Korean Election

Wednesday is Korea's Presidential election with a total of 12 candidates on the bill. For the past 30 days signs and banners have been popping up everywhere. To make the morning walk into the subway even more crowded, lines of people dressed in the candidates colours are set up outside each exit funnelling the mass of people into the station much earlier than normal. By bottle necking the mob they create an audience that they then shout the leader's name and number at before finishing it off with a nice bow for wasting your time.

The bigger parties have all hired these stupid trucks that blare recorded speeches and songs from. If you're lucky some are even stocked with middle aged men and women wearing gloves with their candidates number stamped on the palm. They then do a dance where they flash the number at anyone bored enough to stare.

Korean politics are quite fun. I'm sure you've seen a highlight or two of it without knowing, probably at the end of the newscast where the newscaters shake their heads and show cliups of parlimentarians fighting. In Korea to put forth a bill you must work your way up to a microphone at the front of the house. If it's a controversial bill, the opposition will try everything they can to stop you from making it to the podium. This is where you see what should be respectful men and women dressed up in suits pushing, swearing, fighting and steaming mad.


This year the likely winner will be Lee Myuong Bak the former mayor of Seoul. In the polls he is sitting somewhere near 40 percent despite already having serious corruption charges hanging over his head. From people I've talked to, they are forgiving him of his scandal (it has to do with manipulating stocks) because they think Korea needs a strong leader at the moment and his business background and connections will make everyone prosper. (read: buy stocks in Hyundai).

I definitely wouldn't be voting for him, not because of his scandal (there are scandals every month in Korea) or because I don't like him (I like that he built bus lanes to speed up traffic and a stream that runs downtown Seoul). I wouldn't vote for because it's been pointed out to me that Lee Myoung Bak looks very much like Marilyn Manson.