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By Lee Ji-eun, Hankyoreh21 staff reporter

Moon Jae-in may be the Democratic United Party‘s (DUP) top presidential contender, but that means little with software mogul Ahn Cheol-soo in the competition. The party’s preliminary primary has him flanked by seven challengers. He has a lot of work to do, and things are only getting rougher. Already faced with support ratings below 20%, he‘s now in danger of seeing them drop into single digits.

Perhaps his biggest weakness is the specter of former President Roh Moo-hyun. At a time when he needs to be getting past Ahn, and eventually the New Frontier Party’s Park Geun-hye, he is still overshadowed by Roh‘s presence.

On July 23, Moon said, “It was definitely painful to see the Roh administration lose the office [to the Grand National Party], but I wouldn’t call the administration a failure just because the party lost the election. On the whole, it was a successful administration.”

The remarks came on the same day that Ahn appeared on the SBS television show “Healing Camp.” Moon was soon under heavy fire. Another DUP contender, Sohn Hak-kyu, blasted his remarks, saying, “How does he expect to win over the public by saying that it was a ‘success on the whole’? The public welfare failure wasn‘t just a partial failure- it was the most important failure.”

Sohn ratcheted up the intensity with later remarks lambasting the administration as “a three-time loser that caused three failures for the democrats: a public welfare failure, a presidential election failure, and a general election failure.” He also denounced the administration for “turning its back.”

Throughout the preliminary primary, Moon’s seven challengers drew attention not only to Roh-era policy issues such as the special prosecutor‘s investigation of payments to North Korea, the worsening temporary employment situation, soaring real estate prices, and the South Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement, but also political issues such as the division of the Democratic Party (the predecessor to todaya