Kang Seung-woo is the Business Desk editor at The Korea Times. Prior to this position, he covered politics, national affairs, finance and sports.
Veteran politicians fail to survive general election
Rep. Park Jie-won of Minsaeng Party / Korea Times file
By Kang Seung-woo
By Kang Seung-woo
High-profile veteran politicians are seeing their political careers end prematurely as lesser-known political novices put up more of a fight than expected in Wednesday's general election.
Rep. Park Jie-won of the minor opposition Minsaeng Party, a four-term lawmaker best known as former President Kim Dae-jung's chief of staff, was behind ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) candidate Kim Won-I, 45.2 percent to 39.2 percent in the electoral district of Mokpo, South Jeolla Province, as of 11 p.m. Kim is a former deputy mayor for political affairs at the Seoul Metropolitan Government.
Chun Jung-bae, another Minsaeng Party lawmaker, is seeing his bid for a seventh term potentially stopped by the DPK's Yang Hyang-ja in Gwangju's Seo-B District. In his run in the quadrennial election, he was behind the former Samsung Electronics executive by nearly 60 percentage points. Four years ago, Chun, a former justice minister, easily beat Yang 54.5 percent to 31.5 percent.
Rep. Chung Dong-young, also of the Minsaeng Party, is also seeing his influence diminish in his district of Jeonju-C in North Jeolla Province as he appears to be on the verge of suffering a defeat to former Assemblyman Kim Sung-ju of the DPK by a wide margin ― 69.5 percent to 29.3 percent. Chung was a former unification minister under the Roh Moo-hyun administration and also ran unsuccessfully for president in 2007.