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SEOUL, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) — South Korea’s presidential election kicked off early Wednesday morning with a closely contested race pitting the daughter of a military strongman against a former human rights lawyer who was jailed for protesting against his rule.
Voting began at 6 a.m. local time at 13,542 polling stations across the country, with more than 40.4 million eligible voters set to cast their ballots. Polls close at 6 p.m., with results expected by midnight.
Opinion polls released last week showed Park Geun-hye, the candidate of the conservative ruling Saenuri Party, slightly ahead of her liberal rival Moon Jae-in, the candidate of the main center-left opposition Democratic United Party.
Still, the margin in most polls is within the margin of error and analysts say the race is too tight to be predictable and the outcome will ultimately depend on turnout.
Park Geun-hye, the 60-year-old daughter of former South Korean President Park Chung-hee, is expected to become South Korea’s first female leader and extend the conservative party’s rule for another five years.
“I will restore the middle class and expand it to 70 percent of the country,” Park said at a news conference at her campaign headquarters in Seoul on Tuesday.
Park, who served as her father’s de facto first lady after her mother’s assassination, remains popular among older voters who miss the rapid economic growth under South Korea’s 18 years of authoritarian rule.
Yet she is a nuisance to former democracy activists such as Moon Jae-in, who was jailed in 1975 for protesting against the late dictator.
Moon, 59, a former human rights lawyer and chief of staff to the late President Roh Moo-hyun, sees the election as a contest between vested interests and new political ambitions.
“It has been proven that the Saenuri Party is incapable of representing the country,” Moon Jae-in said on the last day of the campaign.
He is the only candidate among the liberal candidates after independent candidate Ahn Cheol-soo and leftist candidate Lee Chung-hee dropped out of the race and endorsed him.
Current President Lee Myung-bak’s five-year term ends early next year and under the constitution he is not eligible to run for re-election.
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