As the 2012 U.S. presidential election was under way on Wednesday local time, many South Koreans showed keen interest in what is projected to be one of the closest presidential races in the history of America.

On the eve of the election, many of the major Korean newspapers -- including The Korea Herald, Joongang Ilbo, DongA Ilbo, Maeil Business Newspaper -- ran stories about it on their front pages.

SBS, one of the country’s top three broadcasting stations, organized nearly seven hours of special news programs covering the election.

As of 10 a.m. Wednesday, “Obama” was the most searched keyword on leading local search engine Naver.com. Additionally, “U.S. presidential election” was the third-most searched keyword, reflecting Koreans’ interest in the event.

Many Koreans expressed discontent over the seemingly endless parade of news coverage on the U.S. election.

“With America being the most powerful country in the world, I know the election is important, but do we really need live coverage? This is too much. I feel like Korea is one of America’s states,” a South Korean citizen wrote on Twitter.

Some were surprised that the U.S. election was so close, given that the incumbent’s popularity seemed to exceed his Republican rival’s in many countries including South Korea.

“Obama seems to be exceptionally popular outside America compared to the other U.S. presidents in the past, thus showing that an outsiders’ evaluation on a person doesn’t necessarily equal those of insiders,” a Twitter user nicknamed “Lurico” wrote.

In a survey conducted a few years ago by Hanguk College Newspaper and Internet search engine Campus Life, Obama was selected by college students as the most respected foreigner. He was followed by Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey.

South Koreans weren’t alone in supporting the first-ever African-American U.S. president, either.

A recent BBC World Service poll of 21,797 people in 21 nations found that Obama enjoyed support from most countries that participated in the survey, except Pakistan.

“Pakistan is the only country in the survey where Romney enjoys more support than Obama (14 percent versus 11 percent). However, this small difference in public favor is less striking than is the fact that 75 percent of Pakistanis express no preference,” pollster GlobeScan/PIPA said.

In the survey, France had proven to be the most avid supporter of Obama, with 72 percent of French respondents preferring the Democrat.

According to another poll by British pollster YouGov, 90 percent of Europeans said that they would vote for Obama if they could participate in the election.

Surveys showed that many Europeans thought Romney leans too far to the right.

“Tea Party-influenced Romney is seen as pulled to the extremes, his open criticism of European fiscal and social welfare policies jarring with modern European politics,” said Sarah Ludford, a British member of the European Parliament, in an interview with local media.


By Yoon Min-sik
(minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)