Taipei, Dec. 21 (CNA) Hope for "a bigger pie" and a better economy was why South Koreans voted for President-elect Lee Myung-bak, who is expected to have little room to adopt a new Taiwan policy, local and South Korean academics said Friday in a forum.
"South Korea's economy has been doing O.K. in general, but the past regimes focused too much on wealth distribution and social welfare in their socialistic economic policies. People tended to see these policies as a failure, " said Taeho Bark, chairman of the Korea International Trade Commission and a professor at Seoul
National University.
The annual Taipei-Seoul Forum was held two days after the presidential election in South Korea concluded with a landslide victory for Lee Myung-bak, who garnered 48.7 percent of the votes, putting him 22 percentage points ahead of his closest rival, Chung Dong-young.
Economic issues proved to be the deciding factor in the election, Bark said, as "the rich are not getting richer but the poor are getting poorer in Korea." He said that while the country enjoys substantial economic growth, it's still difficult for university graduates to find jobs, while established corporations such as Samsung have been neglecting the domestic market.
That is why people want a more liberal economy and expect Lee, a former mayor of Seoul and chief executive of Hyundai Construction Co., to "make the pie bigger, " he added.
As Lee is expected to make mending fences with the United States his top diplomatic priority, the forum participants said there will be little room for him to adopt a new policy on Taiwan, given the current Northeast Asian international order, said Lee Ming, a professor at National Chengchi University.
Ron Moo-hyun, the incumbent president, is seen as a leader driven by his ideology, including anti-Americanism, while Lee is seen as more of a pragmatist who can solve problems, said Kim Sunhyuk, director of the Global Leadership Development Center of Korea University.
"Voters chose pragmatism over ideology in this election, " agreed Lee Dong-bak, president of the North Korea Democratization Forum and a former member of South Korea's National Assembly.
"It seems to me that South Korean electorate had already decided two years ago that they would vote for the Grand National Party, " Lee said.
The two-day forum, which was organized by the Institute of International Relations of National Chengchi University and the Seoul Forum for International Affairs, will continue Saturday with three sessions to discuss the new phase of Taiwan-South Korean relations and regional development in East Asia.