Songpa B by-election




Jamsil baseball stadium in the north of the constituency. Picture  By Cyberdoomslayer.

About the district: Songpa is in Seoul. It is one of the richest areas in all of Korea right next to Gangnam. Songpa B is mostly the western part of Songpa, stretching from the Jamsil Baseball stadium in the north to the Garak market in the South.  The further north you can go in constituency the richer it becomes and the more likely residents are to vote for the Liberty Korea party.

It is also a swing district (bear in mind Grand National and New Frontier are both previous names of Liberty Korea)'

2004
Grand National49.5
Our Open Party 43.5
New Millennium Democratic7.0
(the Our Open Party and the New Millennium Democratic Party had only split shortly before the election and recombined shortly afterwards, good work there guys….)

2008

Grand National 61.6
Democrat 35.7

2012

New Frontier 50%
Democratic 46%
2016
Democratic - 44%*
Independent (with support of New Frontier)-  35.4
*Winner defected to the People’s party in 2017 before being kicked out of the assembly.
As you can see every election bar 2008 (a disaster nationwide for the Democratic party) has been pretty close.

Why is there a by-election?  



Former National Assembly member Choi Myeong-gil in happier times.

The previous representative Choi Myeong-gil kicked out for breaking campaign finance rules. He sent a message to someone who was not registered as one of his campaign workers asking them to put out his adverts on social media. He also asked them for about $2,000 which he claimed in court was to organise a book fair. He was given a fine of $2,000- politicians fined more than $1000 dollars or given a prison sentence lose their seats in the National Assembly.

His political was pretty short though in that time he managed to tour all the political parties. Before politics he was a reporter at MBC. He initially was a supporter of the New Frontier (now known as Liberty Korea) party before defecting to the Democrats. Despite a drink driving conviction and failing to get selected for a seat in his native Daejeon he was selected to fight the key marginal of Songpa B by the party leadership. He won his election in 2016 and quickly rewarded the party leader’s faith in him by defecting to the People’s Party in 2017 though shortly afterwards his conviction meant he was kicked out of the assembly. 
Meet the candidates



Choi Chae-song- Democratic Party

While majoring in Buddhist Studies at Dongguk University he was the university student president. He was involved in the democracy movement and was imprisoned. He is a career politician. He served for 12 years as the assembly member for Namyangju (a satellite town of Seoul). He once dubbed the government of Lee Myung-bak a ‘Gangnam richmans government’ , probably not realising he’d be running to represent the constituency next door next day. He held various roles within the Democratic party during his time in parliament. I can’t actually find out why he didn’t stand for election last time though there were rumours he was thinking of running for Governor of Gyeonggi Province. If anyone knows more please let me know! He is a long-time supporter of current President Moon Jae-in and has emphasised his relationship with the President in his campaign.



Bae Hyun-jin

Bae Hyun-jin is reasonably famous in Korea presenting MBC Newsdesk- one of the most popular news shows in the country- for 8 years. She left this role on March 7th, announced she had joined the Liberty Korea party on March 9th and became head of the Songpa party comitee March 16th. Workers at MBC claimed there had been political interference at the company during the Presidency of Park Geun-hye and went on strike demanding (ultimately successfully) the removal of chief executive Kim Jang-gyeom. Bae Hyun-jin claims that she has been discriminated against for not taking part in the ‘politically motivated’ strikes.  She appears to be running a campaign aimed strongly at the Liberty Korea parties base making strong attacks on popular President Moon Jae-in.  She has got in to trouble for saying a gold prize in a University debating competition when she actually won a silver prize.





Park Jong-jin- Righteous Future Party

Yet another TV journalist! A lot less famous though- he worked as a correspondent on cable news channel MBN and then as a News-anchor on cable Channel A.
He has been the head of the local Righteous Future Party since July 2017.

Who is going to win?

There has been three opinion polls conducted:

Choi (Democratic) on 57%, Bae (Free Korea) 18% and Park (Righteous Future) 12%
Company
Date
Choi, Democratic
Bae, Free Korea
Park, Righteous Future
Chuwon-si-an-a-i
March 28
49.6
18.4
10.8
RS View
May 4
50.0
23.5
12.4
Gallup
May 9
52.1
17.4
8.6

The constituency usually closely mirrors national results and considering nationally the Democratic party now has a 30-40% opinion poll lead it appears set to do the same again.
Judging from her speeches on Youtube The Liberty Korea candidate seems to know she’s isn’t going to win running a campaign enamouring herself to the party’s base voters rather than potential swing voters presumably trying to set herself up for future attempts to run for office.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nowon C by-election

Image
About the constituency: The constituency is in the far North-East of the city of Seoul- This is an Assembly Constiuency map of Seoul with Nowon C highlighted in red: Nowon is the densest populated area of Seoul though is bordered to the north by relatively mountainous areas. It is a fairly standard residential suburb of Seoul.   Past results: The district has been highly unpredictable in the past returning candidates from all over the political spectrum in the past. However, one trend is that the Liberty Korea party and its predecessor parties have been in gradual decline here for a decade. The neighbouring Nowon A and Nowon B districts are both held by the Democratic party Previous Results by % (winners % in bold): Democrat* Liberty Korea* Minjung* Righteous Future* Justice party* other 2004 general election 45.2* 37.0 6.8 Did not run Did not run 11.0* 2008 gener...
Read more

How are the Korean local elections going to go?

The general political atmosphere in South Korea is very favourable for Moon and his Democratic Party. His latest approval ratings are as follows: Company Date Doing Well % Doing badly % Gallup Korea 16-17 May 76 14 RS View 17 May 72 23 Real Meter 14-16 May 74.5% 20.9% The latest political party polls look like this: Company Date Democratic Liberty Korea Righteous Future Justice Party Democracy and Peace Other/ don’t know/ undecided Gallup Meter 16-17 May 51 11 6 4 * 27 RS View 17 May 57 21 6 5 1 10 Real Meter 14-16 May 53.8 19.6 5.7 5.5 3.7 11.7 Gallup shows a very high number of don’t knows on the political party question. However 54% of their don’t knows say that Moon Jae-in is doing well as Preside...
Read more

New Opponent- same results

Image
New leader of Liberty Korea Hwang Kyo-Ahn has not changed their fortunes.  Nothing much has changed in Korean opinion polling in the last few months. In the opinion polls Moon still has a approval rating of around 50%. His Democratic Party continues to lead in the polls although by 10-15 points rather than 20 point leads that were common at the start of the year.  What is interesting about this is the news has not been good for Moon in the last few months. Moon's main weakness has always been his failure to deliver on his (unrealistic) pledge to boost Korean growth. In fact Korea's economy shrank by 0.3% in the first quarter of 2019. Meanwhile the North Korean peace process has stalled- missile tests, attacks on Moon from Pyongyang and the Americans seizing North Korean ships suggest if anything the process is going backwards. Yet Moon still remains popular compared to past Korean presidents at this stage in their term while his party is on track for a big win in the 20...
Read more