{"id":78,"date":"2013-06-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-02T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yule-tide.generalsemiotics.net\/index.php\/2013\/06\/02\/xpost-71-ahn-cheol-soo-can-destroy-koreas-democratic-party\/"},"modified":"2013-06-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-02T00:00:00","slug":"xpost-71-ahn-cheol-soo-can-destroy-koreas-democratic-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/2013\/06\/02\/xpost-71-ahn-cheol-soo-can-destroy-koreas-democratic-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-71: Ahn Cheol-Soo Can Destroy (Korea’s) Democratic Party"},"content":{"rendered":"
Ahn Cheol-Soo (\uc548\ucca0\uc218) [who I wrote about back at the bottom of post-66<\/a>] may have it within his power to single-handedly destroy South Korea’s major opposition center-left political party, the Democratic Unity Party (\ubbfc\uc8fc\ud1b5\ud569\ub2f9), the Korea Herald<\/em> says.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/span>Americans will know South Korea’s Democratic Party as the party associated with the “Sunshine Policy” vis-a-vis North Korea. This party has had trouble for nearly years now. Recently, it failed to win a majority in the legislature in April 2012 despite favorable conditions (see post-66<\/a>), then it failed to win the presidency in December 2012. It is my impression that Koreans tend to view the Democratic Party as a party of corrupt, grandstanding, political-hacks.<\/p>\n

The Herald,<\/em><\/span> on June 3rd, reported the following public support, as found in a nationwide survey in mid-May 2013:
\n            21% say they <\/span>support the Democratic Party<\/strong> (the big center-left party)
\n            40% say they support the Saenuri Party<\/strong><\/span> (the big center-right party)
\n            39% say they support neither of those parties<\/p>\n

The poll also asked about the prospect of an “Ahn Cheol-Soo Party”<\/span>.
\n            12% say they would support the Democratic Party if Ahn formed a party<\/strong> [-9%]
\n<\/span>            29% say they would support the Saenuri Party if Ahn formed a party<\/strong> [-11%]
\n            26% say they would support Ahn Cheol-Soo’s party, if he formed one<\/strong> [+26%]
\n            33% say they would support none of the three parties in that scenario [-6%]<\/p>\n

Ahn draws support from left, right, and nonpolitica<\/span>l camps. If the above is accurate, then his party, if formed, would obviously be the new “opposition”. The Democratic Party (with 12% support) would flounder and fold, all else equal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span>\"Picture\"<\/a>Ahn Cheol-Soo
\nPotential future president of South Korea<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/span>The article<\/a> quotes a Democratic Party functionary who warns: “(Ahn forming an independent power base) could become a development deserving of an award from the [right-wing] Saenuri Party”<\/em>. He means Ahn would split the electorate, handing future victories to the right-wing. This is plausible, but not borne out by the polling data above: Ahn draws support evenly from all sides of the spectrum, and 40-45% of the supporters of the new party would actually have been former Saenuri supporters! (11%\/26%).<\/p>\n

This may cause South-Korean politics to move away from the boringly-binary U.S. model which it has been drifting towards.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ahn Cheol-Soo (\uc548\ucca0\uc218) [who I wrote about back at the bottom of post-66] may have it within his power to single-handedly destroy South Korea’s major opposition center-left political party, the Democratic Unity Party (\ubbfc\uc8fc\ud1b5\ud569\ub2f9), the Korea Herald says. Americans will know South Korea’s Democratic Party as the party associated with the “Sunshine Policy” vis-a-vis North […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-korea","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}