After many turns and crises along the way, presidential candidates Roh Moo-hyun and Chung Mong-joon finally agreed in full to unifying their campaigns. If the plan is fully implemented, one of them will have won the presidential "semi-final," and it will be the first such development of its kind when the winner of this semi-final moves on to the "final," the presidential election December 19.

The negotiations were always about how to go about choosing who would run, and who would support the other was always about the selection process; there was from the start no debate over each man's political views. Given they've agreed that the individual who loses out between them will serve as the campaign chairman for the other, it would only make sense for them to fine-tune their policy differences. It's forced agreement from the very beginning when they talk about joining as one while leaving political differences to the side.

It would, for example, be more consistent with the spirit of combining campaigns for the party of the losing side, for example, to forfeit its platform. It could lead to a strange situation where because a party loses in the polls, that party gives up on its political identity and principles.

It’s hard enough to understand how you can select a single candidate with an opinion poll, but its all the more doubtful that the unheard of methods being employed in the poll will significantly serve to function as a poll in the true sense of the word. Then their television debate Friday evening is not without criticism for being unfair campaigning as well.

These many problems originate in the fact that the unified campaign agreement is fundamentally about nothing more than the mathematical calculations that had these "anti-Lee Hoi-chang" campaigns talking in the first place. Both men must present the voters with straightforward answers to these issues in the course of combining their campaigns and during the regular presidential campaign period November 23, 2002