-Caveat Lector- http://www.iht.com/articles/80949.html
Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com Roh wins presidency in Seoul Howard W. French/NYT The New York Times Friday, December 20, 2002 His policy on North at odds with Bush's SEOUL Roh Moo Hyun, a liberal lawyer who urges continued engagement with North Korea and greater autonomy from the United States, narrowly triumphed Thursday in a tight presidential election. With about 99 percent of the votes counted, Roh had 48.9 percent and Lee Hoi Chang had 46.6 percent. The victory of Roh, 56, the candidate of the governing Millennium Democratic Party, sets South Korea and the United States, close military and economic partners, on the most divergent diplomatic paths they have followed in a half century of alliance. The Bush administration has spent the last three months pressing traditional friends like Japan and newer ones, like Russia and China, to heavily ratchet up the pressure on North Korea to force it to abandon a once-secret nuclear weapons program and to end its missile sales in the Middle East and elsewhere. Roh, however, staked his campaign on continued engagement with North Korea and has forcefully ruled out deadlines for compliance or economic sanctions to force South Korea's impoverished communist neighbor to respect its international engagements. By contrast, his main rival, Lee Hoi Chang, a conservative former supreme court justice who lost even more narrowly to Kim Dae Jung five years ago, had said that South Korea should suspend its assistance to the North until it cooperated on a host of issues, from arms control to family reunifications. Roh's commitment to engagement with North Korea, the most important legacy of his political mentor, Kim, has been so pronounced at times that it produced a last-minute turn of events that many here had thought could cost him the election. In the final day of campaigning, Wednesday, Roh's comments about North Korea shocked a former rival candidate and late supporter, Chung Mong Joon, scion of the Hyundai empire, causing him to drop their painstakingly arranged alliance. In that pre-election speech, with Chung standing nearby, Roh said, "If the U.S. and North Korea start a war, we will stop it." Some took that to imply that South Korea would take a neutral position in any dispute between the United States and North Korea. Later, through a spokesman, Chung denounced Roh's speech, saying "the United States is our ally and our view is that the U.S. has no reason to fight North Korea." Chung's abrupt withdrawal of support was featured on the front pages of all of the country's newspapers Thursday morning, and most commentators assumed it would devastate Roh's chances, especially since its left him with no time to recover. The two men forged their alliance only last month after a hastily arranged primary election aimed at producing a candidacy that could defeat Lee, whom opinion surveys had until then consistently ranked as the front-runner. Roh, who had always placed third in the polls, defeated Chung in the primary and was immediately catapulted into the front-runner's position. On Thursday afternoon, with many of his campaign workers looking demoralized over Chung's embarrassing defection and appearing to assume defeat, Roh restated the assertive diplomatic position he has taken throughout the three-week campaign. "We must have dialogue with the North and with the U.S.," Roh told a crowd in Seoul on Thursday. "In this way, we must make sure that the North-U.S. dispute does not escalate into a war. Now the Republic of Korea must take a central role. We cannot have a war." South Korean politics have a long history of treacherous twists and bold dirty tricks. In the last election, the national intelligence service reportedly sought to pay North Korea to stage a border incident in order to boost the conservative candidate. So alternative theories abounded about Chung's motives, with people invoking everything from a fear of a vendetta against Hyundai if Lee won to heavy backstage lobbying by Washington. "Almost everyone expected that Chung's move would do a lot more damage," said Yim Young Soon, a political scientist at Sung- kyunkwan University. "In the end, the fact that Chung defaulted seemed to solidify Roh's support. "On the North Korean nuclear threat, the conventional wisdom said it would help Lee Hoi Chang, but people who live close to a demilitarized zone turned out to prefer Roh's more peaceful approach." If relations with North Korea have been at the center of the campaign from the very start, South Korea's ties with the United States have been its barely concealed subtext. In recent weeks, the country has seen some of the biggest demonstrations in a generation in Seoul and other cities to protest the recent acquittal of two U.S. Army personnel in the death of two schoolgirls who were crushed by their armored vehicle in June. The outpouring of anti-American sentiment appeared to give a strong boost to the candidacy of Roh, who advocated the outright withdrawal of the United States' 37,000 troops from South Korea when he was a labor lawyer in the 1980s. The protests appeared to put Lee, whose diplomatic views are close to those of the Bush administration, on the defensive. He appeared awkward expressing sympathy for some of the demonstrators' demands, such as the need for a revision of the Status of Forces Agreement, the legal framework governing the rights of American troops here. Already assured of strong support from the young and the working classes, Roh edged toward the center, repeatedly stating that his opposition to American bases was mistaken, adding that he valued the country's alliance with the United States. He also reportedly told a visiting American diplomat that he had "grown more realistic." Roh's difficult challenge now is to reconcile the dual yearnings of South Korea's sophisticated and increasingly affluent younger generations for more autonomy from the United States and reduced tensions with North Korea with his country's continued heavy reliance on American security guarantees. "The challenge will be between accommodating popular aspirations and meeting the demands of the Bush Administration," said Scott Snyder, Korea representative of the Asia Society. "The new president is going to face critical decisions in three areas - redefining the relationship with the U.S., managing relations with North Korea and reorienting Koreas relations in the regional context." Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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