Park Keun-Hae, Lee Soo-Sung Agree to Form a New Party

The political circle is stirring by the moves for a formation of a new party to support `a third Presidential candidate` by the time of the local government election in June.

Rep. Park Keun-Hae defected from the Grand National Party and former Prime Minister Lee Soo-Sung met with each other at Merriot Hotel and reportedly reached an agreement on the necessity of the formation of a new party.

Rep. Park revealed after the meeting that “we agreed on the cooperative effort on the creation of a nation that gives hopes to the people in cooperation with the people who share the same idea for the political reformation.” With regard to the participation in the local government election, she said, “I have no concrete thought about it but I will carefully observe the situation,” implying that she is considering the formation of a new party before the local government election, depending on the changes of the situation.

Former Prime Minister Lee also expressed his intention to gather a new group from various fields of the society, saying “I am not thinking about the formation of a new party by the re-organization of the existing parties.”

Former President Kim Yong-Sam also had a press conference after his mountain climbing of Mt. Yongmun and revealed his plan to meet with Kim Jong-Pil, president of the United Liberal Democrats, saying “the Presidential election planning may change several times from now on.”

Rep. Kang Sam-Jae, who also resigned from his vice presidency of GNP, held a press conference at Masan and insisted that “If president Lee Hoi-Chang does not effort for the reformation of the party even after the defection of Rep. Park K. H. and Rep. Kim Deok-Ryong, it would end up with a great chaos of the party around the local government election and the party`s competition for the presidential candidacy (May 9th).”

He said that he does not have a plan to defect from the party for now but cannot guarantee the situation in a few months.

Rep. Kim Deok-Ryong reportedly had a golf meeting with former lawmaker Kim Sang-Hyun, who joined NMDP to exchange the ideas about the future steps including defection from GNP.

Meanwhile, Han Hwa-Gap who is known to make a `great decision` before the competition in Kwangju on 16th, said that the Presidential election would be a multi-lateral competition to fill the vacuum of the 3 Kims policy.

He also hinted the possibility to disobey the result of the competition, saying “You cannot blame a student who wants to leave a school, protesting against the acts of buying answer sheets.”

chang@donga.com