[Breaking News - Ruling Party Files Complaint Against Seoul Mayor Min Seongcheol with Prosecution!]
[Ruling Party: “Suspicions Surround Numerous Municipal Documents, Including the Water Bus!”]
[Candidate Choe Sangdong: “Before Running for Mayor, Mayor Min Seongcheol Must Reveal His Relationship with Dong Taegyun”]
[Opposition Party Protests: “With Public Opinion Turning Against Them, the Ruling Party Has Started Its False Agitation Again!”]
[Min Seongcheol: “Candidate Choe Sangdong Is the One Who Must Clearly Explain the Process of His Asset Formation. How Did a Former Human Rights Lawyer Come to Own So Many Apartments?”]
[Opposition Party Files Counter-Complaint Against Candidate Choe Sangdong with Prosecution!]
With the legally mandated debate fifteen days away, both parties began their smear campaigns in earnest.
The ruling party struck first.
Choe Sangdong and the rest of the Minguk Party leadership held a press conference in front of Seocho-gu, raising fifteen suspicions and beginning their attack on Mayor Min’s morality.
The Daehan Party was not about to sit still.
Min Seongcheol and the Daehan Party leadership pointed to Choe Sangdong’s alleged multiple-home ownership(?) and the jeonse price he had suddenly raised right before the June 13 measures, but unfortunately, the main stage of this election, too, was not the people but the prosecutors’ office.
-Step down! Step down!
-Is this Venice? What’s this nonsense about a water bus!
-Reveal all the special favors given to the companies involved!
-Why did you kneel before Dong Taegyun!
-Bring out the human rights lawyer with a 200-million-won salary!
-Why did you raise your own home’s jeonse by 300 million while proposing a tenant protection bill?!
-Prosecution, thoroughly investigate Choe Sangdong’s multiple-home allegations!
-Disclose how many houses all ruling party lawmakers own!
Citizens had a truly strange side to them.
The majority of the public said the prosecution must not interfere with power, but when election season came around, they wanted the prosecution to interfere with power more than anyone. Was it because a contest of morality was easier than a contest of visions?
One week after the first complaint was filed.
Every morning at nine, both parties held a complaint-filing party in Seocho-gu, and thanks to that, this local election too became news unfit for minors.
-Mayor Min, it’s me.
“Yeah, come in.”
Min Seongcheol threw the day’s newspaper aside with a displeased look.
Because the newspaper headline had a photo of him placed side by side with Dong Taegyun, before whom even members of the National Assembly had once bowed their heads.
Looking at the vice mayor, he asked in an irritated voice.
“What happened?”
The vice mayor’s expression was not bright either.
-It seems the Minguk Party has begun rallying its base. Since the prosecution complaint, Choe Sangdong’s approval rating has been rising.
“How much has it risen?”
-He is still in the thirty-percent range. There is a ten-percentage-point gap between him and you, Mayor. However... in the internal party poll conducted today, it showed for the first time that your support has fallen below a majority.
Mayor Min snatched up the documents.
When he checked the numbers, his face flushed as if it might burst.
When the primaries of both parties had just ended, the general election had been an extremely easy one, with the opposition expected to win by a landslide. The ruling party’s anti-market economic logic of trying to regulate all of Seoul, along with skyrocketing housing prices, had enraged every citizen of Seoul.
But the effect of that medicine was wearing off.
Mayor Min’s approval rating, which had easily passed a majority in the candidate suitability survey, had at some point dropped below half. And now the gap with Choe Sangdong was only ten percentage points.
“Those damn... Those damn... Shit!”
This entire series of events was because of the smear campaigns by both parties. Their mudslinging was clearly working more against Min Seongcheol.
And for good reason. This had not originally been his image.
Min Seongcheol was one of the few candidates in the conservative camp with a rational and intelligent image. Despite his long career in municipal administration, he had avoided major scandals and could be considered relatively clean.
But Dong Taegyun’s rampage, which had begun the year before last, had reached a point where even the party could no longer control it...
Dong Taegyun was a power broker who had thrived under the previous administration, a man who could easily get one or two National Assembly members nominated with a single phone call. And that man kept making revelations, saying Min Seongcheol had knelt before him to get the Seoul mayoral nomination, had cried, had clung to his trouser legs... These were not suspicions raised by the opposing party, but bombshell remarks coming from within his own party, so even the party could do nothing to control them.
-Forgive me, Mayor... but the ruling party will probably keep bringing this issue up during the legally mandated debate as well. It seems their calculation is to peel away the centrist votes first while rallying their own base.
“No, then what the hell is our party doing?! I told them to shut that bastard’s mouth!”
-I am sorry, but... even if we shut his mouth, that will not be the end of it.
“What?”
-From what I hear inside and outside the party, they are ultimately planning to ask about your stance on the former president again during this debate...
Min Seongcheol’s hands trembled.
If he defended the former president, the centrist vote would obviously drop away even faster than now. But if he disavowed his predecessor, the diehard base would obviously leave.
Just when, exactly, would this three-year mourning period end?
-Forgive me, but we must decide now as well. Whether we are going after the centrist vote, or the diehard base...
Min Seongcheol barely held back his anger and said in a cold voice.
“Vice Mayor, call Candidate Choe Sangdong. Tell him to stop the mudslinging, and let’s compete on vision in the legally mandated debate.”
-Pardon? No, but...
“You think I’ll have nothing to say if he brings up my predecessor? If that bastard asks in the legally mandated debate why the former president died, I’ll ask why the former mayor died. Let’s see how far we can take this!”
Understanding his meaning, the vice mayor lowered his head.
-Understood. I will convey that.
After the vice mayor withdrew, Min Seongcheol murmured in a low voice.
“It’s the real estate, you idiots.”
*
“Hello, Candidate. I’m Lee Sejun, a team leader at the pension fund.”
When the legally mandated debate was one week away, I visited Choe Sangdong’s election camp.
When Choe Sangdong saw me, he welcomed me with an extremely satisfied smile.
“Goodness, it’s a pleasure. I’ve heard a lot about you from the Prime Minister.”
“Thank you for making time during such a difficult period.”
“Difficult? Not at all. I was already planning to ask our Sejun here to meet me separately. I hear it was thanks to you that Dong Taegyun was provoked into continually spewing reckless remarks. Thanks to that, I’ve already caught up to within ten percentage points in the polls.”
The Choe Sangdong I met for the first time looked very cheerful.
And for good reason. The election situation was not bad. The various suspicions and scandals surrounding Mayor Min had at some point broken his majority support, and as the opposite effect, Choe Sangdong’s approval rating had risen.
“You flatter me. Are you preparing well for the legally mandated debate?”
“Of course. This debate will be the turning point. Right now, around twenty percent of voters say they support no candidate, but if I shatter Min Seongcheol’s image during the debate, that entire group will come to us. If I’m elected, I will never forget your kindness, Sejun.”
The election funds I had poured in by the trillions had played a very solid role in his rebound in approval.
I had given consolation money to the candidates who lost in the ruling party primary, making them support him without any noise, and I had worked hard to sow discord in the opposing party’s camp.
Amid Dong Taegyun’s revelations exploding every time one opened one’s eyes, Mayor Min’s approval rating fell by the day, and the more that happened, the more firmly Choe Sangdong’s supporters rallied around him.
“By the way, Sejun, what’s the special reason you asked to meet me today? I heard you had something important to discuss.”
“It’s nothing else. I was curious what kind of vision you have.”
“What kind of what?”
“Vision. To be honest, when the atmosphere has reached this point, some kind of vision policy should be coming out of the camp, but I haven’t really heard anything on the news.”
“Ah, vision? Good. Vision is a very good thing... Don’t worry. Soon, we’ll announce a splendid vision that can make Seoul a truly great city. Look forward to it during the debate.”
“If you don’t mind, may I offer a few comments on that?”
“Hm?”
I quietly handed over a bulky stack of documents.
“These concern the recently triggered real estate issues in Seoul. Before going into the debate, I would like you to select this issue as your official agenda, Candidate.”
With a slightly uncomfortable expression, Choe Sangdong picked up the documents. Not only him, but everyone in the election camp began reviewing my papers.
-No, what is this...
As expected, the atmosphere turned cold in an instant.
After they finished reviewing the documents in a very short time, Choe Sangdong snapped at me with a displeased face.
“Sejun, what is this?”
“Real estate measures for Seoul. Measures Korea absolutely needs.”
“How on earth is this supposed to be a measure? Blocking all redevelopment and land transaction permits, designating all of Seoul as a speculation zone, and relocating companies and school districts—this is a measure?”
“You know the fundamental problem is population concentration. This is not greatly different from the government’s policy direction.”
“That’s the Blue House’s position! People are already furious because supply has been choked off, and you’re telling me to announce this crap? Do you want me to get stoned while campaigning?!”
When he burst into anger, the camp officials beside him each added a word.
-Hey, Sejun. What candidate says in a legally mandated debate that he’s going to smash his own local government?
-I understand that a young man like you has the country at heart, but this isn’t it. Politics, by its nature, sometimes requires political judgment, you know? If he recites this kind of nonsense at the debate, the approval rating he barely managed to catch up with will vanish in an instant.
I turned my head toward them.
“Then what vision do you plan to tell the citizens of Seoul during this legally mandated debate?”
-No, are you possessed by a ghost that died because of vision or something?! Why do you keep going on about vision?!
-This legally mandated debate will be a harsh stage for verifying morality. We have perfectly prepared questions that will make either his centrist votes or his diehard votes drop away no matter how Mayor Min answers!
I smiled bitterly.
If my memory was correct, this Seoul mayoral election would end as one of the dirtiest elections in history. Choe Sangdong would point to the former president, and in response, Min Seongcheol would point to the former mayor, and the election would end in a cesspool as they repeated nothing but stories of the past.
There could be no hope in an election where discourse about the future had disappeared like this.
The successor mayor selected from the mud pit, as expected, continued the existing policy direction without major change... and thanks to that, Eunma Apartment eventually reached ten billion won.
“Candidate Choe... are you proud of yourself?”
But I knew that ending. I knew that the frothy real estate market would eat into even corporate R&D funds and turn the country into a real estate republic once more.
“What?”
“If you bring up his predecessor, they will bring up the former mayor as well. Have you decided on your answer to that?”
“Wh-what?”
“I also think camp logic is a necessary evil. If you want to break down the opposing camp and rally our supporters, it can’t be helped. But why must camp logic be the end of it? Now that the era of skyrocketing real estate is past, we need a coolheaded economic assessment. Why real estate prices rose like that back then, why jeonse fraud proliferated when the bubble burst, what Korea would be like now if real estate supply had gone ahead as the mayor at the time wanted—we need to examine each point one by one and establish future measures based on cold judgment. If we blame everything on the president and think there was no problem at all with our real estate system, the same problem will repeat forever.”
“You little bastard, how dare you raise your voice here! Get out right now!”
Just then, one of the camp officials knocked on the door and hurried into the conference room.
-C-Candidate... we have a problem.
With a troubled expression, the secretary continued.
-We received a call from Mayor Min’s camp... They say they want to stop the debate over past history during this legally mandated debate. If we continue, they say they will bring up that matter as well...