South Korea ruling camp to split, policy in limbo

Seoul, Jan 2: South Korea's embattled ruling party is headed for a split one year ahead of a presidential election, a move analysts said could render an already dysfunctional administration and parliament even more ineffective.

The liberal Uri Party, with polls ratings slumping to about 10 per cent in recent weeks, is seeking to rally its base and distance itself from President Roh Moo-hyun, who is widely seen by the public as a failed leader.

Uri is likely to split between one group backing Roh and his calls for regional development and engagement with North Korea and another which wants to see market forces play a greater role in policy while re-thinking how Seoul gives aid to the North.

''They are pushed to the edge of a cliff,'' political analyst Choi Han-soo said of Uri leaders who are also presidential hopefuls.

''They are not angry or upset at the president. They're just trying to survive.'' Analysts said they saw little hope for key economic and reform bills now pending in parliament making it through the legislature before the December. 19 presidential vote.

''For a year (up to the presidential vote,) while history moves on, national policy gets suspended,'' political scientist Choi Han-soo of Konkuk University said.

If left-of-centre politicians are to stand a chance in the presidential race, they need to come up with a new set of centrist policies in a country that has turned to the right since Roh took office about four years ago, analysts said.

Opposition Flying High

The main opposition force, the conservative Grand National Party (GNP), has 50 per cent support in a poll published in the daily Dong-a Ilbo today.

Former Uri chairman Chung Dong-young and current head Kim Geun-tae, founders of the party when it splintered from the Democratic Party three years ago, said last week they would set up a new party that was ''outside of anybody's influence''.

An Uri spokesman denied that the two leaders had Roh in mind, but the pact to split has been met with cries of betrayal by members of the party's pro-Roh faction.

Polls give potential Uri presidential contenders such as Chung low single-digit backing, badly trailing GNP members in potential match-ups.

Roh's failure to deliver on key policy promises has left even his supporters disappointed and bitter, most notably those in the working class who have watched as their dream of higher incomes, affordable housing and stable jobs slip, analysts said.

Roh has seen his support rate hit a new low in recent weeks at about 15 per cent.

''The loss of the support base is devastating,'' said political commentator Yu Chang-seon.

Roh created political problems for himself with a confrontational and often unbending style as he tried to rein in a soaring speculative property market, which might better have been left to work itself out, another analyst said.

''It's hard to tell the arsonist from the firefighter,'' said Sungkyunkwan University economics professor Lee Chae-woong.

Analysts wonder whether South Korea's left can sell itself as new and improved or whether the public will see the change as a charade.

''It would be at least honest to say they are getting a facelift and hanging up a new sign post because they know they cannot win the election next year under an unpopular sitting president and the party as it is,'' the Dong-a Ilbo said in an editorial.

Reuters