‘Squid Game Election’: South Korean campaign gets ugly

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The race between South Korea’s two leading presidential candidates has seen unprecedented levels of toxic rhetoric, mudslinging and lawsuits.

How bad is it? “Hitler,” “beast,” and “parasite” are some of the choicer insults leveled by both camps. Some are even calling it “The Squid Game Election,” in reference to Netflix’s megahit survival drama where people are killed if they lose children’s games.

And the stakes? There’s widespread speculation that the loser will be arrested. “It’s a dreadful presidential election when the losing contender faces prison. Please survive this dogfight in the mire!” senior opposition politician Hong Joon-pyo wrote on Facebook.

Just days before Wednesday’s election, Lee Jae-myung from the liberal governing Democratic Party and Yoon Suk Yeol from the main conservative opposition People Power Party are locked in an extremely tight race.

Their negative campaigns are aggravating South Korea’s already severe political divide at a time when it faces a battered, pandemic-hit economy, a balancing act over competition between its main ally, Washington, and its top trading partner, China, and a raft of threats and weapons tests from rival North Korea. Opinion surveys show that both candidates have more critics than supporters.

“Isn’t our national future too bleak with an unpleasant and bitter presidential election that calls for choosing the lesser of two evils?” the mass-circulation Dong-A Ilbo newspaper said in an editorial. Yoon has slammed Lee over his possible ties to an allegedly corrupt land development scandal.

Lee has denied any connection, and in turn has tried to link Yoon to the same scandal, while separately criticizing him for his reported ties to shamanism — an ancient, indigenous religious belief.