'Sunshine policy' at risk in Korean presidential poll

The eyes of Washington's foreign policy-makers will be anxiously trained on South Korea today where a crucial presidential election will determine the handling of the unstable and volatile North.

The outcome will decide whether South Korea continues a policy of engagement towards the North, which President George Bush called part of an "axis of evil", despite its admission that it has a uranium-enriching programme.

The race, seen as one of the closest in South Korea's history, pits a self-educated 56-year-old liberal human rights lawyer, Roh Moo-hyun, against a conservative former Supreme Court judge, Lee Hoi-chang, 67.

Mr Roh, from the ruling Millennium Democratic Party, believes in pursuing a policy of engagement, saying "the survival of 70 million people" depends on co-operation with the Communist dictatorship, whose artillery and rocket-launchers are trained on the South's capital, Seoul.

Mr Lee, who has close ties with Washington and represents the opposition Grand National Party, fervently denounces the efforts at engagement – the so-called "Sunshine Policy" – of the out-going President, Kim Dae-jung, who cannot stand for re-election. It was, Mr Lee says, a failure.

He favours the use of the stick, not the carrot. Aid to the North, which was given 500,000 tons of South Korean food last year, should be cut unless it abandons its efforts to produce weapons of mass destruction, he says. Engagement should be pursued only if the regime of Kim Jung-Il reciprocates, step-by-step.

The build-up to the election (seven candidates but a two-way race) has been punctuated by a series of crises, sending America's stand-off with North Korea to alarming new levels. These began in October when Pyongyang admitted to the US that they had a uranium-enriching programme, violating a 1994 agreement not to make nuclear weapons.

The penalty was the loss of its supplies of free heavy fuel oil, which it desperately needs to make up electricity shortfalls, especially in the winter. The North responded last week, saying the loss of the fuel oil meant it would immediately have to fire up an ageing Soviet-era atomic reactor. The CIA believes the reactor is capable of making weapons-grade plutonium for nuclear missiles.

South Korea's difficult relationship with the US, its closest ally and with 37,000 troops on its turf, has been a major theme of the campaign. It is dividing the younger generation, which wants a review of Seoul's relations with the US from the older voters, who still regard America as its saviour in the Korean War.

There is widespread anger over the case of two South Korean schoolgirls run over and killed by a US armoured vehicle in June. This escalated last month when an American military panel acquitted two soldiers of blame. This weekend, tens of thousands of Koreans took to the streets for rallies calling for their courts to have jurisdiction over such cases.

Analysts say this anti-US sentiment may benefit the progressive Mr Roh, who warns that the Bush administration's hardline attitude to the North, refusing to give concessions until the nuclear programme is refrozen, is a clear danger to South Koreans.