Taipei, Dec. 21 (CNA) A lot of similarities can be found in the presidential elections of South Korea and Taiwan, academics said Friday on the heels of Lee Myung-bak's landslide victory in South Korea's presidential election.
The first and most obvious similarity is that the economy has become one of the most important issues in both elections, according to academics from Taiwan and South Korea in the annual Taipei-Seoul Forum.
Lee's victory shows voters recognized incumbent President Roh Moo -hyun's economic policy as a failure, said Taeho Bark, chairman of the Korea International Trade Commission and a professor at Seoul National University.
The economy is also a hot topic in Taiwan, although there are other issues, such as national identity and the United Nations referendum, being discussed at the same time, said Lee Ming, a professor at National Chengchi University.
Presidential candidates in both countries are beset by legal cases, as Taiwan's opposition Kuomintang (KMT) candidate Ma Ying-jeou is in the middle of a corruption trial and Lee Myung-bak faces investigation for his involvement in a scandal.
North Korea and China, which have interfered in every major election in South Korea and Taiwan in the past, are surprisingly silent this time, said Lee Ming, president of the North Korea Democratization Forum and a former member of South Korea's National Assembly.
North Korea did not want to see the conservative Grand National Party (GNP) become the ruling party, so it "secretly" collaborated with socialists in South Korea to undermine the GNP in past elections, Lee Dong-bak claimed, adding that South Koreans said "no" to North Korea with their ballots.
Lee also observed a "reversal theory" in elections in South Korea, where GNP and the liberal United New Democratic Party (UNDP) have been exchanged leads in presidential and parliamentary elections during the past few years.
The same theory is also common in local discussions about elections, as political parties that lose in parliamentary or presidential elections will be favored to win the next election because of the voter habit of "helping the weak."
Observers saw the South Korean presidential election as a showdown between Roh and Lee Myung-bak rather than Lee versus UNDP candidate Chung Dong-young, said Lee Ming.
In Taiwan, he continued, some people are also under the impression that President Chen Shui-bian has taken the lead role in the election, making the March election a "Chen vs. Ma" tussle rather the "real" fight, which is between Ma and ruling Democratic Progressive Party candidate Frank Hsieh.
"I don't know much about Chen vs. Ma but I do know that in Korea, some people saw this as an election between Lee and former President Kim Dae-jung, rather than Roh Moo-hyun, " Lee Dong-bak said.
The two-day forum, organized by the Institute of International Relations (IIR) of National Chengchi University and the Seoul Forum for International Affairs (SFIA), will proceed Saturday with three sessions to discuss the new phase of Taiwan-South Korean relations and regional development in East Asia.