Seoul’s Conservative Mayor Edges Out Leftist Rival in Late Vote-Counting

Seoul’s conservative mayor, Oh Se-hoon, has snatched victory from the jaws of seemingly certain defeat, winning a fifth term as the Korean capital’s chief executive.Mr. Oh’s victory, after he had been widely reported in the Korean press as having lost, provided a measure of relief for conservatives who believed they had little chance of standing up against the country’s left-leaning president, Lee Jae-myung.As the last votes were counted, Mr. Oh surged ahead with 48.7 percent of the vote as opposed to 48.1 percent for his leftist rival, Jung Won-oh, a margin of 23,000 votes. A one-time student activist, Mr. Jung had led in 24 of Seoul’s 25 districts earlier in the counting.Conceding defeat, Mr.Jung said “I was lacking” and “will humbly accept the choice of Seoul citizens.”Mr Oh’s eleventh-hour victory at once made him a strong possibility to run for president four years from now as the candidate of the People Power Party, now in disarray after the downfall last year of the previous president, Yoon Suk-yeol. Mr. Yoon is now in jail as a result of the failure of his abortive attempt at imposing martial law.Mr. Jung, until his defeat, had been viewed as a possible successor to Korea’s President Lee Jae-myung, leader of the Minju or Democratic Party, who cannot run for a second five-year term under Korea’s democracy constitution.Mr. Oh, now entering his fifth term as mayor, had whipped up voters in Seoul by promising to “lead the conservative reformation” against the leftist government that has upset voters by repressing conservative voices of dissent.“If we lose Seoul, the final brake to stop this administration’s reckless actions will disappear, and democracy in South Korea will be placed in grave danger,” he said at a press conference after his nomination to run again. “This local election is not just a regular election that comes every four years,” Seoul’s Asia Business News quoted him as saying, “but the final battleground for restoring the rule of law and maintaining the balance of democracy.”Mr. Oh’s success was probably due more to his promises to control skyrocketing real estate prices than to questions about foreign policy, including the Korean American alliance. Mr. Lee’s warming relations with Beijing, however, do bear a direct relationship to the welfare of ordinary citizens. Many blame Chinese business ties for driving up real estate prices, making it difficult for working-class people to buy or lease apartments.“During the 10 years of Democratic Party municipal administration, which condemned redevelopment and reconstruction, housing supply in Seoul entered an ice age,” he said. “Left-leaning civic groups used the Seoul Metropolitan Government as an ATM (automatic teller machine).”The resurrection of Mr. Oh from what had looked like certain defeat sets the stage for a presidential election four years hence in which conservatives will be counting on the type of swing in voter sentiment that has occurred regularly since the adoption after mass protests in 1987 of a “democracy constitution “ that replaced an era of military dictatorship. Protests have also led to the ouster of three conservative presidents, most recently Mr. Yoon.Conservatives were expected to take to the streets of Seoul in large numbers over the weekend, charging that paper ballots had run out in many voting places and that Minju agents had stuffed ballot boxes. One adherent of Mr. Oh’s People Power Party told the Sun that he expected the protest to spread to other cities where the Minju had racked up unexpectedly large numbers of votes.

Seoul’s Conservative Mayor Edges Out Leftist Rival in Late Vote-Counting

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