Liberal party wins in S. Korea

SEOUL -- South Korean voters swept the Uri Party allied to impeached President Roh Moon Hyun into power yesterday in key legislative elections. The vote handed control of the National Assembly to a party whose top leadership advocates rapprochement with North Korea and greater independence from the United States, Seoul's traditional ally.

Uri's victory marked the emergence of South Korea's first liberal-dominated legislature since the 1961 coup that brought longtime military dictator Park Chung Hee to power on what is now the Cold War's last frontier. The electoral battle pitted conservative older generations against liberal voters in their 20s and 30s, who turned the formerly tiny Uri Party into the nation's largest political force and signaled what could be new frictions ahead between the Bush administration and one of its most strategically important allies.

With 94 percent of the ballots counted, the Uri Party more than tripled its representation in the 299-seat National Assembly to at least 150 seats, taking majority control from the establishment-dominated Grand National Party (GNP), which gained at least 122 seats, according to official tallies cited by South Korea's KBS news.

Yesterday's elections were largely seen as a referendum on Roh's surprise impeachment last month -- an act applauded by South Koreans who still harbor memories of the Korean War, but viewed by younger voters, who now make up almost half the electorate, as a political coup against Roh's more liberal stances on North Korea, the US-South Korean alliance and the direction of national economic policy.

Roh followed the path of his predecessor, former president and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Kim Dae Jung, in seeking to extend olive branches of economic exchange and dialogue to North Korea after decades of Cold War enmity. But both Roh and Kim faced conservative-dominated legislatures that curbed their attempts to shape new foreign and economic policies for South Korea.

The Grand National Party impeached Roh for committing an electoral infraction and for allegedly being unfit to rule following a series of corruption scandals that brought down several of his top aides. But South Korean prosecutors have implicated the GNP in far broader cases of corruption that have severely undermined the party's reputation. Many people observed Roh granting prosecutors a new mandate to break the traditional ties between politicians and big business, and they saw his impeachment as hypocritical.

The victory for the Uri Party will likely put added pressure on South Korea's Constitutional Court to overturn Roh's impeachment and restore the now-suspended president to power, perhaps as early as next month, analysts say.

Analysts say the rise of the Uri could ultimately strain US relations with Seoul. Since Roh took office last year, Seoul has pressed the Bush administration to adopt a more flexible approach toward North Korea's nuclear weapons programs, and has been sensitive to any suggestion from Washington that military force might be used to resolve the conflict. Some members of the Uri Party -- although not Roh himself -- have opposed the planned dispatch of more than 3,000 South Korean troops to Iraq. Additionally sensitive is the realignment of the 37,000 US troops still stationed in South Korea, where polls indicated anti-American sentiment has been rising even as younger generations are increasingly viewing North Koreans in more sympathetic terms.