Choi Min-hee's Support Slides in Democratic Party Supreme Council Race as 'The Child Who Passes Golden Poop' Controversy Reignites

Park Seon-won follows in second with 16.74%, Han Min-su is third with 14.39%, and Seo Mi-hwa is fourth with 14.24%.

In the race for the fifth and final seat, Kim Yong has 12.65% and Lee Sung-yoon has 11.88%.

Choi Min-hee had consistently held first place and was expected to perform well, but her support has declined recently amid several controversies. In particular, the incident in which she asked a soccer official 'Why did you lose?' is said to have raised her unfavorability even among people who are not interested in politics.

As a result, among Honam-region rights-holding party members who support Chung Sye-kyun, a decline in Choi Min-hee's standing has been detected, and rumors are circulating that voters who had planned to back her are instead splitting their votes between Han Min-su and Lee Sung-yoon.

With both sides saying they will 'leave the top seat to fate,' the so-called 'three-candidate tactic' is reportedly already underway. This is interpreted as a strategy to elect three candidates.

That this 'three-candidate tactic' is being discussed on both sides shows that the distinctive bloc-voting tendency in this Supreme Council election is strengthening.

This loyalty effect toward the party leader is expected to be a key factor in deciding the contest between Choi Min-hee and Park Seon-won.

During the Supreme Council vote, a highly undemocratic and unreasonable tactic has been discussed: voters spreading their ballots evenly across specific candidates according to their birthdays.

Choi Min-hee, born in 1960, graduated from the history department of Ewha Womans University. Starting in 1985, she worked as a reporter for the monthly magazine Mal of the Democratic Press Movement Council, serving as secretary, central committee member, and secretary-general.

She later served as secretary-general of the Citizens' Alliance for Democratic Press Movement and as executive representative of the Korea Press Media Watch (KPMW), a media-monitoring group, and in 2000 she founded the natural-health and child-rearing group 'Sussu Patteok Child Love Club,' serving as its representative for 15 years.

The book includes assertions such as 'Giving a child boiled opium-poppy water stopped the bloody stools,' 'Infertility is the result of improper sexual life,' and 'Children who drink milk become violent.'

It also contained content at odds with modern scientific and medical knowledge, such as the claim that 'a newborn should go without food for the first three days and be left naked for 100 minutes.'

In response, Choi Min-hee ran a corrective report after a press arbitration process, explaining that 'the poppy mentioned in the book is not the narcotic opium poppy and has nothing to do with violations of the Narcotics Control Act.'

During the Roh Moo-hyun administration, from 2006 to February 2008, she served as a ruling-party-nominated member of the Korea Broadcasting Commission and rose to become its vice chair.

She is reported to have built a relationship with then-Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan during this process.

Choi Min-hee first entered the National Assembly in the April 2012 general election through a proportional-representation seat. In the 2016 general election she ran in Namyangju B and lost.

Her conviction for election-law violations (spreading false information) was finalized by the Supreme Court in 2018.

She was later restored to eligibility through a special pardon in 2021, and in the 2022 presidential election she served as media special envoy head in Lee Jae-myung's campaign.

After the Yoon Suk Yeol administration took office, the Democratic Party nominated Choi Min-hee multiple times as a standing-committee candidate for the Korea Communications Commission. The Democratic Party alone approved her appointment, but the president did not appoint her, which drew attention. Choi Min-hee then withdrew on her own.

She later ran in Namyangju A in the 22nd general election, won, and returned to the National Assembly.

Many say she has very strong self-conviction and tends to charge ahead regardless of gains or losses once she believes she is right.

Those who view her favorably read this as determined drive, while critics point to it as an unwillingness to listen to others and a lack of openness.

The view is that this movement style shaped her political identity and formed a tendency to treat certain forces with hostility and hatred.

The core of media reform should be constant coordination and adjustment through communication and democratic public debate. It is regrettable, critics say, that Choi Min-hee is viewed as 'uncommunicative' on exactly this essential point.

Criticism has been raised that a figure who calls for media reform is herself showing a lack of communication.

Recently, while OhmyTV reporters were filming, an aide to Choi Min-hee came over holding a sheet of paper and blocked the camera, an act dubbed 'the paper block' that drew controversy. The act has been described as unprecedented and caused a major stir.

As the controversy grew, Choi Min-hee issued a response saying: 'Thank you for your great interest, reporter from OhmyNews, who came from the Chosun Ilbo side. I ask that you love all 11 candidates equally.'

Criticism has been raised that Choi Min-hee's attitude toward other candidates and her obstruction of reporters stem from arrogance. Her conduct has been called impolite: when Seo Mi-hwa was speaking, she is said to have gone off on her own tangent and argued with someone trying to stop her, and she later refused to shake hands.

Also, deliberately passing by Seo Mi-hwa, who has a visual impairment, left a bad impression, and critics say this series of words and actions stems from the arrogance of a politician.

For a former journalist to act this way is self-contradictory, and it casts doubt on the sincerity of her media reform agenda.

The prevailing point is that 'one should not privately block a camera just because one dislikes it.'

Asking whether the Democratic Party would have stayed silent if someone had blocked the Kim Eo-jun 'News Factory' camera, aides have voiced the view that if one dislikes a report, one should use the press arbitration commission rather than exercising physical force against a reporter doing their job.