SEOUL -- Roh Moo Hyun, the recently anointed presidential candidate of Kim Dae Jung's Millennium Democratic party, or MDP, for December's elections, has been on a roll this spring. A relative political unknown, he succeeded in toppling his party's front-runner for the nomination, Rhee In Je, while generating enough political momentum to earn him the sobriquet "Roh Phoon."
Now comes the hard part -- taking on the Grand National Party's nominee, Lee Hoi Chang, who narrowly lost the last presidential election to Kim. Snatching the nomination from a political maverick like Rhee, who played the spoiler role in 1997, is one thing; taking on the conservative South Korean political establishment centered in the GNP (which felt cheated by the outcome of the 1997 election) is quite another.
The question is whether "Roh Phoon" will blow over or stay on course, again blowing away the political opposition. For the moment, the political typhoon has stalled, with a 2-1 lead in the early polls now whittled down to a neck-and-neck contest between Roh and Lee.