Be a MBitious.

If you didn't know, Lee Myung-bak was elected president of South Korea two days ago. There were twelve candidates, and Lee won with about 48% of the vote. He's the former mayor of Seoul and former head of Hyundai, and he seems all right. There are lots of scandals around about him, and I find this paragraph from a pre-election Korea Times column hilarious:

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.

South Korea is a pretty corrupt country anyway, so I don't think his behavior is too out of the ordinary. It's just funny because any of the above scandals would kill a campaign back home, and public figures and politicians have resigned over much less.

I do find it odd that my students, almost to a (wo)man, call Lee a thief. I guess it's not that odd, since he's pretty unpopular among voters around here. According to a Korea Times article, Lee won in all provinces and cities save for the two Jeollas and Gwangju. It continues:

[Lee] also received single-digit support in Gwangju and North and South Jeolla provinces, which poll experts said is a sign of lingering regionalism.

The Jeolla area likes Sunchang-native and former North Korean lackey Unification Minister Chung Dong-young because all of my neighbors are communists he is handsome.

Anyway, you can read about the election on Marmot's Hole, even though Mr. Koehler doesn't mention how cool it is that his number was 2. Get it . . . 2 . . . 이 . . . 명박. *cough*

I just wanted to bring back an Ohmynews piece from May, translated by Koreabeat, that talks about one of Lee's campaign stops and that gives us this picture (click to enlarge):



The Koreabeat piece also includes a quotation by Lee on the topic of abortion:

“Basically, I’m against it, but you know, there are inevitable cases. For instance, if a child is to be born as disabled, it seems this inevitable abortion should be accepted. However, fundamentally I’m against abortion. It may sound conservative.”

Koreabeat doesn't have a stellar reputation for translating, so no guarantees the quotation is right. But still, speaking of things that'd kill a campaign back home . . .

edit: Thanks to a Marmot's reader I can now see a regional break-down of votes. In Jeollanam-do, Chung Dong-young got 78.7% of the vote. Lee Myung-bak came in second with 9.2%. If you can navigate Korean, browse the maps on the National Election Commissiion (sic) site here.