Pictures from the 2007 Korean Presidential Election Day

These are some pictures I took today as Koreans go to the polls to elect a new president:

Upcoming Korean Presidential Election

With the Korean Presidential Election now a week away, I happened to see a good article in The Korea Times profiling each of the major candidates.

Quick Look at Presidential Hopefuls

By Andy Jackson

With the official presidential campaign period upon us, neighborhoods all over Korea have suddenly become inundated with posters, signs and sound trucks touting the virtues of the various candidates. In particular, you cannot walk far in any direction without seeing a group of twelve posters that have been put up by election officials, one for each of the official candidates.

The natural reaction of many foreign residents in Korea upon seeing those posters is: ``Who are these guys?" One or two might look familiar but the rest will draw a blank.

So I will offer this short review of the candidates as a service to my fellow foreigners, listed in the order they appear on the posters.

#1 Chung Dong-young is the candidate for the United New Democratic Party, which is the Uri party in all but name. He is a former television newsreader (with the hair to prove it) and more recently has served as both Uri Party chairman and Minister of Unification under President Roh Moo-hyun.

Chung is a strong supporter of engagement with North Korea and has pushed for more investment in North Korea's Gaeseong Industrial Complex. He also wants to expand social welfare programs and sees defenses spending cuts, made possible by what he believes are lessening tensions with North Korea, as a possible means for paying for them.

He has had his share of ups and downs. He was long considered the leading candidate to succeed President Roh but saw his stock fall after Uri lost in local elections in 2006. Chung also lost support during National Assembly elections in 2004 when he said that seniors should ``stay home and rest" rather than vote. Despite these set backs, Chung was able to defeat a more popular candidate to secure the UNDP nomination and may yet be the unified progressive candidate.

He has so far failed to garner enough support to pose a serious challenge to the frontrunner but he could gain support in the next two weeks as progressives settle on a single candidate to support.

#2 Lee Myung-bak, a former business executive and mayor of Seoul, is certainly the most scandal-plagued candidate in the field. Since he started preparing for his presidential last year Lee has been hit with scandals involving free use of tennis courts, having fake addresses to get his children into the right schools, real estate speculation, using proxies to hide his wealth, fake jobs for his children and investment fraud.

So, naturally, the Grand National Party standard bearer is the leading candidate.

After nearly five years being governed by a president seen as being moral but incompetent, voters are willing to support someone who they believe can get results, even if he has a little dirt on his hands.

Lee has been the leading candidate for over a year and, with prosecutors clearing him of wrongdoing in the BBK investment fraud scandal, he is likely to win the election by a comfortable margin.

Lee has pledged to reduce unemployment by boosting the economy through tax cuts, deregulation and attracting foreign investment. The centerpiece of his economic revitalization program is a proposal for a 550-kilometer canal connecting Seoul and Busan. He also favors engagement with Pyongyang but wants a more reciprocal relationship and insists that North Korean denuclearization precede further economic aid.

#3 Kwon Young-ghil is three-time candidate of the Democratic Labor Party. The socialist DLP favors closer ties with North Korea and many more regulations on business. Kwon won only 1.2 percent of the vote in 1997 but tripled that to 3.9 percent in 2002. His party then went on to win 13 percent of the vote in the 2004 National Assembly elections.

While Kwon has no realistic chance of winning the election he could gain significant support among labor and farmer groups unhappy with the proposed free trade agreement with the United States.

#4 Rhee In-jae is probably the most hated man in Korean politics today. Conservatives blame him for leaving the predecessor of the Grand National Party during the 1997 presidential election, splitting the conservative vote and allowing Kim Dae-jung to narrowly defeat Lee Hoi-chang. He got 19 percent of the vote then but has little chance of repeating that performance this year as he has been stuck at around 2% in the polls.

#5 Shim Dae-pyong of the People First Party recently dropped out of the race and endorsed Lee Hoi-Chang (see #12).

#6 Moon Kook-hyun touts himself as a successful businessman who cares for average people. He has emerged as a serious candidate on the left over the past several months as his polls numbers have slowly risen. However, the former executive CEO of Yuhan Kimberly is still well behind the leading candidates in the polls and he is facing increasing pressure to agree to an alliance with Chung, which would likely force him to step aside.

#7-11 Don't worry about the 7-11 candidates. They will not have a significant impact on the election.

#12 Lee Hoi-chang, a former Supreme Court judge, has twice been nominated by the main conservative party as its presidential candidate. He was ahead in the polls both times only to eventually lose on election day. This time he is running as an independent candidate and has emerged as the single biggest threat to Lee Myung-bak.

He is the most conservative of the major candidates. He is pro-business and supports a harder line in dealing with North Korea. Pyongyang takes Lee's candidacy seriously enough for the North Korean state news agency to assail him on an almost daily basis.

Lee's hard-line North Korea policies, along with worries about Lee Myung-bak's alleged ethical lapses, propelled the independent candidate into second place in the polls as soon as he announced his candidacy on November 7.

Lee will likely stay in the race as long has he enjoys significant support. However, conservatives fear that a split between supporters of the two Lees might allow Chung Dong-young to slip past them to win the election. That factor will pressure Lee Hoi-chang to step aside if he cannot close the current 20-point gap with Lee Myung-bak in the polls.

With such a large and politically diverse field, Koreans certainly cannot complain of a lack of choices.

My Videos

Here are two of the videos I made with pictures from Korea. Feel free to watch them and leave a comment:

Korean Documentary on Obama/Clinton airs showing footage from Obama's visit in September

KBS aired a documentary about the candidacy of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton Sunday night here in Korea. Of interest was the footage that was shown from Obama's September visit to Portland. The documentary gave quite a bit of background information about the two presidential candidates to a Korean audience that is curious about the potential outcome of next years election.

In one scene from Portland, you can clearly see myself and Todd Barnhart (Blue Oregon contributor and Oregon Obama organizer) talking in the background.

If I can, I'll try to get the video put on YouTube and add a link.

North Korean Human Rights Violations

So many in the US and around the world are unaware of the horror going on inside North Korea. As an American living in South Korea and married to a Korean, I have become more interested in what is going on there.

I found this video on YouTube of a symposium on North Korea by Adrian Hong, who started the organization LINK (which stands for Liberty in North Korea). The video is about an hour long, but very informational in terms of what is going on there.



I also recommend reading The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag by Kang Chol-Hwan. In the book, Kang gives a detailed account of the ten years he spend in a North Korean Gulag.

There seems to be a lot of apathy worldwide about what is going on in North Korea and I think it's time people are made aware of just how bad it is.

Somewhere in Seoul

Well I arrived Wednesday night here in Seoul and had quite a trip. My suitcases were packed (or over packed as it were) with stuff to bring back with me. I had to pay $100 extra for my flight from Medford to SF for one of the two bags which weighed 87lbs (the other one weighed 50lbs). When I went to shift things around in SF I broke the lock on my suitcase. I then had to run into a Brookstone store and buy a luggage strap to hold my suitcase close and pay to have my suitcase wrapped to make sure it wouldn't come open. Here I was thinking what a relaxing 6 hour layover it would be in SF.

Before that though, I was on the phone with my sister, who wouldn't come over to see me off, and suddenly the fire alarms went off in the airport. Apparently there was a fire and they decided to evacuate everyone from he building. Given the fact I had a boatload of stuff, I decided to stick it out as I wasn't that far from the doors. I saw some firefighters come in a few minutes later, but they didn't look too panicked about what was going on, so I figured it must have been a small fire.

The plane ride over was ok, but I couldn't sleep. I watched a few movies on the entertainment system on the back of the seat. As soon as the plane landed I got through immigration, picked up my luggage, turned in my customs declaration and was out the door.

My wife and father-in-law met me at the airport and we took a bus from Incheon International Airport to Gimpo International Airport (the latter use to be the main airport coming into Korea until 2001, when the larger Incheon Airport opened. Gimpo is mostly a domestic airport now) and then a taxi to her parent's house.

Sitting here on Saturday afternoon, the jet lag has finally started to wear off and I'm starting to feel myself again. I miss live in the US, especially after having a taste of it for four months.

Back To Korea

Well my journey home to try to settle down in the US didn't work out, so after receiving a pretty decent offer to teach at a university, I'm going back to Korea. I have mixed feelings about this as I was looking forward to long Sunday afternoons watching football, catching all the new shows on TV and celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas for the first time in years.

What I will miss most of all, is being involved in this next election cycle. It will mean yet another presidential election overseas (yes I'll vote). There is nothing like watching the campaign in real time from the US. I feel severely disconnected from the process being over there.

Most of all, it's comforting to know I don't have to worry about looking for a job anymore and that after four months of being separated (due to waiting for a visa) my wife and I will see each other.

At this point I'm just trying to gather all the details so I can start making decisions about seeing some family members that I haven't seen yet before going back.

I promise to keep blogging about things, even if no one reads it. Only because I enjoy talking to myself.

David

Why the situation in Iraq is not the same as Korea

Gates and Bush fail to see the difference between Iraq and Korea. As someone who lived in Korea for over three and a half years and has become interested in understanding Korean history, I am shocked at the comparisons drawn between the two countries by the Bush Administration.

First of all, the situation prior to our involvement with the two countries were a totally different set of circumstances. The reason we are in Iraq is oil. Even former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan acknowledges that fact in a Washington Post interview about his new book. The difference is that the two Koreas were divided after the end of WWII by the US and Russia to administer (or run) the countries. That became permanent when the type of elections and government could not be agreed upon. The reason we were there (and still are there), had to do with a threat from the Communist North which invaded South Korea in June of 1951.

Second, while there were a small number of "left wing insurgents" in Korea between 1945-1948, they were few in number compared to the large scale insurgency which is causing the sectarian violence in Iraq. The best estimates of violence in Korea is 30,000-100,000 people killed in Korea in the three years before the Korean Government was formed in 1948, compared to around 655,000 based on the Lancet Surveys of Mortality in Iraq.

Third, the administration fails to acknowledge to this day, there is a great amount of animosity toward the US from Koreans in terms of our continued presence there. This is the one area we can draw a comparison. Depending on who you talk to of course, the older generations (for the most part) realize that the US made sacrifices to keep the South free, whereas the younger generation tend to question why we still have troops in their country.

Some of the animosity I referenced above has to do with different incidents occurring US Military personal in Korea. The most famous incident happened in 2003 (prior to my arrival in Korea), when US soldiers stationed at the Youngsan Garrison Base were driving an armored vehicle which ran over two Korean girls. The US Military refused to turn the soldiers over the the Korean authorities, instead opting to put them on trial in military court. Both of the two soldiers were acquitted of manslaughter, the outcome of which caused a huge outrage toward all Americans (military or civilian) by Koreans.

I have to honestly wonder what Gates and Bush are thinking when they make such crude comparisons between Iraq and Korea. The only thing we are done is causing animosity toward the US, instead of helping the Iraq people.

The light at the end of the tunnel

After almost three and a half years of living overseas I'm coming home. It has been a long and sometimes tough journey. There has been somethings that have happened that I never would have expected.

On June 6th, I will get on a plane to fly home. I'm excited and somewhat nervous about picking up my life in Oregon. In mid September my wife, Namhee, will join me after she gets her visa to live permanently in the US.

Leaving my school and my life here will be difficult. There is no doubt in my mind that I have had some great experiences, especially in the last year.

This is the first of a few different posts about my life in Korea and my experience as an Expat coming home later this month.

If you'd like, feel free to visit my photo album to see what I've been up to these last few years:

David's Photo Album

Korean Reaction to the Tragedy at Virginia Tech

Editor's note: This was posted on Blue Oregon yesterday, but I am posting it here as well.

The last couple of days have been weird to say the least. Since the authorities in Virginia have released the name of the person who shot thirty people at Virginia Tech, the reaction has been one of heartache, embarrassment and sorrow.

As someone who has lived here in South Korea and taught English as a Second Language for over three years, I wondered what the reaction would be from Koreans after I heard the news. It is sometimes difficult to gauge how they deal with things as they are much more emotional, but at the same time they keep things locked inside.

When I heard the news, I was in the bedroom scanning the internet as I usually do on any given night. My wife, who is Korean, was watching the news in the other room and came running into the bedroom to tell me that the gunman was a Korean immigrant. I can tell you her first reaction was that she was sorry it was a Korean who did this. I told her I don't blame Korea, I blame the person who did it.

The sadness of this tragedy overshadowed another piece of news which was that the City of Incheon won the right to host the 2014 Asian Games. When I heard this, I knew there would be no celebration in light of the shootings and the fact that they had such a close tie to Korea.

This morning I arrived at work and the first thing I happened to ask the English Coordinator at my school was about the Asian Games. But right off the bat, she asked if I'd heard about the identity of the shooter at Virginia Tech. I told her yes I had. She also expressed her regret and sorrow over the shootings that took place.

On the website for native-speaking teachers in Korea, many lashed out at Koreans because of the shooter's nationality. I for one was shocked by this. Certainly in a time of tragedy like this, it is no time to take advantage of an incident to browbeat someone of another nationality.

What we should be taking from this tragedy is that both Korea and the United States need to take seriously the treatment of mental illness.

Today is a sad day for both the United States and the Republic of Korea.