Korea's presidential election

Korea will elect a new president at the end of this year. Since presidents are only chosen for single, five-year terms here, the race is going to be interesting.

Liberals recently reconstituted various groups into the Unified New Democratic Party, and chose their top five candidates yesterday. From here I guess they’ll narrow it down to one.

The conservative party, the Grand National Party (하나라당), has already chosen Lee Myung Bak (이명박) as its candidate. He’s a real character – his best-known campaign pledge is called the “Pan Korea Grand Waterway,” a 17-route canal system that would span almost 2,000 miles.

I have a hard time wrapping my mind around this idea because I can’t think of a worse country to build a canal system in, except maybe Japan.

First, Korea has loads of major highways and – as far as I know – a decent rail system. If the rationale is to improve infrastructure, why not improve the existing systems (which can utilize tunnels) rather than build canals? They’re way more expensive.

Second, Korea is a peninsula. If you want to go send something from Seoul to Pusan you can do it by sea freight in big ships. Why do it inland in small ships? Korea makes great ships!

Last, Korea is 80 percent mountains. In order to build those canals you’d have to blast away half the country. Is that really worth it?

Canals worked well in France in the early 1800s. The country was mostly flat, railways and highways didn’t exist, freight tonnage was small, and going around Spain was strategically unsound.

So does Mr. Lee like his canal idea so much? His former position as CEO of Hyundai Construction and Engineering makes me think he’s trying to pull a Dick Cheney.

The current U.S. vice president helped the administration choose Halliburton, Cheney’s old company, for its Iraq contracting jobs. It seems likely that Hyundai would benefit immensely from the frivolous pork-barrel government spending Lee is planning.

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