For all of Neil Kinnock's achievements in modernising the Labour party in the United Kingdom, he will still be remembered by many for his slip into the sea whilst campaigning in the 1987 general election. Likewise, the Republican candidate Bob Dole, for all his achievements over a long career, was left with a fall from a stage whilst electioneering during the 1996 US Presidential election as defining, metaphorically if not literally, his race against the overwhelmingly successful Bill Clinton.
GNP candidate made gaffe
For Na Kyeong Won, right wing GNP candidate in the Seoul Mayoral elections, her gaffe at the epicentre of media interest and public scrutiny was to bathe a disabled child in front of the TV cameras, something which many civic activists and netizens, especially amongst the influential 20 and 30 some things which overwhelmingly ended up voting against her, saw as patronising and thoughtless.
Economic growth has always been a priority
In the end though such an event must be taken into a wider context of the wider development of what is still a nascent democracy in the country; it was but in 1987 when popular uprisings ended the regime of Chun Doo Won, and led to free democratic elections. Ever since the country has continued to prioritise economic growth, an export led protectionist model which saw geographic industrial planning as state policy, and the nourishment of powerful Chaebol corporations and their powerful and influential familial kleptocrats. Crony capitalism has led to vested interests where money has become king, even if such a panacea of individual enrichment ends in the tragedies of suicide, disgrace and rumour which befell the likes of former President Noh Moo Hyun or more recently Jeong Gu Haeng, a top Korean banker.
