Yang Hyang-ja has been confirmed as the People Power Party candidate for Gyeonggi governor in the June 3 local elections.
The People Power Party central nomination management committee said on the 2nd that, as a result of the primary for Gyeonggi governor, Yang, a supreme council member, was chosen as the final candidate.
The primary was held over two days from Apr. 30 to May 1. Reflecting 50% each from party member voting and a public opinion poll of the general public, Yang, a supreme council member, clinched a ticket to the main race by beating former MBC announcer Lee Seong-bae and former Korea Expressway Corporation (KEC) president Ham Jin-kyu.
The Gyeonggi governor race will be a head-to-head contest between People Power Party candidate Yang Hyang-ja and Democratic Party of Korea candidate Choo Mi-ae. From the conservative opposition, former lawmaker Cho Eung-cheon of the Reform Party has also entered the race.
Yang is known as the first woman with a high school diploma to become an executive at Samsung Electronics, the protagonist of the so-called "high school graduate success story." In 2016, when former President Moon Jae-in was serving as leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, she was recruited as a female talent and entered politics.
At a news conference that day, Yang said, "In this election, I will talk only about the economy and people's livelihoods beyond ideology and camps," adding, "Together with reasonable citizens, not the extreme bases of the two parties, I will turn a 'political election' into an 'economic election.'"
She added a message to the party leadership: "From now on, please lead the party with broad embrace and reconciliation. Do not be swayed any longer by some extremist forces, and come out to the sea of public sentiment beyond old practices and the past."