By Ju-min Park
SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korean presidential hopefuls Kim Moon-soo and former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo clashed on Thursday during a meeting to discuss merging their campaigns in order to field a single conservative candidate to contest the upcoming election.
Unifying conservatives behind a single candidate is seen as crucial if the right-wing People Power Party (PPP) is to stand any chance of success against Democratic Party frontrunner Lee Jae-myung in the snap election on June 3.
So far neither Kim nor Han has shown much sign of being willing to stand aside.
“Let’s make a decision today or tomorrow” on unifying the conservative candidacy, Han said during a testy televised meeting in a garden in the grounds of parliament, where the candidates were heckled at times by a surrounding crowd.
Earlier, Kim told a press conference he believed the PPP leadership was trying to “bring him down” in favour of Han, even though he had been chosen as the party’s “legitimate” nominee.
Later on Thursday, Kim said on a TV programme he had filed an injunction to confirm his presidential candidate status at the Seoul Southern District Court.
The PPP selected Kim as its candidate on Saturday through primaries, but has since demanded Kim and Han negotiate which one of them would represent the party in the election.
“I have priority in the party, but they are in the process of calling a party convention and replacing the candidate,” Kim said.
Han, who resigned as acting leader last week to run in the polls, is not a member of the PPP but was prime minister under ousted President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was from the party.
In a two-way race, Democratic Party candidate Lee has 44% support against Han with 34%, while Lee leads 43% against Kim’s 29%, according to a National Barometer Survey released on Thursday.
Han was the preferred candidate among 53% of PPP supporters versus 32% who backed Kim.
Conservative leader Yoon was removed from office in April over his shock martial law order, prompting the snap election.
But efforts to form a unity ticket among conservatives have proved difficult.
The feud has overshadowed the conservative party’s already difficult battle to retain the presidency and policy debate has taken a back seat, while Lee met business leaders to discuss job creation and deregulation and urged North Korea to stop military provocation and come to dialogue.
Senior PPP leaders and Han’s campaign are pressuring Kim to come to an agreement before May 11 when the registration for presidential candidates closes.
Kim has proposed a one-week campaign for each candidate and a public survey afterwards to pick the candidate to contest the presidential poll.
In response, Kweon Seong-dong, floor leader of the PPP, said that Kim was trying to keep his candidacy in a “pathetic” way, pointing to opinion polls that show him trailing Han.
(Reporting by Ju-min Park and Jack Kim; Additional reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Ed Davies, Saad Sayeed and Kate Mayberry)
