Published: June 2, 2010
SEOUL, South Korea — President Lee Myung-bak’s governing party suffered a surprising setback in local elections that had been widely viewed as a referendum on Mr. Lee’s handling of the sinking of a South Korean warship, according to election results released on Thursday.
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Times Topic: The Cheonan (Ship)
Candidates of Mr. Lee’s Grand National Party had hoped that outrage in South Korea over the sinking of the Cheonan, which led to the death of 46 South Korean sailors, would help them ride a conservative wave to a sweeping victory. Mr. Lee’s government has formally accused North Korea of attacking the ship with a torpedo from a submarine.
“The election results were far less than we had expected and hoped for,” Cho Hae-jin, a spokesman for the governing party, told reporters.
The party’s chairman, Chung Mong-joon, an important ally of Mr. Lee, said he was stepping down over the poor results.
Pre-election surveys showed that a majority of South Koreans blamed North Korea for the warship’s sinking, which the government characterized as the worst North Korean military provocation since the end of the Korean War. Many political analysts said that the president’s party, whose candidates had at one point faced tight races in some districts, appeared poised to sweep the most important races.
But the president’s party won only 6 of 16 crucial races to elect mayors and governors in big cities and provinces in the voting on Wednesday. Its main rival, the opposition Democratic Party, won seven races. The remaining three races were won by independents and a candidate from a small opposition party.
The mayor of Seoul, Oh Se-hoon, who is a member of Mr. Lee’s party, won re-election by a razor-thin margin. But in a hotly contested mayoral race in Incheon, a large port city west of Seoul, the opposition candidate, Song Young-gil, a vocal critic of Mr. Lee, won an unexpected victory. The ship’s sinking was an especially significant election issue there, because the ship went down in waters in Incheon’s jurisdiction.
Nationwide, about 9,900 candidates campaigned for 3,991 posts, including contests for mayor in small cities, as well as members of city councils and education chiefs. Opposition parties cast the balloting as a mid-term gauge of public support for Mr. Lee’s performance in general, his policies toward North Korea and his handling of the crisis over the sinking of the ship.
The voter turnout, 54.5 percent, was the highest for local elections in 15 years.
During the campaign, opposition politicians contended that Mr. Lee’s hard-line approach to North Korea, which ended a decade of improving ties with the reclusive and impoverished North, had helped provoke the North to lash out in an attack.
“This is the people’s verdict on Lee Myung-bak’s arrogance,” said Woo Sang-ho, a spokesman for the Democratic Party.
Chung Se-kyun, the leader of the Democratic Party, said the election results indicated that Mr. Lee should “abandon his confrontational policy on North Korea and ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula.”
A version of this article appeared in print on June 3, 2010, on page A9 of the New York edition.
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