The success of the GNP in these elections points the way to the end of nearly 10 years of liberal national leadership since Kim Dae-Jung was elected president in December 1997 two weeks after the government submitted to an agreement with the International Monetary Fund to avoid national bankruptcy in what was called “the IMF crisis.”

Most noticeably, the GNP candidate for mayor of Seoul, Oh Se-Hoon, slaughtered Kang Kum-Sil, the left-leaning justice minister, winding up 33 percentage points ahead of her in the polls. Oh will succeed Lee Myung-Bak, a pillar of the GNP, who gained popularity and respect by major reforms and rebuilding programs, including the opening of a stream, hidden from view by highways, that runs through central Seoul.

Ruling Uri Party Chairman Chung Dong-young, center, and his party members watch a television broadcasting exit polls at the party headquarters Seoul on May 31. AP/Yonhap, Chun Soo-young

Indeed, so nearly complete was the shame of the leftists in the elections that their candidates won only in the southwestern Cholla provinces and the independent city of Kwangju, whose voters had finally lofted Kim Dae-Jung to the presidency by casting upwards of 95 percent of their ballots for him in 1997 and in his three previous runs at the Blue House.

A sign of the public’s weariness of far-leftists, including pro-communists leading demonstrations against construction of a huge new base at which the U.S. is to consolidate its forces in Korea 40 miles south of Seoul, was that candidates of the Democratic Labor Party were completely shut out in the elections. The DLP has sought to increase its standing through an unseemly alliance with the pro-Pyongyang Hanchongnyon, a student group, and with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, representing 600,000 workers in major factories.

Yonhap, the semi-official news agency, cited political observers as describing the GNP’s “sweeping victory” as “almost unprecedented, not only for the main opposition party but for any political party in the country.”

The sense of shame was felt most acutely by Uri Party leader Chung Dong-Young, a former unification minister who had won a reputation for toadying to North Korea, making pro-North comments in visits to Pyongyang and agreeing to just about anything his hosts demanded.

Chung, who had once fancied himself as a presidential contender, went through a ritual of apologizing for the party’s dismal showing, for which, he said, “I feel fully responsible.”

Signaling the overhaul of the government and the party, Goh Kun, former prime minister and mayor of Seoul, sought to avoid seeing the results as “a GNP victory.” Rather, he acknowledged the results “should be seen as the ruling party’s complete defeat.”

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