South Korea: Conservative Yoon Wins Tight Presidential Race
By Staff, Agencies
The opposition conservative Yoon Suk-yeol has won South Korea's presidential election, Yonhap reported early Thursday.
After a bitter, hard-fought election campaign, Yoon, formerly a top government prosecutor who has never held elected office, was declared winner early Thursday after rival Lee Jae-myung from the incumbent Democratic Party conceded defeat.
“This is a victory of the great South Korean people,” Yoon told cheering supporters, who were chanting his name at the country's National Assembly.
Despite a campaign dominated by mud-slinging between front-runners Yoon and Lee, voter turnout was 77.1 percent, including record early voting, with interest strong and the policy stakes high in the country of some 52 million.
The two parties are ideologically apart, and Yoon's victory looks set to usher in a more hawkish, fiscally conservative regime after five years under outgoing President Moon Jae-in's dovish liberals.
It is also a dramatic victory for the opposition People Power party, who were left in disarray in 2017 after their president Park Gung-hye was impeached.
On the campaign trail, Yoon threatened to investigate outgoing President Moon Jae-in, citing unspecified "irregularities."
But in his victory speech, he struck a more conciliatory tone, telling the country after a divisive race: "The competition is over now, and everyone must make joint efforts to become one."
The front-runners, who were both so unpopular that local media branded it the "election of the unfavorable," have been neck and neck for months. Exit polls showed the candidates separated by less than a percentage point.
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