By Tong Kim

In less than six months, the people of South Korea will choose their next president. At this point they don’t even know who will be the candidates to choose from in December.

The Grand National Party (GNP) will pick either Lee Myung-bak, former mayor of Seoul, or Park Geun-hye, former GNP chair person, for its candidate in August. Polls have suggested that either candidate will defeat any opponent from a known group of potentials to join the race, including Sohn Hak-kyu, former governor of the Geyonggi province, and Chung Dong-young, former chairman of the Uri Party.

The two confident GNP primary candidates recently avoided a fatal clash over their party rules of nomination. If their disagreement had continued, it would have split the party into two, and either candidate would be positioned to capture the next presidency.

The public never really understood the problem of the complicated rules that kept changing. The general voters do not care about how a party selects its candidate as long as the competition process makes sense to them.

The problem with the GNP’s primary rules stem from a complicated formula of vote counting. The latest formula agreed between the two candidates relies on a fixed base number of 230,000 eligible voters that are distributed among delegates and ordinary members of the party and participating voters from the general populace in a ratio of 20 percent, 30 percent and 30 percent in addition to votes from the result of an opinion poll that will count up to another 20 percent of the total eligible voters. But the number of votes from the poll is subject to variation according to the actual percentage of voter participation in the group of randomly selected voters from the general populace.

The average voters are not interested in understanding this unique and weird mathematic formula. To determine and execute the rules for a primary process is the GNP’s purview. On the other hand, the people simply know votes from poll results will be favorable to Lee Myung-bak, whose support rate is around 40 percent. Lee has consistently come ahead of his rival Park Geun-hye by a double score in polls for several months.

While menacingly fighting each other over the rules, both GNP candidates were seen as intractable and seeking only their personal interest. Their self-justifications _ either ``upholding the principles’’ (Park’s) or ``claiming the demand of the times’’ (Lee’s) were neither accepted nor supported by the people in general. Both missed an opportunity to show the kind of leadership that will make the people feel comfortable to trust and depend on them for running the country if they are elected.

The two leading candidates will likely clash again over an internal party hearing process during which they will be put to scrutiny for their personal backgrounds, to clarify widely circulated suspicions and charges against them. Park’s camp believes Lee, if nominated, would lose because of his vulnerability to negative attacks in the main race. Lee’s camp says they are ready for any tough questions, because Lee has a clean record.

The ordinary GNP members and its National Assembly members are roughly divided 50/50 into the two camps. Many of them have turned out full time campaign workers, neglecting their duty as national lawmakers. But they do this in search for their personal political interest, betting on the candidate of their choice. It is an all out zero sum game.

The more personal and emotional they get in their internal party power struggle, the more difficult it would be to unify the divided forces and to rally behind their final party candidate. If united, that is if the loser actively supports the winner of the primary for the December race, the GNP has a good chance to win the December election. If split, the GNP’s chance will be slim to defeat an emerging candidate who will represent a broad spectrum of progressive democratic and moderate political forces that are committed to oppose the GNP.

It is still murky to predict who will be the winner in a presidential election so critical to domestic and global transformation affecting the future of Korea. Once the final candidates are determined, it will be another close race between the two major opponents. However, it is not difficult to predict what the election will be about.

It will not be about ending military rule or democratization as in the 80s and 90s, when Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung became presidents. (Korea is now a full-fledged mature democracy.) It will not be about progressive reform against the establishment or anti-American sentiments, which helped President Roh Moo-hyun get elected.

It will not be about political regionalism or ideological divide, although their efficacy is still noticeable. But it will be about the candidate’s vision, leadership, ability and character to move the nation forward with effective and programmatic policies -- regarding the economy and the issues of peace and security. It will be about competition in an era of free trade agreements and an ever-challenging global system.

It will be about achieving a denuclearized Korean peninsula, strengthening the evolving alliance with the United States and stabilizing the peace and stability in Korea by working with North Korea and the other surrounding nations. It will be about a vision for national unification. There are other important issues that will be waiting for the new president to address, including education, housing, economic and social polarization, environment, etc.

Well executed negative attacks work in elections if they effectively exploit the opponent’s vulnerabilities in terms of his record, policy or positions. However, a negative campaign against the Roh government may not work this time unless President Roh aggressively supports a leading non-GNP candidate. Most voters do not seem to be particularly dissatisfied with a departing administration. They are more interested in looking forward to a new administration that will be born in February 2008.

Non-GNP candidates should remember that they must campaign on their own record and their own merits. It is easier to win an election on the faults of the opponent with whom the voters may get angry. But there is no major issue that is likely to anger the majority of the people this election year.

Winning the election will also depend on who makes critical gaffes and stumbling blunders along the path to the final election. Tricks may work in the short term, but the truth wins at the end but it may be too late. Politics is a function of perception. What’s your take?

Tong Kim is former senior interpreter at the U.S. State Department and now a research professor at Korea University and a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).