South Koreans Vote in Closely Fought Presidential Race

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Voters were choosing a successor to President Lee Myung-bak, who by law cannot seek a second term. The race pits the conservative governing party’s candidate, Park Geun-hye, 60, daughter of the late dictator Park Chung-hee, against her liberal rival Moon Jae-in, 59, a former human rights lawyer who was once imprisoned for opposing her father. With both campaigns having featured similar messages about a more inclusive economy and less tension with the North, the candidates were hoping to win over what appeared to be a large number of still-undecided voters, who polls have indicated want a new direction for the country but are disenchanted with the established parties.

Few analysts interviewed Wednesday were confident about predicting the outcome. "This is probably the most closely contested presidential election ever in South Korean history," said Choi Jin, head of the Institute of Presidential Leadership in Seoul. By midafternoon, turnout was higher than it had been at the same point in the past two presidential elections, according to the election authorities.

If elected, Ms. Park, a five-term lawmaker, would be the first female president of South Korea, which is still a male-dominant society despite the inroads women have made in corporate and government hierarchies in recent years. She would also be the first child of a past president to hold the office.

Ms. Park’s popularity is due in large part to her father, who remains a polarizing figure 33 years after his assassination by his disgruntled spy chief in 1979. Those who braved freezing weather in downtown Seoul to hear her speak on Tuesday, the last day of campaigning, were mostly people in their 50s and older, a generation that tends to harbor nostalgia for Park Chung-hee’s 18-year authoritarian rule, during which the South Korean economy skyrocketed.

"I have no family to take care of. I have no child to inherit my properties," Ms. Park, who has never married, said Tuesday. "You, the people, are my only family and to make you happy is the reason I do politics, and if elected, I would govern like a mother dedicated to her family."

Ms. Park’s most ardent critics, who form the basis of Mr. Moon’s support, are young voters whose disenchantment with the political establishment has deepened as their job opportunities have dwindled in recent years, even as the country’s politically connected conglomerates have made record profits. Another core group of Moon supporters is older voters who remember Park Chung-hee not as the overseer of economic revival, but as a ruthless dictator whose regime tortured dissidents and framed them as Communist subversives, and who banned such things as rock music and miniskirts. In the last years of her father’s rule, Ms. Park, whose mother was killed by another assassin’s bullet in 1974, effectively served as his first lady, and many of her progressive critics see her bid for the presidential Blue House as an attempt to turn the clock back.

"When I was living in poverty, she was living like a princess in the Blue House; when I was fighting dictatorship, she was at the very heart of it," Mr. Moon, who was chief of staff under President Lee’s liberal predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun, has said. "Her Saenuri Party is disqualified and unable to represent our nation. It must be replaced with a brand-new team."

Both candidates have promised to cut college tuition by half, spend more on welfare and provide small businesses with economic protection from the unpopular, family-controlled conglomerates known as chaebol. They have also said that President Lee’s hard-line policy on North Korea has failed and that they would attempt to engage the regime with both dialogue and aid.

Poll numbers released on Dec. 12, the last day new survey results could legally be published, indicated that Ms. Park was leading Mr. Moon by an average of about 2 percent, but they found Mr. Moon to be narrowing the gap. People in their 50s and older preferred Ms. Park, while Mr. Moon maintained a dominant lead among voters in their 20s and 30s. The country’s jobless rate for those 15 to 29 years old is more than double the national average of 3.1 percent.

Turnout has historically been stronger among older South Korean voters. Mr. Moon spent the last week exhorting young South Koreans to punish the government of Mr. Lee, which has recently been plagued by corruption scandals involving his relatives and former aides, by rejecting Ms. Park. He also stressed that the country’s conglomerate-dominated economic model, long credited for fueling growth but increasingly blamed for widening the gap between rich and poor, was established under Ms. Park’s father.

Still, Mr. Moon’s Democratic United Party, itself mired in political infighting, may be hard-pressed to characterize itself as anti-establishment among young voters who have expressed disdain for both established parties. Many young voters had enthusiastically supported another liberal candidate, Ahn Cheol-soo, a software mogul and university dean with no political experience, but Mr. Ahn withdrew from the race last month and backed Mr. Moon.

"This election will be decided by the voter turnout, by how many young people vote," said Kim Ji-yoon, a polling expert at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul.

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Best in Blogs: Are the Dodgers Worth More than The Scream? Plus How Halo 4 Could Sway the Presidential Election

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At GamePolitics.com, "Where Politics and Video Games Collide," they must be popping the champagne bottles after a blockbuster story landed in their narrow wheelhouse this week. "How Halo 4 Could Impact the Presidential Election," shouted a midweek headline: "When Microsoft decided to pick November 6, 2012 as the release date for Halo 4, did they take into account that the date is actually pretty damned important to the future direction of the country for the next four years? By choosing that date have they given gamers in the 18 - 34 age group an excuse to be more apathetic about voting than usual?" Wait, so Halo 4 is being released on election day to drive down the youth vote and hurt Obama's re-election bid? MovieBob at The Escapist has assembled a video exploring the origin of the theory and how much there is to it. "Since this is the Internet, the second biggest breeding ground for conspiracy theories outside of isolated well-armed cabins in the Montana wilderness, imaginings of a nefarious conspiracy being at work quickly took shape," the video says. Microsoft already dismissed the conflict as "purely coincidental." It's really possible to buy Halo 4 and vote on the same day. Though as David Their at Forbes blogged: "it doesn't do much to dispel the myth of gamers as clueless and detached when it comes to the real world."

The Blackberry 10 may not sway a national election, but the soon-to-be-released smartphone "comes during really interesting times," says Beta News. Its maker, Research in Motion, "gets one more shot, one last call to battle. It's do or die." The early verdict? "Overall, I am not seeing anything that will save this company, but there are a few nice features in the new OS," says 9 to 5 Mac. With a virtual keyboard, "RIM is putting the last nail in the physical keyboard coffin." There's also a kooky camera feature (video here) that allows you to step back in time when you miss a shot." Huh? "The camera is just taking shots from the time the camera app is open and caching them for later browsing." Mashable explains how that feature could be useful: "The hypothetical situation was when someone...closes their eyes during a shot." That could come I nhandy but also illustrates RIM's ongoing effort to woo consumers when it really should be focusing on corporate users. Mashable says "RIM is fighting the wrong war," by which it does not mean Halo 4. Early feedback from popular app makers is mixed. "Some were completely opposed to making apps for the BlackBerry because of RIM's uncertain future, while others kept an open mind," says Bits.

Two items sold this week at record-smashing prices, the Los Angeles Dodgers ($2.15 billion) and a version of Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream" ($119.9 million). "The Scream is officially the world's most absurdly overpriced painting," says Gizmodo. "This version of The Scream is unique in a few ways," notes Geekosystem. "This one is said to be the most colorful and vibrant of the four versions of the painting, and is the only version where one of the two people in the background look out toward the cityscape." Baseball teams still cost more. By way of comparison, MTR Media notes that The Scream now "costs about the same as the remainder of Carl Crawford's Red Sox contract."

It's been said that there are two kinds of people: those who think that the different ways in which Rihanna and Beyonce use social media can tell us all about our future, and those who don't. At the Bits blog, Jenna Wortham appears to fall into the first category. Apparently the two divas "sit on opposite sides of the spectrum... I've noticted something intriguing about the way they each use the social Web and what it means about a future where everyone has some sort of presence online," she blogs. So "will you be a Beyonce, and present a carefully groomed version of yourself to the Web? Or will you take Rihanna's road and throw caution to the wind, baring your life, your friends and occasionally, your unmentionables?" Gosh, umm, is there another option? "Of course, there's also a third possibility," The Verge suggests, "that both methods are just as carefully or unconsciously deployed, the one no more "real" than the other."

Or you could have the social media style of "Sarah Phillips," who was hired as a columnist for ESPN.com based on some message board posts, tweets, and fake profile photos that look pretty but aren't really her. A new Deadspin investigation asks: "Is Sarah Phillips for real? Thirteen months ago, she was an unknown message-board participant at Covers.com, a gambling website. Then Covers plucked her from the boards and gave her a weekly column, sight unseen. Five months after that, she was tapped by Lynn Hoppes, an editor for ESPN.com, to write a weekly column for ESPN's Page 2--once the home of writers like David Halberstam, Ralph Wiley, and Hunter S. Thompson...The swiftness of her ascent gave her that weird sort of internet half-celebrity whereby she became moderately famous before anyone really knew who she was." It turns out that Phillips may be behind several Internet scams. Awful Announcing does its own lengthy investigation and determines that "the Sarah Phillips mystery goes way beyond ESPN and into the farthest reaches of the Twitterverse." It also reaches into the lunacy of what qualifies soemoen to become a columnist these days. Asks Buzzfeed: "Will there be legal fallout from all of this, and if so to what extent? Will Aaron Nilsen get his money or his Twitter account back? Was this all secretly a sequel to Catfish?"

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