The Grand National Party Launches Two-Top Members of the Board of Election

On March 26, the Grand National Party will officially launch the 17th Board of Election in which the steering committee appointed Representative Park Keun-hae and Park Sae-il, professor of the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University, as joint election commissioners and will convert the party to develop an election system for selecting its leaders.

Representative Park appointed Professor Park as the official president of the Board of Examiners on March 25 at the tented headquarters of the party in Yeouido, Seoul. She also planned to reform the Board of Examiners’ method of screening candidates for proportional representative positions.

Kim Kwang-won, who was appointed as a proportional representative and president of the Board of Examiners by former Representative Choi Byung-ryul before his retirement, expressed gratitude to Representative Park.

Representative Park stated her plans of arranging a superior rank of proportional representatives to the Professor Park by saying, “He initially refused to take the position of proportional representative, but I requested him to take charge considering the party’s needs.”

At the press conference after a ceremony welcoming his entrance to the party, Professor Park stated, “The collapse of the opposition party represents a crisis in democracy,” and added, “At this rate, representative democracy and liberal democracy will undoubtedly face a crisis of (the Uri Party) being enticed by temptation, arrogance, and complacency as a result of a single party control.”

Yeon-Wook Jung jyw11@donga.com