As the December 19, presidential election draws close, fierce on and offline arguments between generations are taking place. The Internet, which has been led by those aged between 10 and 30, has now generations 40 and above participating in discussions and inside households parents and their children discuss their support for candidates.

Park Jung-yong, a manager at Naver, a portal site (www.naver.com) said the "older generations above 40 who did not even account for 1% of bulletin board users have recently increased to about 10% and as the argument between the old and the new heats up more than 3,000 messages are posted daily.

In websites where there are significant conservative and progressive tendencies many are exchanging abusive and harsh words. A progressive site, has openly put up articles supporting a certain candidate and on a conservative site a message titled "To my son prior to the presidential election," the letter asserts that one should guard against demagogue politicians that are wrongfully taking advantage of youngster's pure mind.

Generation arguments are continuing inside the house. Yoo, a taxi driver said that he was annoyed when his college son treated him as an ignorant person when he voiced his support for a certain candidate. Lee a student at the Hansung University said that his parents thought of him to be senseless when he talked about the candidate he supported.

Oh who came to Seoul from Busan three years ago says that she is arguing over the phone with her mother for the second day in a row. She persuaded her mother saying that her brother decided to vote for candidate B but the mother advised her daughter that young people think too easily of voting and that she should reconsider.

In universities, support for candidates is mixed between young and old professors. An engineering professor at the Seoul National University says that while old professors confidently voice their support for a certain candidate young professors supporting others are keeping silence. "This presidential election will be recorded as the one with the most significant voting intention disparity between generations" notes Bae Nam-young, a researcher at Korea Gallup. (Jeong Woo-sang, imagine@chosun.com )