Saenuri Party leader Kim Moo-sung announced that the party will not nominate candidates in five constituencies including lawmaker Yoo Seong-min's constituency. He also said he will not hold a meeting of the party's supreme council until March 25, when candidate registrations for the parliamentary elections end. If things go according to Kim's announcement, the "true" pro-Park candidates in the five constituencies nominated by the party's nomination committee without any competition will not be able to register for the elections. This is because they need the seal of the party leader on their candidate registration form. The worst candidate nomination in history has driven the ruling party leader to engage in a "seal demonstration." This is a scene revealing the backwardness of South Korean politics.

Yesterday, Kim held a press conference and said, "We will not nominate candidates in the five constituencies on which the supreme council had postponed their votes." The five areas are lawmaker Lee Jae-oh's constituency, Eunpyeong 2 District in Seoul, lawmaker Yoo Seong-min's constituency, East 2 District in Daegu, Songpa 2 District in Seoul and East 1 District and Dalseong District in Daegu. The supreme council had delayed a vote on the candidate nominations in these areas claiming that the nominations had either violated party regulations or that they went against the purpose of the bottom-up public nomination system. Kim explained, "I think it is best that we at least right what we can of the problematic nominations and seek the people's forgiveness."
As we have mentioned on numerous occasions, the candidate nominations by the Saenuri Party have dragged politics back decades. Candidates ahead in approval ratings were excluded from the nominations because they had lost favor with President Park Geun-hye. Lawmaker Yoo was even forced to leave the party.

As if the party's nomination committee had been waiting for his departure, they nominated a candidate after Yoo left. In addition to the five constituencies where the supreme council had delayed their votes, the candidate nomination for Suseong 2 District of Daegu has also been suspended. The court partially accepted the request for the suspension of the nomination in this area submitted by lawmaker Joo Ho-young, who failed to obtain a party nomination. The court deemed that there was a problem in the process of excluding Joo and designating this area as one where a female candidate would be given priority. The judiciary getting involved in politics is in principle not very desirable. But we can understand the court's frustration in pulling the brakes on the candidate nominations of a political party.

Kim Moo-sung's "seal demonstration" does seem belated. Kim practically turned a blind eye when the party turned the bottom-up nominations, on which he had bet his political career, into a carcass. He seems to have engaged in a demonstration with his seal based on a political judgment that it would be impossible to recover his leadership if he allowed the pro-Parks to push him any further. Nevertheless, he was right when he said, "A number of incidents that would not have happened if the party had walked a proper road of principle according to the party regulations have occurred." The Saenuri Party's latest candidate nominations were a disaster that damaged party politics and undermined the people. The responsibility for all this lies with President Park Geun-hye and Lee Hahn-koo, the chairman of the party's nomination committee.