South Koreans Vote for New President after Tight, Bitter Election Race

On Wednesday, South Koreans voted for a new president, with an outspoken candidate from the ruling party and a conservative former prosecutor seen as the frontrunners in a tight campaign that has exacerbated local differences, according to The Irish Examiner.

In pre-election polls, liberal Lee Jae-myung, an ex-governor of South Korea's most populous Gyeonggi province, and his major conservative competitor, former prosecutor-general Yoon Suk Yeol, were neck and neck, with eleven other candidates trailing.

The winner will assume office in May and will head the world's tenth-largest economy for a single five-year term.

Lee and Yoon conducted one of the most bitter political campaigns in recent memory.

Both recently agreed that if they won they would not carry out politically motivated investigations against the other, but many believe the losing candidate could still face criminal probes over some of the scandals in which they are implicated.

Critics say neither candidate has presented a clear strategy on how they would ease the threat from North Korea and its nuclear weapons.

They also say voters are sceptical about how both would handle international relations amid the US-China rivalry and how they would address widening economic inequality and runaway housing prices.

“Despite the significance of this year’s election, the race has centred too much on negative campaigning,” said Jang Seung-Jin, a professor at Seoul’s Kookmin University, adding that neither leading candidate laid out a convincing blueprint on how they would lead South Korea.

The election comes as South Korea has been grappling with a Covid-19 surge driven by the Omicron variant. On Wednesday, South Korea’s health authorities reported 342,446 new virus cases, another record high.

After voting began at 6am, mask-wearing voters waited in long queues at some polling stations before putting on vinyl gloves or using hand sanitiser to cast ballots. People infected with coronavirus were to vote after regular polling ended on Wednesday evening.

About 44 million South Koreans aged 18 or older are eligible to vote, out of the country’s 52 million people. About 16 million cast ballots during early voting last week.

Turnout was more than 60% seven hours into voting on Wednesday, when including early voting ballots, the National Election Commission said.