“North Korea’s Favored Candidate”, Liberal Moon Jae-in Wins South Korea Presidential Election
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
May 9, 2017
Having lost to Park Geun-hye in the 2012 presidential election, liberal Moon Jae-in is poised to become the new South Korea president according to an exit poll from today’s South Korean election, according to which Moon was estimated to have collected 41.4% of all votes. The front-runner was followed by Hong Joon-pyo of the conservative Liberty Korea Party with 23.3% . Ahn Cheol-soo of the center-left People’s Party came in third with 21.8%.
North Korea has indicated that Moon is its favored candidate, with state media recently calling on South Korean voters to “punish the puppet group of conservatives” associated with Park.
The son of North Korean refugees, Moon criticized the early installation of a U.S. missile shield on South Korean soil and has said he’d meet with Kim Jong Un under the right circumstances.
As Bloomberg observes, the left-leaning Moon has long led opinion polls in an election triggered by the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye, who was ousted in March and is now in jail while on trial for corruption charges. He has pledged a softer touch with North Korea and tougher action against family-run conglomerates that dominate Asia’s fourth-biggest economy.
After casting his vote on Tuesday, Moon issued a call for unity. “I myself will be the first to make such efforts by embracing other candidates and their parties for harmony,” he said. “I hope the people do what they can do until the end of the election but come back as one after the election for the nation’s unity.”
Moon’s expected victory is perhaps most notable because Moon’s expected victory could herald an era of rapprochement with North Korea, and an unlikely meeting of minds with Donald Trump over Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. “We are a target’: South Korean village wakes up on frontline with North. The 64-year-old liberal has positioned himself as the only candidate qualified to reunite the country after the bitter divisions that opened up over that Park’s allegedly corrupt relationship with her longtime friend and confidante Choi Soon-sil.
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