Kim takes Gangwon and Daegu-Gyeongbuk — and 71% of the vote is still ahead
Kim Min-seok won the combined Gangwon and Daegu-Gyeongbuk round 48.54% to 44.40%, extending his cumulative lead to 1.48 points
The three lines
- Combined Gangwon, Daegu and Gyeongbuk vote: Kim Min-seok 48.54%, Jung Chung-rae 44.40%, Song Young-gil 7.06%
- Cumulative standings: Kim 46.01% to Jung 44.53% — a 1.48-point lead, up from 0.86
- Honam votes Saturday and greater Seoul on Sunday: together, roughly 71% of the party's 1.55 million dues-paying members
Key questions
- Who won this round
- Kim Min-seok, on the combined tally: 48.54% to Jung Chung-rae's 44.40%, with Song Young-gil at 7.06%. The regions split, though — Kim took Gangwon (50.30% to 41.94%) and Gyeongbuk, while Jung won Daegu. Gangwon's eight-point margin effectively decided the combined result.
- Is the race settled
- No. Every region that has voted so far accounts for barely a third of the electorate. About 1.1 million of the party's roughly 1.55 million dues-paying members vote this weekend — 512,000 in the Honam provinces and 596,000 in Seoul and Gyeonggi. A 1.48-point cumulative lead is a rounding error against that volume.
- When is it decided
- Honam votes Saturday, August 15; Seoul and Gyeonggi on Sunday, August 16. The final result comes Monday, August 17 at the party convention, which combines the membership vote with delegate ballots and a general public opinion poll — meaning the member-vote leader and the eventual winner can differ.
South Korea's ruling Democratic Party is choosing its leader through six regional rounds of voting by dues-paying members. After four of them, the race has widened — barely.
Kim Min-seok won the combined Gangwon, Daegu and Gyeongbuk round with 48.54% to Jung Chung-rae's 44.40%. Song Young-gil took 7.06%. Kim's cumulative lead moved from 0.86 points to 1.48.
The more important number is the one that has not been counted yet: roughly 71% of the electorate votes this weekend.
1. A combined win, a split map
Kim won Gangwon decisively — 50.30% against Jung's 41.94% — and also took Gyeongbuk. Jung held Daegu. Since the three are reported as a single combined tally, Gangwon's eight-point margin carried the round.
For Jung, that is a setback in what should have been friendly terrain. He won the first southeastern round (Busan-Ulsan-Gyeongnam) outright; this time he kept one of three.
The quieter shift is Song Young-gil's vote, which fell from 10.17% in the previous round to 7.06%. In a race decided by less than two points, a three-point movement in the third-place vote is large enough to matter — though the regional samples are too small to say where it went.
2. The board — four rounds down, two to go
| Date | Region | Winner | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 1 | Chungcheong | Kim | +0.44pt |
| Aug 2 | Busan-Ulsan-Gyeongnam | Jung | cumulative +0.99pt |
| Aug 8 | Jeju-Incheon | Kim 47.75% | +5.67pt |
| Aug 9 | Gangwon, Daegu-Gyeongbuk | Kim 48.54% | +4.14pt |
| Cumulative | — | Kim 46.01 vs Jung 44.53 | 1.48pt |
| Aug 15 (Sat) | Honam | ≈512,000 members | Decisive belt |
| Aug 16 (Sun) | Seoul, Gyeonggi | ≈596,000 members | Largest electorate |
| Aug 17 (Mon) | Convention | Delegates + public poll added | Final result |
The bottom three rows are the whole race. Press estimates put the party's dues-paying membership at about 1.55 million; the Honam provinces hold roughly 512,000 (North Jeolla alone about 194,000) and Seoul plus Gyeonggi about 596,000. Together, 1.1 million votes — 71% of the total — land in 48 hours.
Against that, a 1.48-point head start is close to nothing. If either candidate wins Honam by fifteen points, the cumulative order flips on the spot. That arithmetic explains why all three candidates spent the past week in Gwangju and the Jeolla provinces.
3. What to watch
The Honam margin, not the Honam winner. With the region holding a third of the electorate, the size of the win matters far more than the fact of it.
Whether Incheon predicted Seoul. Kim's 5.67-point win in Incheon — demographically the closest thing to a greater-Seoul poll this race produces — was read as a preview of the August 16 finale. Sunday tests that reading.
The August 17 aggregation. The member vote is not the whole result. Delegate ballots and a general public opinion poll are added at the convention under formulas set by party rules, so the leader among members is not automatically the winner.
4. What remains unverified
Cumulative percentages are pre-weighting press figures, and outlets report the gap as either 1.45 or 1.48 points; the party's official aggregation may shift the decimals. Membership counts are estimates rather than the certified voter roll. A minority of outlets listed the August 15 and 16 regions in reverse order.
How the six-round format works is in "Korea's touring primary, explained." Who exactly gets to vote — the dues rule behind those 1.55 million members — is in today's companion piece, "What a 'rights member' is." The previous round is in "Kim retakes the lead by 0.86." This page follows Saturday's Honam result.