United Nations: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has addressed mounting speculation that he will run for president of South Korea, saying he will decide how to best help his country when he returns home in early January after 10 years as UN chief.

Ban told his final UN press conference that after taking some rest he plans to meet "as many people as possible," including political leaders, members of civil society and his friends. "I will really consider seriously how best and what I should and I could do for my country," he said on Friday.

Ban said South Korea is "in turmoil" following the explosive corruption scandal involving President Park Geun-hye, whose powers were suspended last week after lawmakers voted to impeach her. </s> Two major presidential hopefuls in South Korea’s biggest opposition party beat outgoing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a simulated presidential election, a local survey showed on Thursday. Moon Jae-in, former head of the main opposition Minjoo Party, is elected as president in a simulated showdown with Ban, who has been seen as the best hope…

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Also, Like us on facebook </s> SEOUL (Reuters) - As hundreds of thousands of South Koreans poured into the streets every weekend for two months to call for President Park Geun-hye to resign, the opposition’s leading contender to replace her appeared reluctant to seize the moment.

Moon Jae-in (C), former human rights lawyer and presidential candidate of the main opposition Democratic United Party, attends a campaign encouraging people to vote, in Seoul, South Korea December 19, 2012. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo

That is changing as Moon Jae-in, a 63-year-old human rights lawyer who lost the 2012 election to Park by more than a million votes, has in recent days taken a higher public profile as he seeks to lead the liberal Democratic Party into the next election and end eight years of conservative rule.

Like many on the left, he calls for sweeping reform of the chaebol - the big conglomerates that dominate the economy and have been at the heart of the current political crisis - calling them a “source of unfairness” in South Korea.

He promises to move the presidential office into a multi-purpose government building and turn the palace-like Blue House, where Park remains while a court decides her fate after she was impeached by parliament, into a public museum.

He has also said that, if elected, he would visit rival North Korea before making a trip to South Korea’s main ally, the United States. Just two North-South summits have been held since the 1950-53 Korean war that divided the peninsula.

“The people who are angry in Korea want regime change, and the most realistic option and most probable person to do that is Moon Jae-in,” Yang Jung-chul, a close aide to Moon, told Reuters.

Moon had led opinion polls in recent weeks, although a survey released on Thursday by Realmeter showed he had fallen just behind United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, by 23.1 percent to 22.2 percent.

Ban has yet to declare his candidacy or party affiliation, but has been expected to join a conservative grouping.

Moon’s popularity among liberals stems from his time as chief of staff to South Korea’s last liberal president, Roh Moo-hyun, a figure revered by the left for his experimental and anti-establishment politics that sought chaebol reform.

“Moon is a symbol of that experiment,” said Yang.

But Roh, derided by conservatives for his pursuit of engagement with North Korea that they say failed to change Pyongyang’s behavior, could also be Moon’s undoing, especially among South Korea’s elderly.

The majority of people aged over 60, most of whom are conservative, have turned out to vote in the last three presidential elections, according to National Election Commission data. In 2012, 85.9 percent of over-60s voted.

By contrast, the least-avid voting group is people in their 20s or 30s, many of whom took to the streets for the first time during recent candle-lit protests in Seoul. At the last election their turnout levels were below 65 percent.

That was high, by recent standards, for the demographic, but Moon will need to convince an even bigger share of them to turn out and vote for him in the upcoming election, which is no sure thing.

“He has a tendency to make ambiguous comments and be overly-cautious of crossing lines,” said Moon Ji-hyun, a student activist at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul. “He wasn’t in the frontlines at the early stages of the protests.”

The Constitutional Court must decide whether to uphold parliament’s Dec. 9 motion to impeach Park, which could take up to 180 days and, if successful, trigger an election two months later.

SWEET POTATO

Moon’s parents fled North Korea during the Korean War and resettled in Busan, at the south of the peninsula, where Moon grew up in a shanty town.

He was jailed in 1975 for protesting against the dictatorship of Park Chung Hee, President Park’s father, whose rule lasted 18 years. After leaving mandatory military service, where he served in the special forces, Moon became a lawyer.

As leader of the opposition last year, Moon adopted a more centrist stance to win over skeptics. But just 8 percent of those polled at the time said they thought Moon’s party was best on economic issues, compared with 44 percent for the ruling Saenuri Party.

“To win undecided voters, Moon needs to address security, diplomacy and unification, where many are distrustful of him,” said Lee Chung-hee, a politics professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul.

Moon came under fire earlier this year for revelations in a former foreign minister’s memoir that he had backed a motion to abstain from a United Nations vote against North Korea’s human rights record.

While Moon leads the race to represent his party in the election, new stars have risen.

One is Lee Jae-myung, the mayor of Seongnam, just south of Seoul, who has gone from rank outsider to third place in polls, riding the crisis with populist speeches.

By contrast, Moon’s caution and deliberate speaking style has earned him the nickname “sweet potato” - slow to cook, slow to eat, and a little difficult to swallow.

Lee, meanwhile, has been dubbed “soda” for his refreshing new take on politics.

In a recent radio interview, Moon said the Seongnam mayor was indeed like soda - refreshing but, unlike his own nickname, lacking substance. </s> Seoul, Dec 23: North Korea has mocked outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon over his apparent ambitions to run for South Korean president, calling him an opportunistic "chameleon in a human mask" who's dreaming a "hollow dream."

The North's state-run Uriminzokkiri website said on Friday that Ban's alleged presidential ambitions were absurd because the way he handled his job as UN chief for the past 10 years has left him living in "criticism and shame."

Ban has not officially declared an ambition to run for South Korean president, but he has not denied his interest either. In a meeting with South Korean reporters earlier this week, Ban said he was ready to "burn" his body in devotion for South Korea, his strongest hint yet of a presidential bid.

"If what I have learned, seen and felt during my 10-year service as UN secretary-general could help advance Korea, I am more than willing to sacrifice myself for this cause," the Jakarta Post quoted Ban as saying.

His term as United Nations Secretary-General ends on December 31. </s> Supporters of South Korea's presidential candidate Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party hold up his election poster in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, May 9, 2017. Exit polls forecast that liberal candidate Moon will win the election Tuesday to succeed ousted President Park Geun-hye. Official results weren't expected for hours, but the exit poll of about 89,000 voters at 330 polling stations, jointly commissioned by three major television stations and released just after polls closed, showed Moon receiving 41.4 percent of the vote. The sign read "Moon Jae-in".(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) </s> North Korea labels UN chief Ban Ki-moon's presidential ambitions a 'hollow dream'

Posted

North Korea has mocked outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon over his apparent ambitions to run for South Korean president, calling him an opportunistic "chameleon in a human mask" who's dreaming a "hollow dream".

The North's state-run Uriminzokkiri website said Mr Ban's alleged presidential ambitions were absurd because the way he handled his job as UN chief for the past 10 years has left him living in "criticism and shame".

The article said Mr Ban, 72, had a bad reputation in South Korea's domestic politics because he was an opportunist who "sets sail wherever winds blow and changes colours by the circumstance".

"There is an old saying that you stretch your feet no longer than your blanket will reach," Uriminzokkiri said.

"His harbouring presidential ambitions despite living in all sorts of criticism and shame could only described as an incomparably hollow, silly dream."

Mr Ban, who steps down as UN secretary-general at the end of the year after two five-year terms, has not officially declared an ambition to run for South Korean president, but he has not denied his interest either.

In a meeting with South Korean reporters in New York earlier this week, Mr Ban said he was ready to "burn" his body in devotion for South Korea, his strongest hint yet of a presidential bid.

The spotlight is on Mr Ban because there was a possibility South Korea could hold a presidential election in the coming months.

The country's opposition-controlled parliament earlier this month voted to impeach President Park Geun-hye over a corruption scandal.

If Ms Park is formally removed from office, a presidential election must be held within 60 days.

If he does make a run for the presidential Blue House, Mr Ban is likely to represent a new conservative party created by defectors from Ms Park's Saenuri Party.

AP

Topics: world-politics, korea-democratic-peoples-republic-of, korea-republic-of, asia </s> Cheonggye Plaza protest via Teddy Cross on Flickr

 

 Since news first broke about Park Geun-Hye's influence peddling scandal in October, overwhelming popular opposition meant that her impeachment was inevitable. It is a delicate time for South Korea to throw a presidential election into the mix, but that's exactly what Park's impeachment has achieved. President-elect Donald Trump has injected ambivalence into America's continued military support for regional allies, Pyongyang is getting increasingly bellicose as it barrels ahead with its efforts to develop nuclear missiles, and the historic "comfort women" agreement clinched last year between Tokyo and Seoul is now teetering on the brink. Worse, the impeachment opens the door for opposition figure Moon Jae-in to become South Korea's next president - a prospect that will see him overturn key aspects of Park's foreign policy commitments and throw the region into disarray.

While most South Koreans continue to celebrate the December 10 impeachment vote in parliament, the country's political leaders are sharpening their knives in anticipation of an early election, probably in the first quarter of 2017. Recent polls show that the two most likely contenders to win that election are the former Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki-moon, and Moon Jae-in, who until January 2016 was the chairman of the opposition Minjoo Party. While Ban Ki-moon has yet to officially throw his hat into the ring, Moon Jae-in will certainly be out to seek his revenge on Park and her conservative Saenuri party for the close defeat he suffered in 2012, which saw Park take the presidency.

With the Saenuri Party in disarray in the wake of Park's impeachment and the strong showing for Moon's Minjoo Party in parliamentary elections in April, there is a strong possibility that Moon could be the next president. Seeing how Moon harbors highly revisionist attitudes that pose dangers for the current trilateral alliance between the U.S., Japan and South Korea, tensions in the already volatile region can only rise.

Of particular concern is Moon's record of appeasing North Korea. According to the biography of Song Min-soon, who served as foreign minister under former president Roh Moo-hyun (to whom Moon was Chief of Staff), Roh's administration sought North Korea's opinion before abstaining from a UN vote in 2007 condemning Pyongyang's human rights abuses. Song alleges that Moon supported the idea - although when confronted, the latter has been evasive and has claimed that he does not remember how the decision was made. That Roh's Chief of Staff would not have been instrumental in this decision - which amounted to nothing short of a peace offering to Kim Jong-il's regime - stretches credulity.

While the Minjoo Party was founded some two and half years ago, most of its leaders are the same leaders that for 11 years opposed passing the North Korean Human Rights Act, choosing instead to direct their criticism at the opposition for "inciting" the North. This is especially worrisome given that during this time the North had shown nothing but bad faith in the six-party talks, continuing to stage nuclear tests and openly working towards developing intercontinental ballistic missiles. Taken in conjunction with the fact that Moon called for sanctions imposed on the North after the 2010 sinking of a South Korean warship to be dropped, at a time when the Kim Jong-un regime has been extraordinarily unruly, it is legitimate to wonder where Moon's loyalties reside.

Moon also seems to favor better relations with China. While Trump has softened his inflammatory stance towards South Korea and Japan over their perceived unwillingness to foot the bill for American troops stationed in the region, Moon has displayed a worrying disregard for it. The Minjoo Party is known for its criticism of the American security umbrella, but a recent delegation of Minjoo lawmakers who met in Beijing with their Chinese counterparts was particularly enraging. The topic discussed? Finding out "Chinese sentiments regarding THAAD", according to one of the lawmakers. The move attests that Minjoo is still susceptible to consult with foreign powers on matters of South Korean policy, thereby making South Korea susceptible to foreign pressure. To say the least, it is disconcerting to see Moon putting Beijing's concerns about the defense system threatening China's security above the security of South Koreans themselves.

When it comes to regional allies, on the other hand, Moon takes a hawkish stance. He has declared the 2015 "comfort women" agreement struck between South Korea and Japan after lengthy negotiations to be "null and void". Incidentally, Minjoo is in agreement with Pyongyang, which has called the deal "humiliating". By rejecting Tokyo's offer of one billion yen (US$8.3 million) in compensation for the remaining victims of Japan's wartime behavior during its colonial rule of Korea, Moon is rebuffing Japan's bid to present a united front against the shared enemy beyond the 38th parallel and driving a worrisome wedge between two strategic American allies.

If Moon comes to power, North Korea will have little incentive to halt its rapidly advancing nuclear program, and China may be in a stronger position to pressure Seoul into getting its way. Moon may prove himself incapable or unwilling to stand up to the North and defend his own people, undermining the stability and security of the region. As Park's impeachment has plunged Seoul into chaos, South Koreans may be in for a truly humiliating government indeed. </s> MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Ki-moon was born June 13, 1944 in North Chungcheong Province in the Republic of Korea. As a teenager, Ban won a contest organized by the Red Cross and was awarded a trip to the United States. During his US visit, the future UN chief met then US President John F. Kennedy.

In 1970, he graduated from Seoul National University receiving a bachelor's degree in international relations and in 1985 earned a Master of Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Ki-moon worked for the South Korean embassy in India and served as first secretary of South Korea’s UN Permanent Observer Mission in New York. He also held diplomatic positions at the South Korean Embassy in the United States.

In 1990-1992, he served as Director-General for American Affairs and in 1995-1996 served as Deputy Foreign Minister for Policy Planning and was Ambassador to Austria in 1998-2000.

In 1999, Ban headed the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization.

In 2001, as South Korea held the rotating presidency at the 56th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, Ban was appointed to be the chief of staff to the General Assembly president.

Three years later he became South Korea’s foreign and trade minister.

He held numerous nuclear talks with North Korea and in 2005, as foreign minister, played a crucial role during the fourth round of six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue in Beijing.

In January 2007, Ban Ki-moon entered upon his duties as the UN secretary-general replacing Kofi Annan. He was unanimously reelected to hold this office in June 2011. His second five-year term expires at midnight on December 31, 2016.

UN Secretary-General-designate Antonio Guterres will take over from Ban Ki-moon on January 1, 2017.

Ban Ki-moon was awarded the Order of Service Merit, 1st class, by the government of South Korea three times. He also received a number of awards from foreign states.

Ban is regarded as a candidate for South Korean presidency, though he has not announced a decision to join the presidential race to date. He has higher popular support compared to the other candidates, according to a poll published on December 26.

The outdoing UN secretary-general speaks Russian and French. He is married and has three daughters and a son. </s> (SEOUL) — Liberal Moon Jae-in has declared victory in South Korea's presidential election after his two major rivals conceded defeat Tuesday.

The election sets up the country's first liberal rule in a decade.

It follows months of political turmoil caused by ousted President Park Geun-hye's corruption scandal.

The concessions by conservative Hong Joon-pyo and centrist Ahn Cheol-soo came after exit polls forecast that Moon would win.
United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon and liberal candidate Moon Jae-in plan to contest the position vacated by Park Geun-hye.