South Korean Lawmakers Reject Female Prime Minister

South Korean lawmakers rejected the first woman nominated as prime minister Wednesday, undermining the ruling party during an election year and dealing a blow to the scandal-plagued administration of President Kim Dae Jung.

“This is serious,” said Kim Byung Kuk, associate professor of politics at Korea University. “It’s a message to the president that he has to shape up and a warning that his remaining days in office could be very rocky.”

Chang Sang, a 62-year-old theologian and former president of prestigious Ewha Womans University, was voted down 142 to 100 during confirmation hearings. The post has little decision-making power, but the prime minister would lead the government if the 77-year-old president died or was incapacitated. The prime minister’s seat became vacant last month in a government reshuffle.

The rebuff followed two bruising days of hearings during which the political neophyte was slammed on live television for allegedly doctoring her resume, pursuing questionable real estate deals and failing to choose Korean citizenship for her son.

Opposition legislators charged Chang with trying to make people believe she’d graduated from Princeton University, when in fact she received her doctorate from Princeton Theological Seminary. Both are in Princeton, N.J. Chang blamed a translation error by her aides.

Her rejection by the National Assembly came as South Korea approaches closely watched elections for a handful of parliamentary seats Aug. 8 and presidential voting Dec. 19. The opposition holds 128 of the assembly’s 259 seats, and members of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party and United Liberal Democrats crossed party lines to vote against Chang.

Analysts said Wednesday’s vote delivered a message that lawmakers, backed by their constituents, were unhappy with the growing number of scandals surrounding Kim’s administration. Corruption charges were recently leveled against two of his sons.

“It’s regrettable that the government gave the opposition party an excuse to attack,” said Chung Jae Guk, 33, an insurance salesman from Seoul.

Political analysts said another source of discontent was Kim’s apparent unwillingness to include among his advisors anyone beyond a small and increasingly unpopular circle of insiders.

But Chang didn’t help herself much, either. Accused of speculative real estate dealings, she initially denied any knowledge, saying her now incapacitated mother-in-law had handled everything.

“That killed her. It seemed really disingenuous,” said Mo Jong Ryn, associate professor at Yonsei University. “Overall, she did something a lot of other people probably did. But people aren’t so tolerant anymore, especially of someone trying to be prime minister.”

Another charge leveled against her was that she failed to have her American-born son renounce his U.S. citizenship.

“It makes us ordinary people sad when leading figures don’t set a good example,” said Chae Kyong Sook, a 36-year-old homemaker.

Analysts said the opposition Grand National Party employed something of a stealth campaign in undermining Chang’s candidacy. It wasn’t overly tough on her in public, wary of alienating female voters, but it worked overtime behind the scenes to discredit her.

This latest skirmish in South Korea’s bare-knuckles political world leaves the ruling party in disarray as key leaders talk about defecting to create a new party.

With only 16 of its 273 parliamentary seats held by women, South Korea is ranked a low 97th in the world for female participation in politics, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Fourteen parliamentary seats are vacant.

Women for Women’s Political Power, a South Korean nongovernmental group, said in a statement that the standards used to judge Chang were too high compared with those applied to past prime ministers.

However, Chang’s rejected candidacy is not likely to hurt women’s growing influence in South Korea, analysts said. In fact, given the importance of female voters in the upcoming elections, the next candidate for prime minister could again be a woman.

Chi Jung Nam in The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.