An emergency council of the ruling Saenuri Party requested its nomination panel Friday retract the candidacy of Suk Ho-ick for the Goryeong, Seongju and Chilgok constituency in North Gyeongsang Province for sexist remarks.

Lee Sang-don, a member of the emergency committee headed by party leader Rep. Park Geun-hye, said that Suk should not represent the party for the election.

“His comments went beyond the limit and we will not let it go,” he said on a radio show.

Suk, former vice chairman of KT, was reproached for his statement at a business meeting in 2007 that “women are more evolved than men. They have an additional hole in their body.”

Though Suk explained that the comment was to highlight the “superiority of women,” the committee members, who have previously influenced the nomination panel to retract two other candidacies, have decided to ask for the retraction, party insiders said.

Rep. Kang Yong-suk in 2010 was criticized for implying TV news anchorwomen should sleep their way into the profession and was expelled from the party. Lee Young-jo, who was nominated in Gangnam, also saw his candidacy canceled for his descriptions of the Gwangju Pro-democracy uprising and Jeju Uprising. The party leaders are also reportedly considering taking back its selection of Sohn Dong-jin, another candidate for Gyeongju of North Gyeongsang Province, for bribing local journalists.

“It would have been better had the nomination panel screened the flaws in the first place. The party needs a good reputation,” a party insider said.

The Saenuri leadership is reportedly considering picking Kim Jong-hoon, former Minister of Trade, as Lee’s replacement.

Kim’s abundant experience in officialdom and his achievements in concluding the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement could woo conservative Gangnam voters, observers said.

“It is up to the party to choose its own man. I have nothing to say about it,” Kim said Friday at a radio show.

On the same day, Park Geun-hye headed to Chungcheong to win hearts of residents that are relatively lukewarm to her party. After the party confirmed the candidacy of Shin Jin, a Chungnam National University professor, for Sejong City, the new administrative city to host government complexes from later this year, Park canceled all other schedules and hurried to the spot. Sejong is a newly established constituency for the April general election.

“No matter who takes the government helm, Sejong City will be built as originally planned,” she stressed at the construction site of the government complex in the afternoon. President Lee Myung-bak previously tried to cancel the city development as planned under the liberal Roh Moo-hyun administration. But Park defended the project, in an apparent bid to attract Chungcheong voters.

“Park’s race will not be easy in Sejong City since Sim Dae-pyung, leader of the Liberty Forward Party, which has a strong political base in the area, has announced that he would run in Sejong City. That’s maybe why Park is so keen to win in the area,” a political pundit said to a vernacular daily.

Meanwhile, the largest opposition Democratic United Party is also mired in a dispute over its candidate selection. Rep. Jeon Hae-sook of Gwangjin district in Seoul protested the party leaders’ decision to deny her candidacy and instead select Kim Han-gill, a party senior. Jeon is suspected of bribing influential men in her constituency.

“I cannot accept the leadership’s decision because I have never offered a kickback to anyone. There was no police or prosecutors’ investigation into the scandal but the leadership simply ditched me,” she said at the National Assembly on Friday, where she started a sit-in.

“In order to support one man, they are trying to take away my political career,” she said.

By Bae Ji-sook (baejisook@heraldcorp.com)