SEOUL, South Korea �� In President Park Geun-hye's hometown of Daegu, a city at the heart of South Korea's economic boom in the 1970s, even the sight of her face is enough to make residents cringe.
Shopkeeper Kim Yeon-hee said many customers want her to remove photos of Park taken after the president bought a pair of shoes for about $35 on a visit to the southeastern city last year. Those were happier times, before Park became embroiled in an influence-peddling scandal that has sparked mass protests calling for her resignation.
"I'll keep them for the sake of memory, but I don't feel admiration for Park any more when I see her," Kim, 59, said this month. "I only pity her."
The disenchantment with Park in her own backyard signals a wider shift in national politics, in which regional loyalties are often stronger among the electorate than policy platforms. With an election next year, her ruling party is at risk of losing more elderly voters in its southeastern base who fondly recall how her father, dictator Park Chung-hee, helped transform the nation into Asia's fourth-largest economy.
Young people have already abandoned her, with a recent poll showing that Park had no support from Koreans in their 20s, many of whom are struggling to find jobs. They are leaning toward opposition parties who want to curb the economic influence of big conglomerates known as chaebol, including Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor.
Daegu, part of South Korea's most populous region, is filled with factory parks. It is next to a highway connecting the country's two biggest cities, Seoul in the north and the port city of Busan in the southeast.
That economic importance translates into political power:.Six of South Korea's 11 presidents have come from the region. In the presidential election in 2012, about 80 percent of Daegu voters backed Park, whose ruling Saenuri party advocates tough measures against North Korea and a pro-business approach to boost economic growth.
Her approval rating plummeted to single digits after she apologized last month for allowing her friend Choi Soon-sil to access presidential documents. Choi has been arrested on suspicion of attempted fraud over allegations that she used her relationship with Park to pressure some of the country's biggest corporations into donating tens of millions of dollars to her foundations. A special prosecutor is set to determine whether Park conducted any wrongdoing.
"Lower approval rates in Daegu are symbolically troubling for Park given that this was her home constituency in the National Assembly," said Timothy Rich, assistant professor at Western Kentucky University who studies East Asia politics. "One of Park's strengths in the past was an image of being above the fray in terms of corruption, and this scandal ends that image. If the Park scandal becomes a prolonged conflict in Korea, this could be damaging for the party's electoral hopes next year."
Park's travails are hurting the prospects of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who appeals to older Koreans. While Ban still has six weeks to go at the United Nations and said whether he hasn't said whether he will run for president, political commentators have guessed that the native of the central region would seek to join Park's Saenuri party and leverage its support base in next year's election.
Overtaking Ban in recent polls is Moon Jae-in, the runner-up to Park in 2012 and a former leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, the nation's largest opposition party. While the DPK, as it's known, has its political roots in the southwest, Moon was born in the southeast and has a better chance of siphoning off votes in the region.
His party showed signs of breaking through in April, when it won a parliamentary seat in Daegu for the first time in more than three decades.
"Discontent with Park in the southeast didn't happen overnight," said Yoon Jong-bin, a political science professor at Myongji University in Seoul. "It's been accumulating and this scandal made it explode."
The shipbuilding industry, mostly in the southeast, eliminated about 20,000 jobs in the first half of the year as losses from excess capacity and sluggish global trade increased. That's having a ripple effect through Daegu, once known as Park's "kitchen garden of ballots" for propelling her to four election victories since 1998.
"She should step down," said Henry Son, vice president at Woosung Metal Co. on the outskirts of Daegu. "Something must be done about the economy. I wouldn't even mind a war to get the factories going again."
Park has shown no sign of resigning. On Nov. 4, she choked back tears and said she "let her guard down" with Choi, appealing to the sympathies of voters. Both were parents killed by assassins.
Yeo Joon-yeon, who makes a living by fixing motor parts in a suburb of Daegu, smiled as he recalled seeing Park attend an annual community sports event at a field across the street from his shop.
"I feel sorry for her because I know how tragically her parents died," he said, stooping over a grease-covered motor with a screw driver. "But I'm also ashamed of her. She's made a national embarrassment of herself and that angers everyone who cared for her."
