SEOUL, South Korea — South Koreans were voting for a new president on Wednesday, with an outspoken liberal ruling party candidate and a conservative former prosecutor considered the favourites in a tight race that has aggravated domestic divisions, according to AP.
Pre-election surveys showed liberal Lee Jae-myung, a former governor of South Korea’s most populous Gyeonggi province, and his main conservative challenger, ex-prosecutor general Yoon Suk Yeol, with neck-and-neck support, way ahead of 10 other contenders. The winner will take office in May and serve a single five-year term as leader of the world’s 10th-largest economy.
Lee and Yoon conducted one of the most bitter political campaigns in recent memory. Both recently agreed that if they won they would not conduct politically motivated investigations against the other, but many believe the losing candidate could still face criminal probes over some of the scandals they’re been implicated in.
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 skeptical 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 centered 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 an omicron-driven Covid-19 surge. On Wednesday, South Korea’s health authorities reported 342,446 new virus cases, another record high.
After the voting began at 6am, masks-wearing voters waited in long lines at some polling stations before putting on vinyl gloves or using hand sanitizers to cast ballots. People infected with the coronavirus were to vote after regular voting ends Wednesday evening.
About 44 million South Koreans aged 18 or order 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 per cent seven hours into voting on Wednesday, when including early voting ballots, the National Election Commission said.
Election officials said vote-counting may take longer than usual because of the extended voting time for Covid-19 patients and that the winner may not be clear until early Thursday.
Ahead of the vote, Jeong Eun-yeong, a 48-year-old Seoul resident, said she was agonizing over which candidate is “the lesser of two evils.”
“Nobody around me seems happy about voting” for either Lee or Yoon, she said. “We need a leader who would be really devoted to improving the lives of working-class citizens.”
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