South Koreans were voting for a new president Wednesday, with a liberal ruling party candidate considered a maverick and a conservative former prosecutor considered the favourites in a tight race that has aggravated the country's domestic divisions.
Pre-election surveys showed liberal Lee Jae-myung, a former governor of South Korea's most populous Gyeonggi province, and his main conservative challenger, ex-prosecutor general Yoon Suk Yeol, running neck-and-neck, way ahead of 10 other contenders.
The wining candidate will take office in May and serve a single five-year term as leader of the world's 10th largest economy.
Lee and Yoon conducted one of the most bitter political campaigns in recent memory. Both recently agreed that if they won they would not conduct politically motivated investigations against the other, but many believe the losing candidate could still face criminal probes over some of the scandals they're been implicated in.
Critics say neither candidate has presented a clear strategy on how they would ease the threat from North Korea and its nuclear weapons. They also say voters are skeptical about how both would handle international relations amid the ongoing US-China rivalry and how they would address widening economic inequalities and runway housing prices.
"Despite the significance of this year's election, the race has centered too much on negative campaigning," said Jang Seung-Jin, a professor at Seoul's Kookmin University, adding that neither leading candidate laid out a convincing blueprint on how they would lead South Korea.
The election comes as South Korea has been grappling with an omicron-driven COVID-19 surge. Virus patients were to vote after regular voting ends Wednesday evening.
Ahead of the vote, Jeong Eun-yeong, a 48-year-old Seoul resident, said she was agonizing over which candidate is "the lesser of two evils".
"Nobody around me seems happy about voting" for either Lee or Yoon, she said. "We need a leader who would be really devoted to improving the lives of working-class citizens."
While both Lee and Yoon share some similar economic and welfare policies, they've clashed over North Korea and other foreign policy issues.