Six months after a brief martial law, a deposed president who barricaded himself in his residence while over a thousand police officers tried to arrest him for rebellion, three irrelevant interim presidents, and social polarization not seen in decades, a new leader emerges in South Korea with the commitment to restore stability to one of the most vibrant democracies in Asia. Initial exit polls place Lee Jae-myung as the clear winner of Tuesday's elections (61 years old), a human rights lawyer leading the Democratic Party (DP), economically liberal, socially progressive, and with a more conciliatory foreign policy towards neighboring North Korea.
Surveys conducted by the three main television networks at the beginning of the vote count gave Lee 51.7% of the votes, well above the 39.3% of former Labor Minister Kim Moon-soo, the candidate of the People Power Party (PPP)
Upon stepping foot in the Blue House, the equivalent of the White House in Seoul, Lee will have to get to work to extinguish all the political and economic fires caused by the ousted Yoon Suk Yeol, the former conservative leader who will go down in history for turning South Korea into a military regime during the five hours of his failed martial law last December.
Lee's task will not be easy. In addition to the internal political crisis in South Korea, there are complex pending duties such as the inability of South Korean leaders to halt the country's plummeting birth rate, the lowest among developed nations. On the international stage, the most complex challenge is balancing Seoul's relations with its largest trading partner, China, and its major security ally, the United States. And let's not forget the ever-ominous regime of Kim Jong-un and his nuclear threat.
If the polls are correct, in these elections held almost two years earlier than planned due to the impeachment and subsequent removal of President Yoon, Lee would have taken revenge after narrowly losing the 2022 electoral battle. The punishment vote against the conservative PPP for the attempted coup by its former leader, who now faces a conviction for insurrection and abuse of power that could result in a life sentence, has been crucial in mobilizing support for the DP.
"We need a new government that is not tainted by the shadow of martial law and that leaves behind the political shame that this country has experienced in recent months to focus on economic issues, which are the real concerns of the citizens now," says a young lawyer, Joe Kim, who voted for Lee at one of the 14,295 polling stations open throughout the country in Seoul.
"Those leading the PPP are the same ones who supported Yoon's plan to send the army to take over the Parliament. Furthermore, their candidate has publicly declared himself anti-feminist and has attacked homosexuals. He is an extreme right-wing populist, and what South Korea least needs at this moment is a profile like his leading a country that is already very divided and where hate speech abounds everywhere," says Yun, a university professor who voted in the morning at a covered badminton court south of Seoul converted into a polling center.
Many South Korean analysts have pointed out in recent days that the personal history of the election winner has been one of the strengths of his candidacy. Lee comes from a very poor family, worked in factories from a young age, went to university to study Law on a scholarship, and built a career as a prominent activist and labor lawyer. This image was reinforced when, on the night of December 3, after Yoon declared martial law, television cameras showed Lee climbing a fence at the National Assembly (Parliament) to enter along with other legislators and overturn the authoritarian decree with an emergency vote.
Near the Parliament is the headquarters of the PPP, where on Tuesday many supporters of the conservative party gathered to follow the vote count. Some of them, wearing caps with the phrase "Make Korea Great Again," imitating the famous slogan of Donald Trump's MAGA movement, were confronted by a group of young DP voters. "This man is a terrorist," shouted one of the boys to an elderly man who, in addition to the cap, wore a pin with the American flag. "With the left, we will become a regime like North Korea," one of the PPP supporters said.
In South Korea, despite the liberal party's victory at the polls, there is a loud wave of sympathizers of former President Yoon who are convinced that Lee wants to turn his country into something very similar to Kim Jong-un's regime and will embrace China. These conspiracy theories were precisely what Yoon clung to justify his martial law.
In recent months, Lee has moderated his leftist populist rhetoric to attract conservative voters and distance himself from accusations of being a "communist leader" often thrown by his opponents. He has promised to continue strengthening the traditional alliance with the US and to increase military deterrence maneuvers in the region alongside the US and Japanese armies.
The new president will also have to deal with the growing debate on whether the country should once again be covered by the American nuclear umbrella. In Seoul, there is a sector that, after Washington withdrew all its nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula in 1991, is not very keen on having them back at home, while other voices have long been calling for the South Korean government to develop its own nuclear arsenal. Lee has stated that his goal is to ease tensions with North Korea by reestablishing the military hotline that Pyongyang broke a couple of years ago.
"We need a competent president who focuses on fixing the economy. There are many layoffs now, and entrepreneurs like me, who are in the export business, are very concerned about Trump's tariffs," says Kim, a steel businessman. "South Korean politics are dominated by older men who have no idea how to convince young women to have more children to solve the demographic crisis. The new government must include more women," demands a university student named Jo.
Lee has promised economic reforms, gradually increasing research budgets and investing in artificial intelligence. He will seek to reach a trade agreement with the US to curb the fluctuations of Donald Trump's trade war. He has also stated that he will raise the current legal retirement age from 60 to 65 and reduce the workweek to four and a half days, which will help improve family reconciliation and boost birth rates, the major obstacle faced by an increasingly aging country.