Kang Seung-woo is the Business Desk editor at The Korea Times. Prior to this position, he covered politics, national affairs, finance and sports.
Presidential race heats up
Gyeonggi Province governor Lee Jae-myung, left, and former prosecutor general Yoon Seok-youl / Korea Times file
By Kang Seung-woo
Gyeonggi governor, ex-prosecutor to announce presidential bids this week
By Kang Seung-woo
The race for Cheong Wa Dae is beginning in earnest, with the high-profile candidates set to declare their bids for the presidency this week.
Gyeonggi Province governor Lee Jae-myung, the leading presidential hopeful of the liberal ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), is expected to announce on Thursday, that he will join the party's primary, which will pick its winner by early September. Yoon Seok-youl, the former prosecutor general who has led many opinion polls, is scheduled officially to declare his presidential bid on Tuesday.
South Korea's presidential election is scheduled to take place on March 9, 2022.
According to Rep. Park Hong-keun of the DPK, one of Lee's aides, the governor plans to declare his candidacy on Thursday, after registering as a preliminary candidate with the DPK. In 2017, he competed in the party primary and came in third, after now-President Moon Jae-in and former South Chungcheong Province governor An Hee-jung.
Along with the Gyeonggi governor, Rep. Lee Nak-yon, the former DPK chairperson and former prime minister, is expected to declare his candidacy next week.
So far, six members of the DPK have expressed their intention to run for presidency, including: former prime minister Chung Sye-kyun, former justice minister Choo Mi-ae and Gangwon Province Governor Choi Moon-soon. The DPK has started its three-day registration period for preliminary candidates in the primary, which lasts until Wednesday.
Meanwhile on Monday, Chung and Rep. Lee Kwang-jae agreed to unify their presidential candidacies by next Monday in an apparent move to curb the strength of the Gyeonggi governor in the race.
“With our common vision to create another government affiliated with the DPK, we decided, through much dialogue and coming to an agreement, to be the first to unify our candidacies,” they said during a press conference at the Korea Exchange in Seoul.
“With an urgent sense of duty to help launch the fourth DPK-led government ... we have committed to contributing to electing a good candidate who has moral integrity, knowledge of the economy and the capability to command state affairs.”
Former prime minister Chung Sye-kyun, right, shakes hands with Rep. Lee Kwang-jae of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, at the Korea Exchange in Seoul, Monday, after agreeing to unify their presidential candidacies for the party's primary by next Monday. Yonhap
On the opposition side, Yoon Seok-youl plans to declare his presidential bid at the memorial hall for Yun Bong-gil ― the Korean independence activist known for setting off a bomb at a Japanese imperial army celebration that killed several dignitaries ― in Yangjae-dong, Tuesday.
The former top prosecutor resigned, March 4, in apparent objection to the liberal ruling bloc's push for a prosecution reform, catapulting him into the spotlight, as a strong presidential contender in the conservative opposition bloc. However, he has yet to decide whether he will run in the election on the conservative main opposition People Power Party's (PPP) ticket.
In addition to Yoon, Choe Jae-hyeong, the chairman of Korea's Board of Audit and Inspection, offered to step down from his post on Monday, in what seemed to be a move to run for president. President Moon accepted this offer later in the day.
Choe Jae-hyeong, the chairman of the Board of Audit and Inspection, announces his intention to resign while reporting to work at his agency in Seoul, Monday, in an apparent bid to run for the presidential race next year. Yonhap
Like the former prosecutor general, Choe found himself in conflict with Cheong Wa Dae and the liberal ruling party over the government's anti-nuclear push, transforming him into an up-and-coming presidential hopeful among conservative opposition supporters.
Choe has also been regarded as a potential alternative to Yoon in case the latter drops out of the race.
According to the latest survey by the Korea Society Opinion Institute, released on Monday, 32.4 percent of respondents picked Yoon as their most preferred candidate in the election, followed by the Gyeonggi governor, with 28.4 percent. Lee Nak-yon came in third at 11.5 percent.