South Korea’s ruling People Power Party (PPP) yesterday won a landslide victory in local elections for leaders of major cities and provinces, official results showed yesterday, giving newly elected South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol a significant boost.
An avowed anti-feminist and political novice, Yoon won the presidential election in March by just 0.7 percent — the narrowest margin ever — and faces an opposition-controlled National Assembly that has vowed to closely scrutinize his policies.
However, the PPP won 12 of the 17 major posts up for grabs in Wednesday’s elections for mayors and provincial governors, including the capital, Seoul, and the country’s second-largest city, Busan.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon and Busan Mayor Park Heong-joon, both of the PPP, were re-elected with 59 percent and 66.4 percent of the vote respectively.
Yoon thanked South Koreans for the “successful completion” of the elections.
“I want to accept the results of this election as the will of the people to revive the economy and take better care of the people’s livelihood,” Kang In-sun, Yoon’s spokeswoman, quoted him as saying.
Public sentiment has soured on the opposition Democratic Party’s (DP) former South Korean president Moon Jae-in and his administration, which have been blamed for soaring housing prices in Seoul — up nearly 120 percent during his time in office.
In parliamentary by-elections, the PPP took five of the seven seats up for grabs in the National Assembly, although the opposition Democratic Party still holds the majority.
The PPP’s Ahn Cheol-soo, who withdrew from the presidential race to support Yoon, secured a seat representing a district in Seongnam, just south of Seoul.
Lee Jae-myung, who was the DP’s presidential candidate, was also elected to parliament representing a district in the port city of Incheon.
Experts said the landslide win gives Yoon the public approval he needs to push his agenda, despite lacking a majority in the parliament.
“The public has ruled against the Democrats, who have massive control within the National Assembly,” said Shin Yul Myongji, a political science professor at the University of Myongji.
“Yoon and his administration will now have more confidence to push forward their policies, despite hitting a roadblock in the parliament, knowing that the public has their back,” Shin said.
The DP, which took 14 of the mayoral and gubernatorial posts in the past election in 2018, only won five key races, including three in its southern stronghold of Jeolla.
The electoral setback comes as the party struggles with internal rifts, prompted largely by rising star and interim head Park Ji-hyun’s call for reform following its defeat in the presidential election.
It also expelled one of its lawmakers earlier this month over allegations of sexual misconduct.
The DP’s former Seoul mayor, Park Won-soon — who was a vocal advocate for women’s rights — took his own life in 2020 after facing an allegation of sexual abuse.
Oh Keo-don, the party’s former mayor of Busan, was also forced to resign for sexually assaulting a female staffer.
“We received our second punishment after the presidential election,” Park Ji-hyun said.
“The results were worse than we thought,” she said.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
Hong Kong microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung (袁國勇) has done battle with some of the world’s worst threats, including the SARS virus he helped isolate and identify, and he has a warning. Another pandemic is inevitable and could exact damage far worse than COVID-19 pandemic, said the soft-spoken scientist sometimes thought of as Hong Kong’s answer to former US National Institutes of Health director Anthony Fauci. “Both the public and [world] leaders must admit that another pandemic will come, and probably sooner than you anticipate,” he said at the city’s Queen Mary Hospital, where he works and teaches. “Why I make such a horrifying prediction
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
INDICTED: US prosecutors said Sue Mi Terry accepted fancy handbags, luxury dinners and thousands of dollars in payments from South Korean intelligence A former CIA employee and senior official at the US National Security Council has been charged with allegedly serving as a secret agent for the South Korean National Intelligence Service, the US Department of Justice said. Sue Mi Terry accepted luxury goods, including fancy handbags, and expensive dinners at sushi restaurants in exchange for advocating South Korean government positions during media appearances, sharing nonpublic information with intelligence officers and facilitating access for South Korean officials to US government officials, an indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan, New York, says. She also admitted to the FBI that she served as a source