With Thursday's 17th National Assembly election drawing near, the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) is still on verge of collapse.

In January 2000, South Korean former President Kim Dae-jung renamed the National Congress for New Politics as the Millennium Democratic Party so as to attend the 16th National Assembly's election three month later with new image.

In 2002, the government led by Kim Dae-Jung was troubled by corruption scandals involving top officials, members of his cabinet and his family, causing rifts within his MDP.

In August 2002, the opposition Grand National Party took control of parliament after wining by-elections. The GNP was able to increase its number of seats to 139 in the 273-member National Assembly after winning 11 of the 13 seats up for election.

Even after Roh Moo-hyun, the presidential candidate for the MDP,beat Lee Hoi-chang, who represented the GNP, in the presidential election in December 2002, the MDP had been suffered internal battles.

Its members were severely divided with such topics as how to reform, whether to re-organize the party. The most embarrassing thing the party encountered was that Roh left the party last October and nearly 40 lawmakers quit it to form the Uri Party loyal to Roh.

These have either led the MDP to lose the ruling party status or weakened its power in the assembly with only 62 seats.

Since then, the MDP has turned to adopt an anti-Roh or anti-government stance and cooperated with the GNP several times in theparliament to block motions of the government.

Chough Soon-hyung, 68, a fifth-term lawmaker, was elected the new leader of the MDP last November. But his leadership was challenged by younger members, who claimed he should resign because of the downward popularity of the party.

The fatal blow to the party was the impeachment bill that backfired.

The MDP originally wanted to use the impeachment to revenge itself on Roh and give a blow to the Uri Party. But contrary to its will, astonished South Korean people blamed the MDP for pushing the impeachment motion out of its partisan interests.

The party's popularity plunged from 10 percent to 3.5 percent.

The party has enrolled 181 candidates for the 243 constituent seats, 43 candidates for the 56 proportional seats for the 17th National Assembly.

The party's future in the new parliament is gloomy for it neverstopped its internal conflicts between Choung's old-line and the younger generation led by the party's No. 2 figure Choo Mae-ai.

Source: Xinhua