Korean Election Gets Interesting

The standoff over North Korean nuclear weapons and a wave of anti-Americanism have turned what would have been a run-of-the-mill election in South Korea into one of the country’s most important.

South Korean voters go to the polls Thursday to choose a president to succeed Kim Dae Jung, the Nobel Peace laureate, barred by the constitution from seeking another five-year term. The leading contenders are Roh Moo Hyun, 56, a self-educated labor lawyer who is considered Kim’s protege, and former Prime Minister Lee Hoi Chang, 67, the most prominent voice of conservatism in the South Korean establishment.

Although Roh is anywhere from 3 to 8 percentage points ahead, the candidates have switched places so many times in the topsy-turvy race and there are so many undecided voters that pollsters are saying it is too close to call.

Up to a few months ago, the conventional wisdom was that South Korea’s relations with the North would undergo mostly cosmetic adjustments if the conservatives took power. But the crisis with North Korea has sharpened the ideological contrasts to where the race looks like a classic struggle between a left- and a right-of-center candidate, between a maverick and an elder statesman, between new and old.

To a certain extent, it is also a referendum on how South Korea should handle its obstreperous neighbor and the role to be played by the United States in keeping the peace.

“There are real existential decisions that voters have to make in this election. The most important of them is how we define our relationship with the United States,” said Kim Kyong Won, a former South Korean ambassador to Washington and a supporter of the Lee camp.

Roh promises to continue with Kim Dae Jung’s “sunshine policy” of generous financial aid, cultural and business exchanges and investment despite the North’s avowed intention to continue with its nuclear program. He unequivocally rejects President Bush’s call to suspend aid until the North shows evidence of compliance, and he is not much more favorably inclined toward U.S. policy on Iraq or Afghanistan.

“Distrust and hatred will only breed more distrust and hatred,” Roh said last week as his campaign bus whisked him from a rally in the port city of Inchon to the airport. “We must persuade North Korea that it must change, that it must work with the rest of the world, that it must work with the United States and give up its weapons. There is no other solution.”

Brushing aside suggestions that he is anti-American, Roh said: “If you want to have successful U.S.-Korean relations, it is not a matter of having a [Korean] president who always says the same thing as the Americans. If the president thinks rationally, that will be more helpful in the end.”

In contrast, Lee emphasizes his country’s historical alliance with the United States as the basis for dealing with North Korea.

“The relationship between the United States and Korea is a unique friendship that has to be maintained,” he said during a break between campaign appearances.

The head of the opposition Grand National Party, Lee was so narrowly defeated in the 1997 presidential race by Kim that some early news reports called the race incorrectly. He has spent much of Kim’s term tweaking what he calls the “leftist government” for being too indulgent with North Korea.

“For the last five years, we have been catering to North Korea, being led around by our noses by Pyongyang,” Lee said at a news conference Sunday. Though he has endorsed continued aid to North Korea and dialogue with the communist state, he backs the Bush position that such measures should wait until the North backs down on its nuclear program.

The resumes of the candidates also mirror their opposing views and backgrounds. Roh made his name as a human rights lawyer in the 1980s. Whereas Lee made a well-publicized visit to Washington earlier this year, giving an appearance that he is the anointed favorite of the White House, Roh wears as almost a badge of honor the fact that he has never been to the United States.

Roh comes from a poor family and didn’t attend college or law school, passing the bar exam after educating himself. Lee is a product of South Korea’s best schools and a well-heeled family. He is considered to be more sympathetic to the chaebol, the giant South Korean conglomerates, such as Samsung and Daewoo.

Breakdowns of the poll show Roh to be the favorite of those in their 20s and 30s, while older voters prefer Lee by a wide margin.

“Lee Hoi Chang represents stability, and Roh Moo Hyun represents the aspirations of the future,” says Scott Snyder of the Asia Foundation.

Since the spring, when the presidential season kicked off in earnest, there have been many reversals of fortune. At one point, Roh was as much as 26 points ahead in the polls. But a series of corruption scandals involving President Kim’s sons nearly sank the ruling Millennium Democratic Party and Roh’s candidacy with it. Then the departure last month of World Cup organizer Chung Mong Jun from the contest and his endorsement of Roh brought the flagging campaign fresh energy.

In recent months, the presidential campaign has been buffeted by each new development in the ongoing standoff with North Korea -- a familiar phenomenon: It has been so common over the years for such crises to arise in election seasons that there is a special term, buk poong, or “northern winds.”

The revelation in October that North Korea was trying to secretly enrich uranium was thought to spell the end of Roh’s candidacy because it was widely assumed that the misdeeds of the North always benefit conservatives at the polls. But it doesn’t seem to be happening that way.

Although Lee supporters argue that the experienced candidate is needed in a time of potential crisis, the Roh campaign has been hammering away at the notion that a Lee victory will mean confrontation with North Korea and maybe war.

“Lee Hoi Chang is too rigid toward North Korea. The whole thing could snap. It’s too dangerous,” said Song Se Taek, a Roh supporter waving his candidate’s trademark yellow balloons at the rally in Inchon.

Polls suggest that an even bigger influence on the election has come from the acquittals last month of two GIs who were court-martialed on charges of negligent homicide after running over two schoolgirls with a mine-clearing vehicle. The acquittals unleashed a groundswell of resentment over the role of the 37,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and a movement in favor of changes in the Status of Forces Agreement with the United States.

Even though Lee quickly joined the chorus demanding a personal apology from Bush over the accident and signed a petition calling for revisions in the forces agreement -- something Roh refused to sign, saying it was inappropriate as a candidate -- the resulting anti-American momentum has worked in favor of Roh.

An American official in Seoul who asked not to be quoted by name said: “Our position is that we will work with either one of them. A healthy and strong bilateral relationship is not going to change regardless of who is elected.”

“Neither one of them is an extremist,” he added.

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Chi Jung Nam of The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.