SOUTH KOREA: A potent mix of anti-Americanism and differing approaches to North Korea has made for a bad-tempered election in South Korea. As David McNeill reports, voters cast their verdict today.
South Korean voters are being offered a clear choice in the country's closest election between a social democrat who takes a conciliatory line with its unpredictable northern neighbour and a conservative who echoes Washington's tougher line.
When South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung picked up his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo two years ago, he said he had spent much of his political life fighting the idea that democracy could never take root in his country.
Today, as Mr Kim hands over the keys to the presidential office of a country where free elections are just 15 years old, evidence of the vibrant democracy he struggled for is all around, but it's doubtful if this is exactly what he had in mind. The former dissident has seen his popularity plummet as the press hounds him over allegations of corruption and nepotism, and strikes continue to rattle the economy, and he will leave office with the sound of mass demonstrations against the country's security treaty with the US ringing in his ears.
The protests have helped set the tone for a bad-tempered contest in which the two leading candidates have staked victory on very different approaches to the election's key issues: relations with the country's volatile northern neighbour and how to respond to Washington's hawkish demands to up the ante against Pyongyang.
"It's an exciting political event because in the past the major themes were regional and factional," says Ms Lee Kyong-hee, editor-in-chief of The Korea Herald. "This time they are dominated by international issues, especially Korea's relationship with the US."
Like Ireland, the faultlines of a violent partition run through the South's political terrain. The candidate from Mr Kim's Millennium Democratic Party is Mr Roh Moo-hyun (56), a former labour rights lawyer who wants to continue the party's "sunshine" policy of using economic aid and diplomatic support for the North to bring it in from the cold.
Pyongyang's decision to restart its mothballed nuclear programme has enabled his opponent, Mr Lee Hoi chang (67) of the Grand National Party, to accuse Mr Kim and his party of playing into the North's hands. The former supreme court judge says five years of catering to Pyongyang have brought nothing except the threat of nuclear weapons.
Many of South Korea's 35 million voters believe this puts Mr Lee much closer to the line of the Bush administration, which wants North Korea's nuclear programme frozen before any more aid is doled out. Younger voters, in particular, clearly prefer the more conciliatory approach of Mr Roh, who says cutting off lifelines to the crippled North Korean economy as winter sets in risks famine and possibly war.
The feeling that Washington is fuelling tensions has helped stoke anti-American sentiment, and comes not long after a US armoured vehicle crushed two schoolgirls on a country road. The incident, and the acquittal of the soldiers involved by a closed military court, have sparked the country's largest demonstrations for years and led to wider calls for the withdrawal of 37,000 US troops.
The presidential candidates must find some way of placating this public anger while attempting to meet Washington's demands and avoiding violent confrontation with the communist North. The stakes are high, and for this reason some commentators believe that when the polls close, the level of rhetoric will drop considerably.
"Both men will have to tone things down once they get into power. This is such an important issue, globally as well as regionally," says the Korean Herald's Ms Lee.
All this takes place amid intense debate about the future direction of the South Korean economy, which has recovered strongly since the disastrous crash of 1997/98, but which is now heading once again for stormy seas. Unemployment and corporate and public debt is still high, and the business-friendly Mr Lee favours tough Thatcherite medicine of business deregulation, tax cuts and labour flexibility.
Mr Roh wants tougher corporate regulation and initiatives to tackle the growing gap between Korea's rich and poor. Given his background in labour rights and his links to the country's famously combative industrial unions, he is viewed with suspicion by many in the business community.
The contest has emerged as the closest in the country's history and while public polls are banned, some are predicting Mr Roh may have the edge. Older voters heavily favour his more conservative opponent and, with memories of the time when free elections were illegal still fresh, are more likely to get to the polling booths. But a majority of the two-thirds of the eligible voters who are under 50 may opt for Mr Roh, if they can be persuaded to actually vote.
Either way, the election results will be closely watched in Washington, which badly needs a stable and loyal South Korea in its global "war on terror", in which Pyongyang is one of the targets.