SKorea party votes on presidential favourite

SEOUL, Aug 19 (Reuters) South Korea's leading party voted to pick between the country's most powerful women politician and a former business magnate in a primary today, where the winner is certain to emerge as front-runner for the presidency.

The results of the conservative Grand National Party primary will be known on Monday. The election for the president of the world's 12th largest economy is on December 19.

Polls indicate Lee Myung-bak, a former top executive at the Hyundai Group who was later Seoul's mayor, is the favourite.

Voting in Seoul, Lee said he was confident of being on the ballot in the December main race.

''I hope to be having a good dream on Dec. 19,'' he said.

But Park Geun-hye, the daughter of the iron ruler who pushed South Korea on the road to economic prowess in the 1960s and 70s, has almost closed the gap.

She expressed concern about voting irregularity, after news reports said a party member in the southern port city of Busan was caught photographing her ballot.

In a sign of the ferocity of the rivalry between the two, officials from both campaigns said they would be up through tonight to guard the ballot boxes from cheating. Counting does not start until tomorrow afternoon.

About two out of three voters would pick either Lee or Park to be president, recent polls said, while the top left-leaning candidate is supported by only about one in every 20 voters.

South Koreans want their next president to take a business-friendly approach to the economy and a harder line toward North Korea, surveys indicate.

They have also grown weary of left-of-centre President Roh Moo-hyun, who is perceived as failing to stabilise an uncertain labour situation or cool down an overheated real estate market.

LAND DEAL PROBED Just ahead of the primary, prosecutors launched a probe into a possible shady land deal by Lee some 12 years ago. Lee denies any wrongdoing and many in his camp accuse Roh of using its influence to damage Lee's chances of election.

Widely praised during his time as mayor for projects to add green spaces to the urban sprawl of the capital, the 65-year-old Lee's popularity rests heavily on his image as a person who can get things done.

Park has a built-in support base due to her father, former President Park Chung-hee, who took power in a 1961 coup and drove the country to an economic powerhouse.

Shot dead by his spy chief in 1979, the former president is a polarising figure, seen by many Koreans as the country's best president while others revile him as a despot who tried to destroy democracy.

Park, 55, who is trying to be the country's first woman president, acted as his first lady after her mother was killed by an assassin's bullet meant for her father.

REUTERS jt ht0908