PPP's Choo Kyung-ho wins Daegu mayoral by-election as DP's Kim Boo-kyum concedes

DAEGU — Choo Kyung-ho of the People Power Party (PPP) won the Daegu mayoral by-election, with his Democratic Party rival, former Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum, conceding defeat. Kim congratulated Choo on his victory and said the race had shown the potential for competitive politics in Daegu.

Choo entered the race late, after the PPP's primary was delayed, by which point polls already showed Kim leading. He responded by touring all of Daegu, telling voters, "I will stake my life on reviving Daegu's economy" and calling to "Protect Daegu, the heart of conservatism."

On May 23 and Sunday, former President Park Geun-hye, once called the "Queen of Elections," joined him on the trail. They visited Chilseong Market in Buk District and Seomun Market in Jung District, and the race tightened into a dead heat.

The standoff carried from the polls into the count, which seesawed between the two candidates. Kim led by about 20,000 votes early in the tally before the result flipped.

Throughout the campaign, Choo cast himself as the right person to revive Daegu's economy. To overhaul the economy, he said he would first integrate AI into the city's advanced new industries and mainstay sectors. He pledged to attract chip fabrication plants from Samsung Electronics and SK hynix and use them to lift Daegu's gross regional domestic product, which has ranked last in the country for 30 years, to 200 trillion won ($130 billion). Creating 500,000 well-paying jobs was also part of his pledges.

He also took up the project of building a new airport in the Daegu-North Gyeongsang area, which stalled over funding shortfalls. Visiting the planned construction site in Sobo-myeon, Gunwi County, during the campaign, he said, "I will turn this into a national project, with the Ministry of National Defense responsible for the military airfield and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport for the civilian airport."

His other pledges included electing a mayor for the special city to be formed by merging Daegu and North Gyeongsang in 2028, bringing the headquarters of the Industrial Bank of Korea, better known by its acronym IBK, to the city in the second round of public institution relocations, and improving the Nakdong River's water quality and Daegu's tap water to the standard available to residents of the greater Seoul region.

"I will make Daegu a city that businesses come to, that young people return to, that is good for raising children and that sits at the center of Korea's future industries," Choo said.

Born in 1960 in Dalseong County, Daegu, Choo graduated from Keisung High School and entered Korea University to study business administration. He passed the higher civil service examination in 1981, while a third-year student, beginning a career in public service. He served as first vice minister of economy and finance and as director of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, a minister-level post, before resigning in 2016 to run for the National Assembly after 33 years in government. He won the party's nomination in the Dalseong County constituency and was elected.

Across his three decades in government, Choo moved through a series of senior economic posts. After entering politics, he was regarded as an economic policy expert independent of any faction. After the Moon Jae-in administration took office, he raised his profile by directly criticizing its economic policy.

When the Yoon Suk Yeol administration started in 2022, Choo became its first deputy prime minister and minister of economy and finance. In a well-known episode, he skipped the dinner celebrating the president's inauguration on the administration's first day and held a "lunch box meeting" with senior ministry officials instead. In January 2023, he topped a poll of officials from the Ministry of Economy and Finance to find what qualities they would want to see from a "boss they would most like to emulate."

Choo won a third term in the 2024 general election with 75.3 percent of the vote, and after returning to the Assembly, he was elected the PPP's floor leader.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.

BY KIM JUNG-SEOK, BAEK KYUNG-SEO [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]