Lee campaign hits the '40% wall'

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Lee campaign hits the '40% wall'

In South Korea's professional baseball history, just one player ever managed to achieve a batting average of .400. Now the Grand National Party is trying to bat .400, that is, to attract 40 percent of the popular support. It thinks that figure could bring victory in the December presidential election.

But polls persistently indicate that Lee Hoi-chang, the majority party's candidate, is a little short. In a TV appearance Saturday, a panelist asked Mr. Lee why he was to be stuck in the mid 30s. "I myself wonder that," Mr. Lee replied.

Since 1987, when Koreans began to vote directly for their president after decades of dictatorship, only once has a candidate polled 40 percent of the votes. Roh Tae-woo got 35.9 percent, while Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung won 41.4 percent and 39.7, percent respectively.

A 40 percent poll standing now would help create a nationwide sense that election victory is likely. Manpower and money would follow, along with highly valued intelligence and the attention and flattery of high-ranking bureaucrats seeking ties with the candidate.

For the past two months, Mr. Lee's popularity rating has been stuck between 30 and 35 percent. The anxiety of Grand National Party officials is visible. Despite all the corruption scandals implicating government officials, despite the allegations that the administration funneled $400 million illegally to North Korea, the conservative Mr. Lee's rating has not budged much. Even the North's admission that it has secretly developed nuclear weapons in violation of international treaties did not help Mr. Lee.

Experts say there is a "veto group" that would never vote for Mr. Lee no matter what his policies. According to them, the group consists of progressive people in their 20s and 30s in the southwest Honam region.

Mr. Lee's "40 percent wall" is a source of encouragement for those trying to merge the campaigns of Chung Mong-joon and Roh Moo-hyun, the two other main candidates, whose combined popularity surpasses Mr. Lee's.

The Grand National Party is trying to target its appeal to particular voter groups. One such is identified as "voters from the Chungcheong region in their 30s with two kids living in rented housing in Seoul and its vicinity."

by Nam Jeong-ho

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