BEIJING — South Korea's may elect its first female leader Wednesday in a presidential election marked by issues of a tough economy, freezing cold and the neighbor from hell.
Though the nuclear threat from North Korea is high on voters' minds, polls show that it is the economy that will determine whether Park Geun-hye wins the presidency.
Park is the choice of the ruling Saenuri Party to replace President Lee Myung-bak, who ended a ban on U.S. beef imports and took a harder approach to communist North Korea's missile program and military threats.
She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, a military general who took power in a coup in 1961 and ran South Korea as a military dictatorship until assassinated in 1979 by his security chief. Park, who has apologized for her father's actions, is in a tight race against Moon Jae-in, a former human rights lawyer once jailed for opposing the regime of Park's father.
On Tuesday, the two made several stops to sway voters.
"I will become a president of the people's livelihoods, who thinks only about the people," said Park, 60, promising to "restore the broken middle class," reported the Yonhap news agency.
Moon, 59, leader of the Democratic United Party, urged South Koreans to "change the entire team" at the top.
"I will become a president who wipes away the people's tears, stresses fairness and justice, makes sacrifices and dedicates himself, puts himself among the people and maintains dignity," he vowed.
Pyongyang's long-range missile test that it said was to launch a satellite broke United Nations regulations and was condemned by Seoul, Washington and Tokyo. But North Korea "is not a prominent issue" in this campaign, said Jaung Hoon, a political scientist at Chung Ang University in Seoul.
"South Koreans have been living in this environment for several decades," Jaung said.
Of greater concern to voters is rising economic inequality, he said. "The middle class is pretty disappointed by President Lee's performance."
Although Park and Moon represent right and left, both "have shown a convergence on social and economic issues," Jaung said. Moon wants to renegotiate a 2008 trade pact with the United States that overturned a ban on U.S. beef due to fears of mad cow disease.
Independent voters in their 40s, living in the Seoul metropolitan area and surrounding Gyeonggi province, home to half the nation's voters, will decide this election's outcome, he predicted.
"Like the United States, the economy is the major factor," and welfare policy has been the key policy issue, agreed Lee Nae-young, a political science professor at Seoul-based Korea University. Welfare benefits are being demanded by many who have lost income over the years.
President Lee's low approval ratings should make the opposition party more likely to win, "but the opposition party is even more unpopular," he said.
Record-breaking cold weather in South Korea will reduce turnout and impact the result, said Lee, alluding to temperature forecasts of 14 degrees Wednesday.
"The floating vote, undecided, is under 10%, but who they choose may determine the national result, together with the turnout rate of the younger generation," who may favor the opposition candidate, he said.
Younger voters appeared far more enthusiastic about Ahn Cheol-soo, who ran as an independent before dropping out and offering support to Moon.
"It's not so clear if younger voters will be so enthusiastic to back Moon," said Scott Snyder, senior fellow for Korea Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
On North Korea, both candidates have indicated that they prefer trying to cooperate more with Pyongyang, though Park sets more conditions on the offers of assistance that the North demands, such as food aid.
President Lee had rejected such "engagement" because his predecessor's so-called "Sunshine Policy" did little to alter the North's behavior when in 2002 it fired on South Korean patrol boats, killing four sailors.
"Regardless of who wins, North Korea will test the parameters and approach of the new president," Snyder said.
Paik Hak-soon, a North Korea expert at the Sejong Institute, a private think tank in Seongnam near Seoul, says squabbling between the candidates over 2010 talks on North Korea indicate that "North Korea is one of the key election issues."
Park sees a "clear limit to inter-Korean cooperation, if the North doesn't give up its nuclear weapons program," Paik said. Moon will "resume cooperation in all areas simultaneously," if Pyongyang agrees to terminate the state of war between the Koreas, he said.
Source: http://www.news.theusalinks.com/2012/12/18/south-korea-to-pick-new-president/
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