self-employed and political support

Korea Society Opinion Institute (sic) has surveyed that Our Open Party (OOP) has lost most of the support it enjoyed among the self-employed and housewifes last year (article in Chosun Ilbo). More than 40% of the self-employed supported OOP and 24% supported Grand National Party (GNP) in May 2004, but now the figure of OOP is only 21% whereas that of GNP 26%. What surprises me is the high figure of OOP support in 2004; my experience (which is of a very small number of people) and perception is that it'd never been high in the first place, but the support of parties as well as parties come and goes. Mr Yi Kwôn-ryôl gathering support among the neighborhood shopkeepers on June 12, 2002 for the Sillim 2-dong seat in the Gwanak-gu ward assembly during the local election campaign. (c)AL 2002 Chosun Ilbo itself and Korean Gallup had surveyed that the figure for OOP would be lower and GNP higher: 16% and 45% respectively. The article quotes a researcher from the opinion institute saying that the self-employed as well as housewives are the most receptive social groups for economic currents; one could ask that has the economy (or even the perception of the state of economy) changed so much as to warrant such a drastic change in political support? I'd say it hasn't. An interesting but not surprising piece of info is that among the "non-employed" (mujikcha) the support of OOP is 22% and GNP 41%. In an adjoining article (based on the same survey), Chosun tells that GNP fails to get love from wage earners (wôlgûpchaengi). The difference in support between the parties is much smaller among the production workers (31% vs. 25%) than among clerical (samujik) workers (36% vs. 20%.) It's the same Opinion Institute that Hankyoreh21 has been using for its recent articles on the Democratic Labor Party: the support of the party for workers, farmers and "ordinary people" (seomin/sômin) is highest among the well-educated, well-earning white collar population. Too bad the figures showing DLP support among the different strata are too small to be readable in the adjoining article, in which the DLP support is discussed in more detail. paikallisvaalit 2002 지방선거 · local elections Added a new set of pictures to my photography page: Korean local elections in June 2002, during which I happened to be present. The not so good quality of the pics is because of the vulgar scan technique I use in lack of a scanner to make paper photos into files: digital camera. Click the small pic of a campaign van to the left to enter the gallery. Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: self-employment ∙ Koreanpolitics ∙ socialcategories