Roh benefits from cyber support club

Myung Kaynam is one of those actors without whom the Korean movie industry would not have existed. He is a perennial supporting-role actor in the industry. Now, as the chief organizer of a group called Nosamo, he is a permanent fixture in the Millennium Democratic Party primary elections.

"They tell me the reason that I am campaigning for Roh Moo-hyun is because I want to be the minister of culture," he shouted through a hand-held loudspeaker after the March 31 Gangwon province election, and a group of people let out a burst of laughter and mock groans. The listeners wear yellow banners and T-shirts emblazoned, "People who love Roh Moo-hyun (shortened to "Nosamo" in Korean).

"I get that reaction a lot. But simply put, this is a fan club and we want our guy to win," Mr. Myung said. The 49-year-old actor and producer is the popular face fronting the first political fan club for the dark-horse candidate.

Nosamo started out as an online group in Daejeon last year after Mr. Roh, a Millennium Democrat, was defeated in his bid for an Assembly seat in a Busan district in the April 13, 2000, election. The group credited Mr. Roh with the courage to give up a chance to run in the safer Jongno district of Seoul, for a much more conservative district in Busan. Mr. Roh persisted in running as a candidate of President Kim Dae-jung's party three times there, although support for the party and for the president is very weak in the region. In the 1997 presidential election, voters in Busan gave President Kim Dae-jung only 15 percent of their votes.

The group collects membership fees and supports itself financially; members take time off from their jobs to rally for Mr. Roh.

"My production company is now a mess," Mr. Myung said, laughing over the telephone. He started devoting most of his time to Mr. Roh before the Jeju primary in early March; he was elected the head of the group after posting a message on the Internet praising Mr. Roh.

The online group expanded beyond the cyber world in earnest when the Millennium Democratic Party primaries began. Their raucous celebration after Mr. Roh's second victory, in Gwangju on March 16, put them in the spotlight.

Since then, they have had more occasions to celebrate good showings by Mr. Roh; he has surged to the top and stayed there through Sunday's primary. The group seems to demonstrate a channeling of latent civic power that earlier had been exercised only in bursts and spurts in the streets. That is especially true among the younger generation that clamored successfully for democracy in the spring of 1987,

Nearly half of the group's 23,000 members are in their 30s, and they come from across the economic spectrum.

"People in their 30s had been steeped in political nihilism and cynicism after watching the "three Kims" divide up the nation, the failure of the Kim Young-sam administration and the long-running 'Red complex,'" said Kim Jin-hyang, 35, a lecturer at Kyungpook National University. He was speaking of the inability of liberals to find a political foothold here because of Koreans' inclination to equate "liberal" with "communist." Mr. Kim heads Nosamo's Daegu and North Gyeongsang provincial office. The organization has 27 branches nationwide, and is being looked at more closely as support for Mr. Roh grows.

Mr. Roh's main rival in the ruling party primary, Representative Rhee In-je, complained that Nosamo has links to a pro-North Korean student group. Nosamo leaders deny the charge, and Mr. Rhee's camp seems to have dropped the issue recently.

The group is mulling over its strategy for the December presidential election. "We are currently discussing whether to reorganize as an official support group," Mr. Kim said.

Mr. Myung believes that attacks on the group stem from both ignorance about the first-ever "fan club" for a politician and resentment by politicians who are comfortable only with the concepts of money- and faction-driven elections.

"We want to be recognized for having turned the primary race into a giant festival," he said.

by Kim Ji-soo