'Roh-mania' goes on unabated

Lee Hoi-chang swept the Grand National Party’s first presidential primary on Saturday in Incheon, while Roh Moo-hyun swept both Millennium Democratic Party primaries, in Cheongju and Suncheon. Mr. Lee received nearly 80 percent of the GNP votes, leading the other Grand National presidential hopefuls by more than 65 percentage points.

The weekend was just another chapter in Mr. Roh’s ascent in the overall lead in the MDP balloting. He won Sunday in the South Jeolla province primary at Suncheon with 62 percent of the votes. Rhee In-je placed second with only 22 percent. Chung Dongyoung, a news announcer-turnedpolitician, trailed even more badly. After Sunday’s election, Mr. Roh also extended his first-place lead in the overall results. He has 9,702 votes; Mr. Rhee has 8,190 and Mr. Chung, 2,240.

On Saturday, Mr. Rhee won in Cheongju with 61 percent to Mr. Roh's 32 percent; only 7 percent of the voters opted for Mr. Chung.

A cooling of public interest in the presidential primaries was apparent Saturday; the balloting in North Chungcheong was delayed for 35 minutes because of a lack of voters. There was a slight scuffle before the voting; a supporter of Mr. Rhee grabbed an election organizer's shirt in an argument over entry to the polling place by non-voting supporters.

There are three more races left for the Millennium Democrats, but the three are all big ones, amounting to more than 50 percent of the party's voting members. They are to be held in Busan on April 20, in Gyeonggi province on April 21 and in Seoul on April 28.

Although there are nominally enough votes left to be cast to elect even Mr. Chung, Mr. Rhee's campaign manager, Kim Ki-jai, asked his candidate to decide what to do based on the results of the South Jeolla province race.

That was generally understood as a call for Mr. Rhee to quit the race if he made a bad showing there.

The Grand National landslide for Mr. Lee in Incheon left both the winner and the losers worried.

"We won by too much. How are we to keep interest in the primaries alive?" an aide to Mr. Lee worried aloud. His opponents, Lee Bu-young and Choe Byung-yul, immediately charged that foul play was involved in Mr. Lee's overwhelming showing.

The atmosphere at Incheon was heated, with supporters of Lee Bu-young and Choe Byung-yul rooting for their candidates outside the stadium where the candidates gave speeches. Once inside the stadium, however, Lee Hoi-chang's supporters dominated the scene, interrupting other candidates' speeches and leading Mr. Choe to comment, apparently in all seriousness, that an election where other candidates did not get as much applause as Lee Hoi-chang was not a fair one. The second GNP primary election will be held in the manufacturing city of Ulsan, South Gyeongsang province, on Thursday.

by Ko Jung-ae, Kang Min-seok