PPP reinstates Kim Moon-soo's candidacy; official registration set for Sunday

Members of the conservative People Power Party (PPP) voted down a motion Saturday to replace the party's presidential candidate, Kim Moon-soo, with former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, officials said, effectively ending a weeklong dispute over a unified candidacy.

The party held an all-party vote in the day on whether to approve the party leadership's unprecedented move to nullify its primary and replace Kim with Han, after talks on merging their candidacies collapsed.

"The all-party vote on reselecting the presidential candidate was narrowly voted down," party spokesperson Shin Dong-wook said, though he did not disclose the exact figures.

More than half of party members' votes are required to pass the cancellation motion against Kim.

The PPP selected Kim as its candidate for the June 3 presidential election through primaries last week, but has pressured him to step aside and support Han, who has performed better in hypothetical matchups with front-runner Lee Jae-myung of the liberal Democratic Party of Korea(DPK).

Following the vote result, the PPP reinstated Kim's candidacy, party officials said, adding that Kim will officially register his candidacy with the state election committee on Sunday, which is the deadline by which a party candidate must register his or her candidacy.

Welcoming the decision, Kim said he "will immediately launch his election campaign committee and form a broad coalition now that everything is back in place."

Han said he "humbly accepts the will of the people and partly members and sincerely hopes that Kim and the party will achieve victory in the upcoming election," according to his camp officials.

Kwon Young-se, the PPP's emergency committee chief, expressed regrets over the party's failure to field a single candidate through political compromise, and offered to step down to take responsibility for the outcome.

After failed talks between Kim and Han on their candidacies Friday, the PPP's emergency committee canceled Kim's nomination in the wee hours of Saturday and officially registered Han as a party member and a new presidential candidate.

Kim lambasted the PPP's move as a "midnight political coup" and an "unprecedented anti-democratic act," vowing to take legal and political actions to hold those responsible accountable.

Kim later filed a court injunction to stop the party from canceling his candidacy, the second such legal action since he became a PPP presidential contender.

The party's late-night move has drawn criticism from primary candidates and their supporters.

Kim had sought a court order to challenge the PPP leadership's push to merge his campaign with Han's. The petition was dismissed by the court Friday.

The party leadership has feared that if Kim and Han fail to unify their candidacy at a time of deepening fissures within the country's conservative camp, the chances of a conservative win in the presidential poll would further diminish given that Lee has been widening his lead.

The PPP had accused Kim of thwarting party efforts toward the single candidacy, defending its decision to disqualify Kim as a candidate as a painful choice the party had to make.

Kim pivoted away from his earlier position in favor of a unified candidacy.

During the party's nomination contest, Kim had repeatedly stressed his intent to swiftly merge candidacies with Han in the event of Han's run for president as an independent. But such a stance changed after he was crowned as the party's official presidential candidate last week.

Demanding that Kim follow through on his pledge for a unified candidacy, the party leadership had pressured him to merge candidacies before Sunday. But Kim insisted that he would seek a unified candidacy through an opinion poll on May 15-16.

In various opinion polls, Han was ahead of Kim. In this week's National Barometer Survey, Lee garnered 43 percent support, trailed by Han with 23 percent and Kim with 12 percent.