Moon Jae-in Sails to Presidential Nomination

Frontrunner Moon Jae-in on Monday easily clinched the nomination as the Minjoo Party's presidential candidate. Moon won the party's primary race for the Seoul metropolitan region, Gangwon and Jeju Provinces with 60.4 percent of votes.

In the overall vote count from all primary races nationwide, Moon bagged 57 percent or 936,419 votes, comfortably avoiding a runoff. South Chungcheong Province Governor An Hee-jung came a distant second with 21.5 percent, followed by Seongnam Mayor Lee Jae-myung with 21.2 percent, and Goyang Mayor Choi Sung with 0.3 percent.

"I'm starting a new chapter in the history of the Korean people today," Moon said in his acceptance speech. "I will resolutely break with the era of division and begin an era of justice and unity."

He said the upcoming presidential election "is not a face-off between conservatives and progressives, but a choice between justice and injustice, between common sense and nonsense, and between fairness and unfairness."

Moon will go head-to-head with Hong Joon-pyo of ex-President Park Geun-hye's Liberty Korea Party, Yoo Seung-min of the splinter conservative Bareun Party, and Sim Sang-jung of the leftist Justice Party.

The People's Party, the third largest after Minjoo and the LKP, will nominate its presidential candidate on Tuesday, but its popular leader Ahn Cheol-soo is sure to clinch the nomination.