On the campaign trail

Hello, my name is Park SangHong, 2-가. Please take this card. Thank you.

Wait. That's not me. Sorry. Let me start again.

Greetings, sentient life-forms! It's easy to forgot how you're supposed to talk to people when you've spent your last two months on the campaign trail. For those of you who don't know, MyungSoo's father, SangHong, ran for Seodaemun district council. Seoul has 25 districts, known as a gu, each with their own slew of elected officials. Seocho, where I work, and Gangnam, where I used to live, are some of the wealthiest gu's. Seodaemun district falls somewhere in the middle. It's not too rich, and it's not too poor. It's just right, really. And it's far enough away from the center of Seoul to make the people much nicer and nature much closer. A ten minute walk can get you to a hiking trail, and five minutes later you can completely forget that you're in the middle of a city of 10 million.

But I digress. MyungSoo's father ran for election, which, of course, meant that we were immediately signed up as volunteers. At the beginning of the campaign, I had no idea what was going on. Mr. Park would text me something along the lines of, "I miss you! Come over for lunch today!" So I'd come over for lunch, only to discover that lunch was delivery Chinese at campaign headquarters and the price of admission was agreeing to hand out business cards for the rest of the day. Politicians are tricky. Don't trust them ever.

Korea is very strict about who gets to work for political campaigns. Volunteers have to be over the age of 19 and must be registered with the election office, at which point they are given a special name tag that they have to wear at all times while campaigning. Family members are also allowed to campaign, but they still need a name tag. With three sons over the age of 19, Mr. Park had hit the campaigning jackpot. And so it was that the Park brothers found themselves involved in politics for the first time.
 Since I'm not a Korean citizen, I'm not legally allowed to campaign, so I spent most of my time following MyungSoo, bowing and thanking people whenever they took a business card.

No, really. I insist. Take it. Please. I have a lot. Like, my house is full of them. I can't sleep at night because I'm surrounded by SangHong's face.

You may be wondering why I was even part of the campaign. That was part of Mr. Park's devious strategy. First, the potential voter sees me. I smile. They smile back (who can resist the charming smile of a determined American girl), then Park introduces himself as the son of a candidate and hands over the business card before anyone can say no. Then we smile and bow and thank the voter together. If we were lucky, this would frequently devolve into a conversation something like this:
Voter: "Who's this?"
Park: "This is my fiancee."
Voter: "Wow, so pretty. What country?"
Me: "I'm American."
Voter: "You're so lucky! So who is this guy on the card?"
Park: "That's my father."
Voter: "He's so lucky too!"


SangHong was already famous in the community before his election. He's been a volunteer for the community for many years now and had friends everywhere (Literally everywhere. It's actually kind of creepy.). His reputation is perfect, and it just got better and better as the campaign continued and other candidates started pulling out dirty tricks. It wasn't long before our campaign became the one to beat.

I was a problem. Due to legal reasons, I was not allowed to campaign. However, voters clearly associated me with the SangHong campaign. One candidate sent a worker to follow me and take pictures of me in an attempt to catch me doing illegal activities. While campaigning from the back of a truck, we noticed a car following us. As they drove past, MyungSoo realized that the passenger had been filming me. After that, I had to stop campaigning on the truck. I wasn't the only target, though. Things got downright nasty one Sunday morning. MyungSoo was campaigning on a street corner with a bunch of other volunteers from different campaigns. Suddenly, a worker from the 1-나 candidate's campaign attacked the daughter of the 2-나 candidate. She accused the girl of being a prostitute and insisted she was there illegally. She tried to rip the girl's name tag away from her, all the while shouting profanities. MyungSoo stepped in and told her to calm down. She didn't. Meanwhile, another worker had called the police. By the time I showed up, the police were mediating between the two candidates, who were demanding apologies, while MyungSoo stood by as an official police witness. A few days later, the same candidate sent a volunteer to take pictures of MyungSoo's aunt. As a member of the family, she was allowed to campaign for her brother. However, no one recognized her, and assumed she was there illegally. The aunt became incredibly upset about such an invasion of privacy, and called her brother. Mr. Park arrived in all his wrath and demanded a public apology. He got it, by the way. The candidate apologized and deleted the pictures.

There is so much more I could talk about. I could talk about the campaign trucks. In order to reach the most number of people, candidates stand on trucks and drive slowly through the town, making campaign promises, while volunteers wave. I could talk about how every campaign is color-coded. Volunteers have special hats, gloves, umbrellas, etc. and stand together in the street holding signs and bowing to passersby. At the start of the campaign, which is legally limited to very short time period, candidates fight to get the best spots to place their banners. Mr. Park sent workers to hold his spot starting from 5 AM and kept someone there all day until midnight when the banner could finally be unfurled. Going to church on Sunday is like running a gauntlet because every candidate sends people to stand outside every major church. Mr. Park kept trying to encourage me to go to Mass at the large Catholic church in the neighborhood. MyungSoo and I politely declined because it was an incredibly ugly church and it's pretty tacky to switch churches for political reasons.

Remember that time Mr. Park forced us to dance to Gangnam Style at the neighborhood singing contest? Turns out that someone took a picture and decided to use this as part of our campaign.

The election board posts pictures of all the candidates together so that voters can see their options.

The campaign truck. These things are so awesome.

On the night of the election, we all gathered at campaign headquarters to watch the results come in. It was a big election, as the post of Seoul city mayor was up for grabs, a position that in some ways is even more powerful than that of the president's. The results didn't come in until around midnight, but they were exactly what we wanted. Sweet, sweet victory. Mr. Park made a short speech and gave flowers to his family. KwangSoo, MyungSoo's younger brother, got special thanks. He suspended his semester just to help his father and rarely complained, even when he should have. Then a bunch of enthusiastic adjusshis got their hands on champagne, and sprayed everyone and everything. Poor MinSoo had to clean it up.

Victory and champagne!