotiations to run one candidate although they haven’t been very successful.
For more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korean_presidential_election,_2012
http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2012/04/jasmine-lee-first-non-ethnic-assembly_27.html
http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2012/11/koreas-presidential-election-part-i.html
http://english.chosun.com/
I suppose one of the main factors will be how well the opposition can link Park Geun-hye to her father, both in terms of similarities of method (will she just be her father all over again?) and in terms of nepotism (she road on her father’s coattails!).
I’m not much of a Korea-watcher, but I’m guessing that PCH’s legacy is either extremely negative or extremely complicated, and this election could open up a lot of old wounds about the Yushin era.
So, she’s the first explicitly Buddhist President of South Korea since… the mid-90s, right?
That’s a good trend.
ARGH. I can’t believe she got elected.
Well, maybe she’ll defy all the odds and actually do a good job. I’m just annoyed that the first woman Korean president is not someone I am proud to call my country’s leader.
My first reaction, is good for Korea in electing a woman president. That really means something in a country as male-dominated as Korea.
But talking to my relatives in Korea over the past day, and wow, they are extremely upset. Actually crying about it. They feel she will follow in the footsteps of her father the dictator. They think the press is already being controlled and it’s just a matter of time before the internet is cracked down on. They’ve forsworn posting on social media.
I think they’re overreacting, but it’s hard to understand politics in another locale. (They thought that democracy was a failure five years ago when their candidate wasn’t elected that time. :smack: ) I won’t be surprised if there are large protests next year if the new president does anything controversial.