Ahn to resume campaigning after funerals of campaign workers

Minor presidential candidate Ahn Cheol-soo will resume campaigning this weekend after attending the funerals of two campaign workers who died in an accident this week, an official said Friday.

Ahn of the centrist People's Party suspended his campaign activities after a local campaign chief and a bus driver were found dead inside a campaign vehicle on Tuesday apparently due to gas poisoning from a generator powering an LED screen.

Ahn attended the party member's funeral Friday morning and will travel to the southeastern city of Gimhae on Saturday morning to attend the bus driver's funeral.

On Friday afternoon, he is scheduled to pay a visit to another bus driver who was in a similar accident and has yet to regain consciousness at a hospital in Wonju, 132 kilometers east of Seoul.

"(Ahn) plans to resume his campaigning tomorrow afternoon after the funeral," the official with Ahn's campaign told Yonhap News Agency.

The accidents occurred on the first day of the official campaigning period with three weeks to go until the March 9 election.

After Ahn suspended campaigning, there was speculation he would drop out of the race and back main opposition candidate Yoon Suk-yeol of the conservative People Power Party.

But Lee Tae-kyu, Ahn's campaign chief, rejected the speculation, saying the candidate is still waiting to hear back from Yoon regarding his earlier proposal to merge campaigns through a public opinion survey on which of the two is a better fit as the unified candidate.

"(Yoon) will have to accept candidate Ahn's proposal, reject it or bring a counterproposal, and if he does that, there will be no excuse for him not to meet (with Yoon)," Lee told Yonhap. (Yonhap)