Lee vows to boost prosperity in both Koreas

Seoul: New South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office on Monday with a promise to boost prosperity not only in his own country but in communist North Korea as well provided the communist state abandons its nuclear weapons.

"Economic revival is our most urgent task," Lee said in his inaugural speech after taking the oath of office as South Korea's first conservative president in a decade.

South Koreans gave the former high-profile construction executive a landslide victory in December's election on his pledge to revitalise the economy and take a less conciliatory approach to nuclear-armed North Korea.

"We must move from the age of ideology into the age of pragmatism," Lee told some 60,000 people who gathered for his inauguration, taking a swipe at the past 10 years of liberal rule during which he said "we found ourselves faltering and confused."

Lee, a former construction CEO nicknamed "The Bulldozer" for his can-do image, took the oath of office at the National Assembly in the presence of cheering onlookers, foreign dignitaries including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a choral rendition of Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

Stronger alliance

Lee, 66, also called for a stronger alliance with top ally Washington and implored North Korea to forgo its nuclear ambitions and open up to the outside world, promising a better future for the impoverished nation.

Lee said he would launch massive investment and aid projects in the North to increase its per capita income to $3,000 (Dh11,000) within a decade "once North Korea abandons its nuclear programme and chooses the path to openness."

Lee is the 10th man to serve as South Korea's president and the first to come from a business background.

He wooed voters by promising to reach annual growth of 7 per cent, double the country's per capita income to $40,000 over a decade and make South Korea one of the world's top seven economies.

Seoul and Tokyo to revive diplomacy

Japanese and South Korean leaders, keen to repair relations long haunted by their wartime history, agreed on Monday to revive stalled "shuttle diplomacy" and promote talks on a free trade agreement.

South Korea's new President Lee Myung-bak will visit Japan in the first half of 2008 and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda will reciprocate by the end of the year, Japanese officials said.

"We agreed to begin top-level 'shuttle diplomacy' to have comfortable and frank talks," Fukuda told reporters after talks with Lee at the Blue House presidential palace. An earlier round of mutual visits was halted after former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited a war shrine seen by critics as a symbol of Tokyo's past militarism.

Fukuda's predecessor, Shinzo Abe, tried to repair ties on a visit to Seoul in 2006, but then South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun did not reciprocate the visit.

Fukuda and Lee acknowledged the need to lay the groundwork to resume talks on a free trade agreement (FTA), but stopped short of agreeing to resume the politically sensitive negotiations.

Tokyo and Seoul launched FTA negotiations in December 2003 but the talks stalled a year later due mainly to Japan's rejection of South Korea's demand that Tokyo open its farm product market.