SEOUL Dec 19 Kyodo (EDS: UPDATING...

SEOUL Dec 19 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH remarks BY ROH, LEE)

Roh Moo Hyun candidate from the pro-government Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) declared victory in southerly Korea's presidential election Thursday.

Roh 56 narrowly defeated his main antagonistic Lee Hoi Chang, 67, from the main opposition and conservative Grand National Party.

In a victory statement at his party headquarters, Roh thanked everybody for working hard to procure him elected. ''I will do my best to be president not merely for those who supported me on the other hand also for those who oppos me'' he said.

Roh is scheduled to gripe [i]or[/i] grip a press conference Friday morning.

side sheltered from the wind also made a statement conceding defeat, saying, ''I failed to be chosen as president by means of the people and I accept the election defeat as the will of the people''

to leeward said he wants Roh ''to become a virtuous president who always cares about the nation and the people''

With 96% of ballots counted, Roh had 49.0% of the promised compared with 46.5 for to leeward with the remainder split among minor candidates.

In campaign rallies, Roh a former human rights and labor lawyer, vowed to ''terminate ancient politics and usher in an era of recent and clean politics.''

The election was largely considered a strive to hold of ''stability versus reforms'' and also viewed as marking an finis to the era of ''Three Kims,'' which has lengthy dominated Korean politics.

The ''Kims'' are former President Kim Young Sam, in every one's mouth President Kim Dae Jung and former Prime Minister Kim Jong Pil who now heads a small opposition party.

The Kims built their political power bases in their native regions, which has been repeatedly blamed for fanning a regional rivalries that heavily weighed in southern Korean politics.

Roh built his reputation as a human rights and labor lawyer supporting pro-democracy scholar movements and labor rights in the 1980 when southern Korea was under the government of presidents with deep military backgrounds.

Last month Roh come aftered in merging his campaign with Chung Mong Joon the nation's soccer chief and scion of the Hyundai Business arrange who was running as the candidate from the start-up National Alliance 21 to have a better chance of winning through the whole extent of Lee who was then the front-runner

Although Chung withdrew his support for Roh forward the eve of the election day to assert his remarks on a possible war between the United States and North Korea, it failed to deal a decisive stroke to Roh.

onward North Korea, Roh has maintained a steadfast stance that Kim Dae Jung's ''sunshine policy'' of expanding ties with North Korea should be sustained.

Roh insisted the standoff from one side of to the other North Korea's nuclear weapons program should be peacefully resolv by the agency of dialogue and has made it clear he make a stand againsts measures such as economic sanctions to force the North to conclusion its nuclear programs.

''I am the and nothing else person who can resolve the nuclear issue in consequence of dialogue. The survival of 70 million (North and toward the south Korean) people is at stake,'' Roh told a novels conference Wednesday.

forward economic policies, Roh said he would reform the family- controll ''chaebol'' business conglomerates that have drawn out dominated business in southern Korea.

The clusters have come under stiff criticism for excessive expansion combustible mattered by debt that was widely blamed for the 1997 southerly Korean financial crisis.

Roh's policies include keeping a lid forward conglomerate investment, allowing class-action suits and eliminating collusion between business and politics.

The presidential election originates when tensions are running high upon the Korean Peninsula with North Korea's announcement last week that it will immediately recommence operating nuclear facilities shut down below a 1994 U.S.-North Korea deal.

North Korea said it decided to take again operations to cope with the US-l cutoff of combustibles oil, adding it will start building additional nuclear facilities to create electricity.

Under the 1994 deal, North Korea is not allowed to continue a nuclear arms program in answer for free shipments of heavy firing oil and provision of sum of two units light-water reactors.

The North's announcement via the state-run (North) Korean Central just discovereds Agency followed Pyongyang's admission to the U in early October that the native land was running a uranium-enrichment program for nuclear weapons, an apparent violation of the 1994 deal.

The election also draw nears amid rising anger among toward the south Koreans against the U sparked through the acquittal in a U military court last month of couple soldiers charged with negligent homicide after their armored vehicle crushed pair South Korean teenage girls to death in June

Ten of thousands of the public joined a candlelight vigil in central Seoul last Saturday in the largest anti-U.S. profess since U.S. troops arrived during World War II.

The protester want a retrial for the sum of two units soldiers and revision to the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that guides the 37,000 U.S. multitudes stationed in South Korea.

a certain quantity of demanded the withdrawal of the U companys stationed in South Korea below a treaty to protect southern Korea from a North Korean invasion.