Grand National Party (GNP) presidential candidate Lee Hoi-chang told a press conference Sunday that the election was a matter of selecting either security or insecurity, calling his main opponent, Roh Moo-hyun of the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP), insecure, radical and unreliable. Commenting on Roh's pledge to transfer the capital, Lee said Seoul has been the capital for 600 years and to arbitrarily make impromptu decisions on such a great national matter without once consulting the people is a political maneuver and causes unrest.

He continued that for the past five years, the current administration has aided North Korea through its "Sunshine Policy," but has been dragged around by the North and only received clandestine nuclear development in return. Lee proposed the president candidates should sign a petition to urge North Korea to give up its nuclear program. On cooperative agreement between Roh and Chung Mong-joon, the head of National Alliance 21, Lee said if Roh were elected, it would become impossible to reveal the truth regarding the numerous aspects of Hyundai's corruption.

In his own press conference the MDP's Roh said the construction of a new administrative capital was a long-term plan and the transfer would begin around 2010, adding population migration would only be 200,000 to 300,000 over 10 years. He continued the GNP's claim that housing prices would drop was "dirty propaganda." Roh repeatedly stressed that the metropolitan area should be an economic capital and the Chungcheong area should be developed separately as an administrative one.

On the North Korean crisis, Roh said that if Lee became president, fear of war will form on the Korean peninsula and foreign investors would leave. He noted in the crisis of 1994, the government (of the time) would not talk with the North because of its nuclear development and as a result, it could not participate in discussions between North Korea and the US. Roh also refused to sign the petition proposed by Lee to urge North Korea to give up nuclear development, saying it was "improper."

Candidate Kwon Young-ghil of the Democratic Labor Party also refused to sign.

(Shin Jung-rok, jrshin@chosun.com )