South Korea's Constitutional Court held a hearing on Friday on President Roh Moo-hyun's impeachment, still the dominant theme in next week's election despite renewed debate about Seoul's plan to send troops to Iraq.
The brief abduction of seven South Korean missionaries in Iraq on Thursday brought the war home to the country, which votes on April 15 to choose 299 National Assembly members in a race that has focused on Roh's fate.
Left-wing civic groups and one opposition party have tried to make Seoul's plan to send 3,000 troops to Iraq a campaign issue. But the government and the pro-government Uri Party held firm on the deployment, which was approved by the outgoing parliament.
"The pastors were released, fortunately, and there's no serious development to change the party's stance," Chung Dong-young, head of the pro-Roh Uri Party, told local media.
"We will closely co-operate with the government," he said.
A Defence Ministry team was due to leave for Iraq on Friday, and government officials said it underscored Seoul's commitment to sending troops to Iraq despite an upsurge in violence one year after leader Saddam Hussein was ousted.
The nine-member Constitutional Court, which has 180 days to rule on Roh's March 12 impeachment by parliament, decided in its third hearing on Friday to summon three Roh aides as trial witnesses, reports from the session said.
One of the aides, Choi Do-sul, is a 20-year Roh confidant found by a special prosecutor to have received $530,000 of illicit funds before, during and after Roh's election in December 2002. Choi is under indictment for the scandal.
Police said a man called the court on Friday and said he would blow it up with a portable gas canister. He left a phone number which turned out not to exist, an officer said.
Two opposition parties impeached Roh after the election watchdog ruled he had violated strict laws forbidding public officials from making partisan comments. Those remarks endorsed the Uri Party.
The last set of polls published before a ban on new surveys took effect on April 2 gave the Uri Party a 20-point lead over the Grand National Party, the conservative main opposition.
But political analysts say initial anger over the impeachment has subsided and the race appears to be tightening going into the final weekend. One television station said the number of undecided voters had increased five percent this week.
On April 15 - declared a national holiday - the country's 35.6 million voters will cast two votes, one for individual candidates in 243 first-past-the-post districts and one for the 56 seats decided by proportional representation on party lines.
Citizens living away from their electoral districts, including large numbers of college students and soldiers, began two days of absentee voting on Friday.
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