South Koreans elect Moon Jae-in as president

South Korea’s new liberal President Moon Jae-in was sworn in on Wednesday and vowed to immediately tackle the difficult tasks of addressing North Korea’s advancing nuclear ambitions and soothing tensions with the United States and China, Reuters reports.

Moon said in his first speech as president he would immediately begin efforts to defuse security tensions on the Korean peninsula and negotiate with Washington and Beijing to ease the row over a U.S. missile defense system being deployed in the South.

Moon won with 41.1 percent of the votes but that seemingly comfortable margin belied a deep ideological and generational divide in the country of 51 million people. Data from an exit poll conducted by South Korea’s top three television networks showed that, while Moon won the majority of votes cast by those under the age of 50, conservative rival Hong Joon-pyo found strong support among voters in their 60s and 70s.