The opposition party was utterly defeated in an election held shortly after the tragic accident of the Sewol, and it was defeated once again in an election held amidst the Sung Wan-jong scandal. The party changed its captain to the number one presidential candidate (Moon Jae-in), but the results remained the same. Is there no way for the opposition party to win?
Indeed, the Saenuri Party has the genes for elections. Three weeks before the April 29 by-elections, the Sung Wan-jong list surfaced revealing allegations of corruption in the government. It was enough to believe that they had no chance at the elections. But the Saenuri Party dug up the special pardon of Sung Wan-jong during the Roh Moo-hyun government, which even their own party members thought was absurd, and in the end had the opposition on the defensive. This is not a skill that anyone can master.

The "message from the sickbed" by President Park Geun-hye which came just two days before the election openly stated the special pardon by the Roh Moo-hyun government as the "origin" of the scandal. There was no evidence or logical grounds. By-elections and re-elections tend to have lower voter turnout, so in the end, it is a battle of who can draw more of their supporters to the polls. A sick Park Geun-hye and a bad Roh Moo-hyun, there is probably no whistle which can enrage the conservative voters and draw them out to the polls more effectively. No matter how low her approval ratings may be, President Park is still the "queen of elections" to the Saenuri Party.

This is no surprising new tactic. A similar strategy was executed after the tragic sinking of the Sewol last year. The ruling party persistently tried to execute a strategy putting the responsibility for the Sewol disaster on the Roh Moo-hyun government shortly ahead of the June 4 local elections and the July 30 by-elections. They used the debt relief of Semo Group, which was executed according to a court's decision near the end of the Roh Moo-hyun government's term, as the link. The president personally claimed that the "origin" of the Sewol disaster lay in this measure and called for an investigation by the Prosecutors' Office. She made allegations of a connection between the Semo Group and the Roh Moo-hyun government as the target of an investigation with no material and circumstantial evidence. The Saenuri Party requested to call Moon Jae-in as a witness in the parliamentary investigation of the Sewol. Of course, the prosecutors' investigation turned up empty-handed.

The special pardon of Sung Wan-jong, which the Saenuri Party mentioned, without much confidence in its effectiveness, to distract the public from the true nature of the scandal, actually ended up dragging the opposition party down and Moon Jae-in, the leader of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy played a major role in the process. Moon attacked "with all his might" in connection to the special pardon fueling the controversy, and as the Saenuri Party had wished, the flow of the Sung Wan-jong scandal changed course. In addition, Moon failed to respond head on to arguments that tried to make the special pardon, the sole right of the president, seem like a criminal activity, and ended up feeding the allegations with a clumsy explanation. The opposition party ended up voluntarily walking into a trap set by the Saenuri Party, which tried to put the special pardon on par with the Sung Wan-jong list scandal, which in its nature poses allegations of government corruption. In a survey conducted by Gallup, 82% of respondents answered that they believed Sung Wan-jong, former chairman of Kyungnam, gave bribes to members of the opposition party as well. This is about the same as those who answered that the bribery allegations of the eight names mentioned in the Sung Wan-jong list were probably true.

The moment the public begins to think that "the ruling party and the opposition party are all the same," the opposition party can no longer use the Sung Wan-jong scandal to their favor in the elections. The New Politics Alliance for Democracy confidently changed their vehicle from promoting themselves as a party focused on the economy to calling for judgment on a corrupt government, but it lost the path on which to run.
Moon Jae-in may be the easiest opponent for the Saenuri Party in next year's general elections and in the next presidential election. This is actually the conclusion reached by strategy experts and lawmakers in the Saenuri Party. Why do they think so when Moon is ahead in approval ratings for the next presidential candidate? They don't find Moon an easy opponent to fight against because of his kind character and gentle political skills. They have included the negative effect of Moon being pro-Roh (Roh Moo-hyun), the so-called pro-Roh discount. The current ruling party politically used the public's hatred for Roh Moo-hyun each time they faced a crisis and at each election, and for the Saenuri Party, there is no figure easier to attack than Moon.

The Saenuri Party verified the effectiveness of this tactic in the April 29 by-elections, where Moon was at the forefront of the opposition's campaign following the last presidential election. It was revealed in the latest battle of the special pardon of Sung Wan-jong that the ten-year-old conventional weapon, the "Roh Moo-hyun business," was still powerful. If Roh Moo-hyun's chief of staff Moon Jae-in remains the representative of the opposition party and as long as he remains in the pro-Roh frame, the Saenuri Party can continue to use their master key in the next parliamentary election and presidential election.
It is now solely up to Moon Jae-in to make the Saenuri Party's "Roh Moo-hyun business"--which the ruling party has used as an exit each time they faced a crisis, and as a support to reverse unfavorable election results--go bankrupt. To open the road to becoming a "winning" party, extreme actions such as visiting the grave of Park Chung-hee may be necessary just as expanding the support of the moderates in economic and security issues may be necessary. But as long as the party is connected to the responsibility for the failures of the Participatory Government, and as long as the party fails to break away from the Roh Moo-hyun frame which becomes a black hole sucking up requests for judgment on the government each time elections come around, that path will not open easily.

Also in order to tear down that frame, Moon needs to get away from "politics he inherited" and execute "his own politics" just as lawmaker Lee In-young, a competitor for party leader, had argued early on.