By Andy Jackson
No Korean election is complete without a visit from a political corpse. Chung Dong-young will fill that role during the National Assembly by-elections coming up on April 29.
You would think that leading the then-named Uri Party to ignominious defeat as chairman in the 2006 local elections, being crushed in the December 2007 presidential election and then being humiliated in a National Assembly race in Seoul last year would have finished him off as a credible leader among Korea progressives. You would think that, but you would be wrong.
By a twist of fate, one of the five districts to be contested is Deokjin in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province. That safe Democratic district just happens to be Chung's home turf. The temptation to get back into the ring was too great and Chung has returned from exile at Duke University in the United States to have a go at it.
When Democratic Party leaders balked at his bid and refused to nominate him, he simply bolted from the party and registered as an independent. If he wins in his old district, which appears likely, he will most likely rejoin his party and carve out a leadership role for himself, despite claims from party leaders that they will not let him back in.
If Chung wins, he will certainly not be the only local politician to come back from the dead. Korea's political landscape is haunted by the undead; those who simply refuse to take ``no" from the Korean public for an answer and come back again and again.
Perhaps the best known of the undead politicians is Lee Hoi-chang, chairman of the Chungcheong Provinces-based Liberty Forward Party (LFP). Lee has lost in the last three presidential general elections. Now that he has his own personal party in the LFP, we can be almost certain that he will try to see if the fourth time is the charm in 2012.
Park Geun-hye showed a steady hand as chairwoman of the Grand National Party (GNP) following the Roh Moo-hyun impeachment debacle in 2004 and a cool head after she was attacked with a box cutter while campaigning in 2006, but a major portion of her popular support is due to the fact that she is the daughter of former president Park Chung-hee. Despite his sometime brutal handling of political opponents, he remains the Korean public's favorite former president by far. This is a case of a politician's influence from beyond the grave being literal.
My personal favorite undead politician is National Assemblyman Rhee In-je. He is somehow able to stick around despite most likely being the most reviled political figure in Korea today.
Rhee, former governor of Gyeonggi Province, bolted from the GNP in 1997 after losing the party's nomination to Lee Hoi-chang and took away just enough conservative votes to allow Kim Dae-jung to win the election. Rhee was the early favorite to win the presidential nomination of Kim's progressive Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) in 2002 but was bumped aside by an upswell of support for Roh and bolted from the MDP.
After getting less that 1 percent of the vote in the 2007 presidential election and being effectively kicked out of the Democratic Party last year, it looked like Rhee was finally finished. However, he managed to win in his old National Assembly district in South Chungcheong Province with only 27.7 percent of the vote when three conservative candidates split 45 percent of the vote between them. Rhee's power may have diminished but his knack for survival endures.
Korea is certainly not the only country with politicians who stick around long after they should have left politics, but it does seem to have more than its fair share. There are several possible reasons.
First, there are strong bonds of personal loyalty in Korea's political classes. They have often known each other for years and have spent time together in protests, singing rooms and Lord knows where else. That creates stronger personal ties than politicians in other democratic countries tend to have. Throw in relatively weak party bonds and you have a system in which ambitious politicians can either force their will on party organizations or, failing that, create their own parties on short notice.
Korea's strong regionalism gives politicians a safe haven where they can lick their wounds and re-gather their strength. Chung might have lost at everything he tried over the past three years, but he can probably still win in North Jeolla Province.
Finally, there is the example of Kim Dae-jung to inspire others to stick around for one more try. Kim lost three presidential elections and had perhaps five attempts on his life over the course of 30 years before he finally was elected president in 1997.
Whatever the reasons for longevity of Korea's undead politicians, we can count on them being around long after we wished they had gone.
Andy Jackson has taught courses on American government and has been writing on Korean politics and other issues for four years. He can be reached at andyinrok@lycos.com.