South Korea’s Park cannot even count on her hometown to help overcome presidential scandal

In President Park Geun-hye’s hometown of Daegu, a city at the heart of South Korea’s economic boom in the 1970s, even the sight of her face is enough to make residents cringe.

“I’ll keep them for the sake of memory, but I don’t feel admiration for Park any more when I see her,” Kim, 59, said on a chilly afternoon in early November. “I only pity her.”

The disenchantment with Park in her own backyard signals a wider shift in the nation’s political landscape, where regional loyalties often hold greater sway among the electorate than policy platforms. With an election looming next year, her ruling party is at risk of losing more elderly voters in its southeastern base who fondly recall how her father, dictator Park Chung-hee, helped transform the nation into Asia’s fourth-largest economy.

The country’s youth has already abandoned her, with a recent poll showing that Park had zero support from Koreans in their 20s, many of whom are struggling to find jobs. They are leaning toward opposition parties who want to curb the economic influence of big conglomerates known as chaebol, including Samsung Electronics Co., Hyundai Motor Co. and Lotte Group.

Daegu, part of South Korea’s most populous region, is filled with factory parks churning out everything from automobile parts to electronics to socks. It sits next to a highway connecting the country’s two biggest cities, Seoul in the north and the port city of Busan in the southeast.

That economic importance translates into political power: Six of South Korea’s 11 presidents have come from the region. In the last presidential election in 2012, some 80 per cent of Daegu voters backed Park, whose ruling Saenuri party advocates tough measures against North Korea and a pro-business approach to boost economic growth.