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South Koreans vote in key polls fueled
y high emotions over impeachment
7 A pjfTAggieland Depot"!^
Diploma Framing
www.aggieland-depot.com
Culpepper Plaza • 695-1422
By Sang-Hun Choe
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEOUL, South Korea —
outh Koreans voted Thursday
n tightly contested parliamen
tary elections that could
eshape relations with the
United States over Iraq and
North Korea and decide the
future of impeached President
Roh Moo-hyun.
Roh was not vying for a
seat in the 299-seat National
Assembly, but the results were
seen as a public referendum
on the suspended leader’s rule.
> Roh has pledged to resign if
the pro-government Uri Party
fares poorly.
The elections also could
introduce a rare, liberal-lean-
ng parliament with implica
tions for the country’s rela
tions with North Korea and the
United States.
Dominated by conserva
tives, the parliament has
PM checked two successive liberal
governments’ attempts to
shape a foreign policy more
ndependent of the United
States, the country’s tradition
al ally, and to boost exchanges
with North Korea despite its
nuclear weapons programs
and human rights violations.
The National Election
Commission expected a voter
turnout of over 60 percent,
higher than the previous elec
tion’s 57.2 percent, reflecting
high emotion
over last
month’s parlia-
m e n t a r y
impeachment of
Roh, the coun
try’s first since
its founding in
1948.
Seven hours
South Korean
democracy is at a
crossroads.
into the polling,
about 38.9 per
cent of the coun
try’s 35.6 million
eligible voters
had cast ballots.
Initial results were expected
later Thursday.
“Everyone should vote,”
Roh urged after voting with
First Lady Kwon Yang-sook at
a school for the speaking- and
hearing-impaired near the pres
idential office.
Vice President Dick
Cheney was to arrive in Seoul
before polls close Thursday
evening. He was expected to
meet Prime Minister Goh
Chung Dong-young
Uri leader
Kun, the acting president, to
discuss North Korea, the
U.S.-South Korean alliance
and South Korea’s pledge to
send 3,600 troops to Iraq. The
United States keeps about
37,000 troops in South Korea.
The Uri Party
was once fore
cast to take an
easy majority in
the National
Assembly, riding
a backlash
against the
impeachment.
Surveys suggest
ed about seven in
10 South
Koreans opposed
the move.
If the Uri
Party wins, it
would strengthen Roll's hand
as the Constitutional Court
rules on whether to uphold his
impeachment or restore his
executive powers. Roh is not a
Uri Party member but has said
he plans to join.
“South Korean democracy
is at a crossroads,” Uri
leader Chung Dong-young
said after voting.
But local media say the
party’s lead has slipped, after
Chung told old South
Koreans to “stay home and
rest” and let young voters
decide the future on election
day. The remark angered
older South Koreans proud of
pulling the nation out pover
ty after the 1950-53 Korean
War and making it a global
trade giant.
The GNP rallied older vot
ers by electing Park Geun-hye
as its head. Park is the daugh
ter of former President Park
Chung-hee, the father of
South Korea’s stunning indus
trialization in the 1960s and
70s, who remains popular
among conservatives.
In an effort to siphon sup
port from the Uri, the GNP also
promised to start pursuing
“more flexible and future-ori
ented North Korean policies.”
Park pledged to visit the North
to foster ties.
The fellow opposition
Millennium Democratic Party,
meanwhile, wants the new par
liament to reconsider South
Korea’s Iraqi troop dispatch,
after escalating violence made
the plan unpopular.
Both the GNP and Uri sup
port the troops dispatch.
exec::
m La
for Hi:
heney pushes Asian nations to do more
to check North Korean nuclear program
led
By Tom Raum
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEOUL, South Korea — Vice President
M Cheney challenged Asian powers
hursday to do more to contain North
jCorea’s nuclear program, saying that letting
tgrow unchecked could spark a new arms
ace in the region and create a weapons
bazaar for terrorists.
“We must see this undertaking through
i its conclusion,” Cheney told a university
ludience in Shanghai, China. “Time is not
jecessarily on our side.”
He expressed clear frustration with the
jurrent diplomatic stalemate before flying
i South Korea, his last stop of a weeklong
^sia trip.
The speech was carried by China’s state
felevision without deletions or blackouts,
jhich U.S. officials took as an encouraging
jign of change.
Cheney praised China for setting up six-
by talks to persuade North Korea to dis-
nantle its nuclear program, but he prodded
thinese leaders to be more aggressive in
Iringing pressure to bear on Pyongyang.
The six-way talks include the United
States, China, Russia, Japan and the two
Koreas.
“We’ll do our level best to achieve this
objective through diplomatic means, and
through negotiations. But it is important that
we make progress in this
area,” Cheney said.
He suggested that North
Korea represented a double
threat — it could stock its
own nuclear arsenal and sell
weapons to the highest bid
der, including al-Qaida and
other terror organizations.
“The people of Asia are
particularly vulnerable to
the threats of (weapons)
proliferation,” Cheney said.
“Many countries that have
the means to develop the
deadliest weapons have refrained from
doing so.”
But he said a continued North Korean
nuclear threat could persuade other powers
in the region to develop their own nuclear
weapons, triggering a new arms race across
the region “and the likelihood that one day
We must see
this undertaking
through to its
condusion.
— Dick Cheney
U.S. vice president
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those weapons would be used.”
Cheney said recent information gleaned
from a top former Pakistani nuclear scientist
provided compelling evidence that Pyongyang
has an active atomic weapons program.
The reclusive communist government
“must understand that no one in
the region wants them to develop
those weapons,” Cheney said.
During Cheney’s Asia trip,
citizens from all three countries
he visited — Japan, China and
South Korea — were seized by
militants in Iraq. Three Japanese
hostages were released Thursday.
The South Korean and Chinese
hostages were freed earlier.
Cheney has engaged in unusu
ally blunt talk in his travels, urg-
ing allies with troops in Iraq not
to bow to pressure from militants
and telling Chinese leaders that U.S. defen
sive military sales to Taiwan are largely a
response to their own military buildup on the
Taiwan Strait.
Cheney came seeking South Korea’s sup
port on the North Korea nuclear issue.
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