A quarter of South Korean voters cast ballots in early voting

More than a quarter of the South Korean electorate have already cast their ballots in early voting ahead of a high-stakes presidential election on Tuesday that has been overshadowed by the nuclear threat of North Korea.

Some 11.1 million people or 26 per cent of the total electorate voted from Thursday to Friday, according to the National Election Commission (NEC), Yonhap news agency reported. Many are planning to head away for the three-day Children's Day holiday weekend.

The election was called after the spectacular downfall of ex-president Park Geun-hye, who was impeached in March following a corruption and influence-peddling scandal that has seen her arrested and jailed.

The country is deeply divided on how to deal with North Korea, which has ratcheted up tensions in the region with its accelerated nuclear weapons programme and ballistic missile tests.

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Moon Jae-in of the liberal, centre-left Democratic Party has a commanding lead going into Tuesday's elections and believes the US moved too quickly to install the THAAD anti-missile battery, which has angered many in the country, as well as caused a serious rift with China.

Mr Moon told the Washington Post that he backs President Donald Trump’s “pragmatic approach” towards North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-un.

“I believe President Trump is more reasonable than he is generally perceived,” he said. “President Trump uses strong rhetoric toward North Korea, but, during the election campaign, he also said he could talk over a burger with Kim Jong-un. I am for that kind of pragmatic approach to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue.”

Record high

There are 42.47 million eligible voters aged 19 and older in South Korea, who can cast their votes at any of the 3,507 polling stations in the country. The early voter turnout is a record high, since early voting was introduced in 2014 and the election commission is forecasting a turnout of more than 80 per cent on May 9th.

For much of its history after the second World War and then the Korean War (1950-53), democracy has been severely limited in South Korea, and dominated by military dictators.

The first free parliamentary elections in South Korea took place in 1988, the same year as Seoul hosted the Olympic games.

An editorial in the Korea Times outlined the priorities for South Korea, as it sees them, going into the polls.

“First, we need a leader who can turn around a long economic slump and put the nation on the path of recovery. Second, we need a leader who can restore the people’s confidence in our diplomacy and national security. Third, the Park Geun-hye administration is in the past, but it needs to be judged by voters for the way it took the nation backwards in so many ways.”