Can she make it?

Park Geun-hye becomes 1st woman presidential candidate of ruling party

Rep. Park Geun-hye holds a bouquet of flowers aloft after being elected the presidential candidate for the ruling Saenuri Party at a party convention at KINTEX in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, Monday. (Photo : Yonhap)

Rep. Park Geun-hye, 60, daughter of the late President Park Chung-hee, won the ruling Sanuri Party’s nomination to compete in the Dec. 19 presidential election Monday.

As predicted, the five-term lawmaker scored a landslide victory in the party primary by garnering 86.3 percent of votes cast by delegates, ordinary party members and nonpartisan citizens.

In the intra-party election that combines the results of an opinion poll and votes cast by party members and ordinary citizens, Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Moon-soo came second with 6.8 percent of the vote, followed by Rep. Kim Tae-ho with 3.2 percent.

Yim Tae-hee, former chief of staff to President Lee Myung-bak, managed to collect 2.8 percent of votes, while former Incheon Mayor Ahn Sang-soo placed last with 0.9 percent.

The victory of Park marks the first time for a political party to give a woman the ticket to run for president.

In her acceptance speech, the presidential contender said she will launch an independent investigation body to root out corruption involving politicians and ranking officials.

“I will be stricter on myself and people close to me,” she said.

“I will introduce a special inspection system to prevent corruption committed by those in power and their relatives.”

Park said that she would launch a permanent investigation body at the prosecution that deals with politicians and their corrupt activities if the country cannot root out illicit influence peddling.

She also pledged to seek balanced national growth and tackle the growing polarization between the haves and have-nots.

“Conglomerates should grow along with small- and medium-sized companies,” she said.

“I will create a society where there is no discrimination between regular workers and non-regular workers, and those who are economically vulnerable will also get a fair chance,”

Observers say her victory over the four rivals from the ruling conservative party clears one hurdle on her path to December’s presidential election, but she faces greater challenges ahead as she tries to widen her appeal among a public divided about the 18-year authoritarian rule of her late father Park Chung-hee.

Born in 1952 as the eldest of three siblings, Park Geun-hye moved into Cheong Wa Dae at the age of 11 when her father took office following a military coup he staged two years earlier.

She left for France in early 1974 to study, but returned home that August after her mother, Yook Young-su, was killed in a bungled assassination attempt on her father by a pro-Pyongyang ethnic-Korean man from Japan.

Park spent the next five years serving as the acting first lady until her father was gunned down by his intelligence chief in 1979.

Her re-entry into political life came much later, in 1998, when she won a legislative seat in her hometown of Daegu as a member of the Grand National Party, which she renamed the Saenuri Party early this year.

She previously ran for president in 2007 against incumbent President Lee Myung-bak and lost in the party primary. <The Korea Times/Lee Tae-hoon>

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