hankyoreh

By Seong Yeon-cheol, staff writer

The 19th National Assembly general election showed the power and prestige of “election queen” Park Geun-hye. The New Frontier Party (NFP) leader confirmed predictions of a march toward the presidency by showing her ability to win over the entire country outside the greater Seoul and Honam regions. But the task of expanding the party’s reach in the capital area still remains.

In essence, Park took sole responsibility for the election from beginning to end, prompting some to call it “Park Geun-hye’s election, by Park Geun-hye and for Park Geun-hye.” Shattering late 2011 expectations that the party would fail to win even 100 seats, she spearheaded the capturing of a majority 152 seats, proportional representatives included.

Credit for the victory was given to her alone.

An associate said, “If you take the ‘less than 100 seats’ prediction as the starting point, then Park Geun-hye clearly showed once again that she is the ‘election queen.’”

An NFP official said, “We saw that Park Geun-hye is pretty much unopposed south of the Han River.”

The same official called the result “stunning, if you consider that this was an even worse situation in some ways than the Roh Moo-hyun impeachment, with all the antipathy toward the Lee Myung-bak administration.

"In terms of the presidential election, Park Geun-hye basically left the narrow targets of Seoul and voters in their twenties and thirties," the official added.

The prevailing analysis among party observers said that Park showed her solid standing within the party by once again showing exceptional leadership in the general election.

"Park Geun-hye’s standing is likely to become even more firm within the party going ahead, since most of the candidates bear her ‘stamp’ as a result of the nomination process," a party official said.

"She’s solidified herself as a presidential contender to such a degree that any leadership contest would be meaningless," the official said.

Another associate said, "It’s just a question of the presidential election now. She’s basically already won the leadership."

Prominent Park opponents who might check her reign suffered a blow in the race, struggling or just eking out wins. With this, there is no longer any countervailing wing in the party.

Park also tied up the "Nakdong River belt," making five visits to the region and focusing nearly all her energies on heading off an opposition push there. The results spoke for themselves: only three of 67 Yeongnam seats went to the opposition Democratic United Party.

Observers also said Park showed her crisis management capabilities.

"Her nickname around here is ‘Swagger,’" an associate said. "At a time when the party‘s fate looked to be in jeopardy, she made no mistake, maintaining her own pace and achieving victory," the associate added.

Her confidence buoyed, Park’s presidential campaigning is expected to gain momentum going ahead.

But Park also showed a much-noted recurring weakness with diminishing strength among voters in Seoul and Gyeonggi and among younger voters. The NFP took just 16 out 48 seats in Seoul and 20 out of 52 election districts in Gyeonggi. The results echo the resistance showed in the greater Seoul area at the time of last October’s mayoral by-election for the capital.

"Honestly, Park Geun-hye took something of a beating in Seoul," said Myongji University political science professor Shin Yul. "There was no expansion of reach, which has been pointed to over and over as a weakness."

In an April 12 press conference, Park stated, "The NFP is determined to begin anew and not repeat the mistakes of the past."

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