SEOUL, April 4 (Xinhua) -- Major South Korean presidential candidates have shown a clear division over policies on security and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), exposing their identities as conservative or liberal.
Conservative politicians here tend to take a hard-line stance toward the DPRK's nuclear program, while sometimes arguing even for nuclear armament, an eye-for-eye reaction escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
Liberal candidates make a case for engagement with the DPRK to denuclearize the peninsula, preferring dialogue and diplomacy to confrontation and tensions in inter-Korean relations.
The primaries of five key political parties ended on Tuesday with the center-right People's Party fielding its former head and co-founder Ahn Cheol-soo as an official candidate. The presidential election is slated for May 9.
Moon Jae-in of the biggest Minjoo Party, frontrunner in recent opinion polls, won a sweeping victory on Monday to be the party's candidate in a race to elect a successor to former President Park Geun-hye who was impeached and arrested.
The runner-up to Park in the 2012 presidential election was former chief of staff to late President Roh Moo-hyun, leading the Minjoo Party before Ahn defected from it and founded his own party in early 2016.
Moon and Ahn were divided over the deployment in South Korea of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system.
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