Uncertainty still prevails in a tight presidential race with the two major opposition candidates struggling over unified candidacy and the ruling party flag-bearer seeking to widen her popularity gap with her rivals.

Little progress has yet been made in the opposition’s talks over a unified candidacy as the Democratic United Party’s candidate Rep. Moon Jae-in and independent Ahn Cheol-soo are in a tug of war over the timing and method for their likely merger.

Meanwhile, Rep. Park Geun-hye, standard-bearer of the ruling Saenuri Party, is highlighting her economic drive focusing on creating jobs and spurring economic growth to win over more undecided voters.

Talks on unifying candidacy are expected to be accelerated after this Saturday, until which Ahn’s camp wants to focus on crafting and refining election pledges despite mounting pressure from Moon’s camp.

The liberal rivals on Sunday travelled to the southwestern Honam region, which has become politically crucial in the race given that it does not appear to clearly support any of the candidates just yet, although it has been a traditional support base for the DUP.

Ahn and Moon met at a ceremony in Iksan, North Jeolla Province, where Jang Eun-cheol, the new leader of Won Buddhism, took office.

Following Moon’s apology in late September for paying insufficient attention to the region during the former Roh Moo-hyun’s presidency, Moon’s ratings in the region have gradually increased, apparently unnerving Ahn. Moon was chief of staff to the late Roh.

Recent polls have put Moon ahead of Ahn. Ahn had led Moon by sngle digits in recent months. In a mock three-way race conducted by Gallup Korea on Oct. 15-20, Moon trailed Ahn 27 percent to 43 percent. But a week later on Oct. 23-24, Moon surpassed Ahn 34 percent to 32 percent.

Mindful of his faltering popularity, Ahn extended his stay in the region by visiting Saemangeum, an extensive plot of reclaimed land along the southwest coast, in the afternoon and stayed overnight in Gwangju. He will deliver a speech at Chonnam National University in the region on Monday.

As both of them have vowed to run in the election “until the end,” striking a compromise will not be easy despite the reality that they should merge their forces in order not to split the opposition vote, observers said.

The major bone of contention is the method to unify candidacy. The two sides are expected to adopt a mobile voting scheme or an opinion survey. Ahn is likely to prefer an opinion poll given that Moon could benefit more from the voting procedure considering his party-based organizational support.

Some predict that the two sides could opt for a method mixing both the mobile voting and the opinion survey.

The prevailing expectation is that Ahn and Moon would unify their candidacy before the official candidate registration period from Nov. 25-26.

Should they fail to do so, even if they unify the candidacy afterwards, the names of both candidates will appear on ballot sheets. This will lead to a loss of votes for the opposition camp as voters could vote for a candidate out of the race.

Amid the intensifying competition over the unified liberal candidacy, Park is seeking to highlight economic issues to project an image of a leader caring more about the livelihoods of regular citizens.

Her camp is expected to announce her roadmap containing specific action plans soon to realize her vision of “economic democratization.”

In an extremely tight race, what is crucial for all three candidates is to insulate themselves against controversy from sensitive campaign issues, observers said.

Park is paying close attention to the continuing controversy surrounding the Jeongsu Scholarship Foundation.

Moon has also been trying to block the ruling party’s offensive concerning Roh’s purported remarks denying the Northern Limit Line as a de-facto maritime border. Ahn has been embroiled in allegations of plagiarism.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluch@heraldcorp.com)