Live streams

South Korea's Opposition Picks Presidential Candidate

Moon Jae-in waves to supporters as he celebrates his win in the primary of his party in Goyang, north of Seoul September 16, 2012.

N. Korea Rejects Emergency Aid from Seoul

TEXT SIZE - +

VOA News

September 16, 2012

South Korea's main opposition party has selected its candidate for the December presidential election.

The Democratic United Party picked former human rights lawyer and former presidential aide Moon Jae-in on Sunday.

In his acceptance speech, Moon vowed to push for summit talks and greater economic cooperation with North Korea.

The liberal party candidate served as chief of staff for the late president Roh Moo-hyun, who held summit talks with the north in 2007.

Moon faces the ruling party's presidential candidate Park Geun-hye, the daughter of slain former dictator Park Chung-hee.

Opinion polls show Park leading in the race. If elected, she would become South Korea's first woman president.

Featured Videos

Your JavaScript is turned off or you have an old version of Adobe's Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player.

Video

Boston Bomber Spent 6 Months in Russia’s Most Violent Republic

The news of the Boston Marathon bombings circled the globe, and resonated here in Dagestan, a majority Muslim republic in Russia, on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Last year, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of two brothers suspected of the bombings and a long-time Boston resident, returned to Dagestan, where he had lived for a year during his youth. Dagestan was the land of his maternal ancestors. But in the last two years, this republic of 3 million people has gained notoriety as the region with the highest level of political and religious violence in all of Russia. VOA's James Brooke reports from Makhachkala, Russia.