South Korea’s conservative former top prosecutor, who has called for a stronger US security guarantee to neutralize North Korean nuclear threats, won the main opposition party’s hotly contested nomination for next March’s presidential election on Friday. Recent opinion surveys showed Yoon Suk Yeol would be locked in a tight race with Lee Jae-myung, the outspoken liberal ruling party candidate, who has vowed to take an appeasement policy on North Korea and adopt pragmatic diplomacy between Washington and Beijing.
The close race between the two candidates will likely further intensify severe domestic polarization in South Korea at a time it faces growing North Korean nuclear threats, an intense US-China rivalry and various economic woes.
A victory for Yoon could lead to South Korea taking steps to bolster its military alliance with the United States while its ties with North Korea and China may sour.
If elected, Lee would push for greater ties with North Korea but he may not be able to convince the country to abandon its nuclear program, possibly sharing the legacy of his party colleague and dovish current President Moon Jae-in, whose single five-year term ends in May.
In the opposition People Power Party’s convention on Friday, party authorities announced that Yoon garnered 47.8% of the votes cast by party members and general citizens, beating his main rival Hong Joon-pyo with 41.5% and two other competitors.
“The government must be very frightened and feeling bitter pains about my victory at the party primary,” Yoon said in an acceptance speech. “I’ll surely achieve a shift in power ... I’ll surely rebuild a new Republic of Korea.”
Yoon, 60, has spent most of his professional career as a prosecutor but is a novice in party politics.
He was also previously Moon’s prosecutor general, who led the president’s contentious anti-corruption campaign that largely focused on conservatives including those aligned with the People Power Party. But Yoon was later embroiled in high-profile political strife with Moon’s allies after some of his investigations targeted Moon associates.