There is a local election for citywide leaders at the end of the month. This happens to be awesome, as it falls in the middle of the week, and election days are days off work! This is just one way things are different than in the United States. In Korean local elections there aren’t attack ads on television, and your much more likely to see the candidate himself on the street. While I can’t vote here, it’s not nearly as intolerable as when election season rolls around in the United States. People take a different approach to getting the vote out here.

Since this isn’t the first election cycle I’ve been here for, I knew what to expect. At the beginning of the month, gigantic pictures of the candidates started appearing on the sides of buildings. Since Koreans don’t tend to have things like lawns, instead of having small signs showing the support of some candidates placed everywhere, there are huge color coded and numbered signs showing a candidate in some thoughtful pose. These are placed on any large building for maximum exposure to traffic.

That’s just one way that people try to get the vote out. When walking on the streets, you are also likely to see this:

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Those are volunteers that sit on the corner of sidewalks to drum up support for their candidate. Also, there is a truck with a mounted podium on the back. The candidate themselves will get up on the backs of these trucks, and with the help of the large speakers inside share their ideas deafen anyone nearby. The best thing about the set of pictures above was that there were to rival groups on opposite street corners on the same intersection.

The group in blue had a coordinated dance routine going on, waiving to cars with gloves, and also providing a show to the people crossing the street. The group in the red was waving to people crossing the street, and the candidate himself handed me a card. It’s not like I can vote, but I appreciate the effort of inclusiveness, since this was the very same street corner I was denied Jesus tissues.

This was the second time I’ve been approached by a candidate. Today, after getting a shot for our new dog, a man lurking in the trees near Wal-Mart handed me his card as well. He had a banner on proclaiming him to be the "Number 8" candidate for whatever it was he was running for. He lacked all sorts of dancing women and had no truck mounted podium, so he was more stealthy in handing out cards to people carrying pets and bags of food. Perhaps he was running for district "Peeping Tom".