Joo Ho-young Heads to Court, Kim Boo-kyum Leads in Polls: Daegu in Turmoil

[The Financial News] The People Power Party (PPP) nomination process for Mayor of Daegu Metropolitan City has fallen into disarray. Lawmaker Joo Ho-young, who was cut off from nomination and excluded from the party ticket, has announced that he plans to file for an injunction with the courts as early as the 25th in protest. At the same time, former Prime Minister of South Korea Kim Boo-kyum, whom The Minjoo Party of Korea is encouraging to run, is showing a clear lead in opinion polls. Despite this, Nomination Management Committee Chair Lee Jung-hyun of the People Power Party has expressed confidence, saying he will let the results speak for themselves.
Joo stated through the media that he would file an injunction request with the courts against the decision of the party’s Nomination Management Committee. Depending on how the courts rule, he is also considering leaving the PPP and running as an independent candidate.
Joo previously filed for an injunction in the 2016 general election as well, after being excluded from nomination in the Daegu Suseong constituency, and the courts partially granted his request. However, before the courts issued their decision at that time, he left the Saenuri Party, the predecessor of the PPP, ran as an independent, and was elected.
Former Chairman of the Korea Communications Commission Lee Jin-sook, who was cut off from nomination along with Joo, is also continuing to protest. On the same day, she used a social networking service (SNS) to request a meeting with the Nomination Management Committee Chairperson. She particularly stressed that, in a hypothetical one-on-one matchup against former Prime Minister Kim as a Minjoo Party candidate, she showed the smallest gap in support in opinion polls.
The Realmeter poll released that day, commissioned by Yeongnam Ilbo, asked about separate one-on-one virtual matchups between former Prime Minister Kim and each of the PPP candidates. In a head-to-head race between Kim and Joo, Kim polled at 45.1% versus Joo’s 38%, a gap outside the margin of error (confidence level 95%, ±3.4 percentage points). By contrast, in a matchup between Kim and Lee Jin-sook, the figures were 47% to 40.4%, a contest within the margin of error.
Among the candidates running in the PPP primary for Mayor of Daegu, all but lawmaker Choo Kyung-ho, who trailed by 9.9 percentage points, showed double-digit deficits in their hypothetical matchups against Kim. In particular, in virtual contests with lawmaker Choi Eun-seok, former lawmaker Hong Seok-jun, and former Mayor of Dong District, Daegu Metropolitan City Lee Jae-man, Kim Boo-kyum recorded support of more than 50%.
In a multi-candidate race, Kim Boo-kyum led with 35.6%, outpacing Lee Jin-sook in second place, who had 20.6%, by 15 percentage points. Choo Kyung-ho placed third with 10.6%, Joo Ho-young was fourth with 10.1%, and the other candidates remained in single digits.
Judging by this poll alone, the upcoming June local elections could produce the first Mayor of Daegu from The Minjoo Party of Korea. In that scenario, the PPP would suffer a crushing defeat, losing even its traditional stronghold. Kim Boo-kyum is expected to decide whether to run around the 30th.
Even in this crisis, Nomination Management Committee Chair Lee Jung-hyun declared, "We deliberately shook things up with this round of nominations," signaling his confidence. On SNS he wrote, "If we simply left incumbents and vested interests in place, there would be no noise, but politics would never change that way," adding, "In Daegu, we made strategic decisions to place the right people in the right positions and shook up vested interests, shifting to full-scale competition."
He particularly emphasized that he made his decisions independently, keeping some distance from party leaders including party chair Jang Dong-hyeok. In doing so, he dismissed suspicions from Joo and other cutoff candidates that this was an example of "Borrowing a knife to kill someone"—using someone else’s hand to do one’s dirty work—by Chair Jang.
The cited poll was conducted on March 22–23 among 820 Daegu citizens aged 18 or older, using an automated wireless response system (ARS), with a response rate of 7.2%. For more detailed information, refer to the website of the Central Election Poll Deliberation Commission.

uknow@fnnews.com Kim Yoon-ho Reporter