SOUTH KOREA: South Korea's President-elect, Mr Roh Moo-hyun, called yesterday for a revamp of his country's relationship with the US, but ruled out radical change and pledged to work with Washington to curtail North Korea's nuclear arms programme.
Mr Roh, a 56-year-old human rights lawyer who won Thursday's presidential election after campaigning for greater autonomy from Washington, said he would propose amendments to a pact governing US forces stationed in the South since the Korean War.
Washington - which favours a tougher line on the unpredictable and possibly nuclear-armed North than both Mr Roh and outgoing president Kim Dae-jung - put a brave face on the result, the latest indication that its popularity around the world may be waning.
"The traditional friendship and alliance between ROK (Republic of Korea) and the United States must mature and advance in the 21st century," Mr Roh told a morning-after news conference.
Mr Roh, who vowed during the campaign never to "kow-tow" to Washington or travel there merely for a White House photo opportunity, softened his tone in victory.
"I will not make major changes to Kim Dae-jung's policies on US relations, North Korea and foreign affairs," he said.
US ambassador Mr Thomas Hubbard paid a courtesy call on the winner, whose spokesman quoted Mr Roh as saying "future working relations with the new South Korean government will be not much different from what the relationship is now".
Mr Roh's victory was a vote of confidence in Mr Kim's "sunshine policy" of engagement with its neighbour which President Bush has dubbed a member of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran.
A member of Mr Kim's Millennium Democratic Party, Mr Roh pledged to continue sending cash aid to the North while working with Washington to persuade the reclusive communist state to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
"In order to resolve peacefully the problem related to North Korea's nuclear development, we will take initiatives through close co-operation between the Republic of Korea and the US government," he said.
Mr Roh, who takes over from Mr Kim in February, beat his older conservative rival, Mr Lee Hoi-chang, by 2.3 percentage points. He tapped into the Internet generation to defeat Mr Lee, whose more hawkish views on North Korea are closer to those of the US.
The pact with Washington governs the status of the 37,000 US troops in South Korea, a focal point of protests after an incident in June in which a US military vehicle on an exercise crushed two schoolgirls to death. Mr Roh rode a tide of unprecedented anti-American sentiment, which brought tens of thousands into the streets after a US court martial acquitted two soldiers involved in the incident.