By Kang Hyun-kyung
“It’s the economy,” Rep. Shim Jae-chul of the ruling Saenuri Party said Sunday, noting that he learned this lesson after he met 40 vendors at a market in his electoral district of Anyang, Gyeonggi Province, Feb. 17.
“Their common response was that their businesses had become worse because of the economic downturn,” the four-term lawmaker said in a news release circulated to reporters, Sunday.
“Only one out of the 40 people said their business was fine compared with last year. The vendor sold chicken and he said last year was his worst because of avian flu.”
Shim said he went to the market in the afternoon the day before Lunar New Year Day expecting the market to be crowded.
“The reality was the opposite,” he said. “The market was very slow. All of the vendors that I met asked me to play a role to revitalize the economy. They said they had suffered a lot because of the economic recession.”
Other lawmakers said the general public was cynical about tax policies because they believed that middle- and lower-income families were suffering while the tax system benefited upper-income families. Also, smokers were upset at cigarette price hikes earlier this year, they said.
Together with the Chuseok holiday in autumn, the Lunar New Year holiday provides a unique opportunity for politicians, who usually stay in Seoul for parliamentary schedules, to meet with their constituents and listen to their opinions about politics.
The term “Seollal Minsim" describes the public opinion politicians gather during their meetings with residents during the consecutive holidays.
It tends to affect the political landscape in the post-holiday season.
Yoo Sung-jin, a political science professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said that leaders of the ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) cared a lot about public opinion.
“The holiday came shortly after polls found that the ratings of the Saenuri Party and the NPAD were neck and neck,” he told The Korea Times. “So it is natural for the leaders of the parties to care about how the public perceives what’s going on in the political arena because it will affect the ratings in the post-Seollal holiday.”
A Realmeter poll taken from Feb. 16 and 17 showed that support for the Saenuri Party was 34.7 percent as opposed to 33.8 percent for the NPAD. The poll has a plus and minus 3.1 percentage points margin of error.
Professor Yoo said public opinion would put pressure on the party leaders because it would affect the April 29 by-elections. Voters of the three electoral districts in Seoul, Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province and Gwangju will elect their representatives.