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Why Korean elections are never boring

by cynthia yoo | December 18, 2007 at 12:20 pm

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Simple. It's because there's nothing Korean voters hate more than a boring election.

I know this reasoning sounds a bit tautological but when you look back at the history of Korean presidential elections, they had a fair bit of nail-biting tension and last-minute upsets.

Korean journalists tell me that when the political chess-board (called "pan"--gameboard) gets predictable, Korean voters want to throw it up in the air and get a new game started.

Unfortunately for voters this year, the huge lead of Lee Myung-bak of the opposition Grand National Party, has prevented the usual tension-filled elections that Koreans have grown used to.

That's why when Korea's National Assembly passed a bill on December 17th (KST) to investigate Lee Myung-bak on charges of fraud, bloggers across the country sighed relief and went to work on speculating how this would affect Wednesday's election.

If Lee is elected, he would become the first president-elect to become the subject of special investigation by law enforcement authorities.

“It’s mind-boggling to imagine what will happen if the special prosecutor finds Mr. Lee guilty and indicts him,” said Kim Neung-gou, chief of Wincom Communication, a political consultancy in Seoul. “Even if he is cleared legally, the damage to his moral authority will dog him as long as he stays in office.”

The independent prosecutor will investigate whether Mr. Lee set up BBK and was the mastermind behind stock manipulation and embezzlement by a Korean-American businessman, Kim Kyung-joon.

Under the bill passed by the National Assembly on Monday, the independent prosecutor must complete his investigation within 40 days, or, in other words, before the winner takes office on Feb. 25. Under the South Korean Constitution, a sitting president is immune from prosecution unless he is charged with treason.

The parliamentary move came a day after a video surfaced of a university lecture that Mr. Lee gave in 2000, in which he appears to be claiming he founded an investment company at the center of stock manipulation charges.

Mr. Lee has denied any involvement with the company, BBK. On Monday, he said he had made “some incorrect statements” in the lecture. Denying again that he had established the company, he said he had “not a speck of guilt concerning BBK.”

“In this election, our nation will decide whether to take a leap forward or stay where we are,” Mr. Lee said in a televised campaign speech on Monday. “We should move from the negative politics of slandering each other to the positive politics of embracing each other.”

The independent counsel is slated to start his investigation of Lee by mid-January and since it's limited to 40 days, it's aimed at completing the first stage of his investigations before February 25, when the new President is sworn into office.

The United New Democratic Party shortened the investigation period when it submitted the independent counsel bill, so that it will possible to determine whether Lee, if elected, should be indicted before the inauguration takes place, because he would be immune from indictment upon taking office.

However, if Lee is elected, his indictment will be suspended for the duration of his term, even if he is indicted before his inauguration. The statue of limitations will be applicable after his five-year term is over, and trials will also be suspended.