"Different Words"... Chaos in Opposition Unity Despite Ahn Cheol-soo's Decision Declaration

Disagreement Over People Power Party's Agreement Accepting Ahn Cheol-soo
People's Party: "100% Competitiveness, Accepting Kim Jong-in-Oh Se-hoon Plan Including Landline"
People Power Party: "Kim Jong-in-Oh Se-hoon Plan Has 50% Competitiveness and Suitability, Includes Landline"

Ahn Cheol-soo, the People's Party candidate for Seoul mayor, is holding a press conference on the 19th at the National Assembly Communication Hall regarding the "unification with Oh Se-hoon, the People Power Party candidate for Seoul mayor." Photo by Yoon Dong-joo doso7@

[Asia Economy reporters Naju-seok and Park Joon-yi] Ahn Cheol-soo, the People’s Party candidate for Seoul mayor, has announced that he will unconditionally accept the unification plan proposed by the People Power Party, but confusion continues. This is because the two sides have differing views on what exactly the unification plan that Ahn accepted entails.

On the 19th, Ahn said, "I will accept the unification plan requested by Kim Jong-in, the emergency committee chairman of the People Power Party, and Oh Se-hoon, the People Power Party’s Seoul mayoral candidate," adding, "Even if it is disadvantageous and unreasonable to me, I will endure it if it can quickly achieve unification." Ahn emphasized, "The unification should be completed quickly so that the unified candidate can appear from the official election start date on the 25th, not the day before the ballot printing on the 28th." He added, "Let’s stop talking about who is advantageous or disadvantageous now. Whoever becomes the unified candidate from the ruling party, if that candidate wins, wouldn’t the entire opposition win as well?"

Following this, Lee Tae-gyu, secretary-general of the People’s Party, told reporters after a press conference, "(The People Power Party) requested that the telephone survey portion in the competitiveness poll be set at 10%, and (Ahn’s acceptance) is based on this condition," explaining, "The reflection ratio needs further discussion." The polling method is to ask about competitiveness, and they are willing to accept the telephone survey method.

In fact, this plan was also proposed by the People Power Party during the working-level negotiations between the two parties on the 17th.

However, the People Power Party told a different story. Jung Yang-seok, secretary-general of the People Power Party, and Sung Il-jong, an emergency committee member of the People Power Party, revealed at a press conference that there are differences between the two sides.

They said that the Kim Jong-in?Oh Se-hoon plan accepted by Ahn is one that asks about competitiveness and suitability each at 50%, and reflects 10% of the total survey results from telephone surveys. It is not a method that only asks about competitiveness.

As recently as the previous day, this plan, which sums competitiveness and suitability, was considered the closest point of agreement between the two sides. While negotiating this plan, the two sides showed differences over whether to accept telephone surveys or not. This is the explanation of what is called the Kim Jong-in?Oh Se-hoon plan.

Secretary-General Jung said, "There is a difference between what candidate Ahn stated and what I stated," adding, "We need to sort out the internal confusion." Committee member Sung added, "Even if time is short, if Ahn said he would accept Oh’s plan, it should have been clearly settled."

For now, both sides plan to narrow their differences through working-level negotiation teams.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.