Will anger over martial law debacle push Lee Jae-myung into S. Korea's presidential Blue House?

Straits Times

2 days ago

A woman voting at a polling station on the second day of early voting of the presidential elections in Seoul on May 30. PHOTO: AFP
– South Koreans head to the polls on June 3 to pick a new leader after former president Yoon Suk Yeol was stripped of his powers by the Constitutional Court for his martial law declaration in December 2024 that triggered months of political chaos .
Opposition Democratic Party (DP) candidate Lee Jae-myung is in pole position to clinch the race after maintaining a two-digit lead over his rivals for most of the three-week campaign, analysts said .
This election will be Mr Lee's second attempt at the presidency after he lost to Yoon by 0.73 percentage point in the 2022 race, the narrowest margin ever in South Korea's election history .
In the last set of opinion polls conducted by research firm Gallup Korea that was released on May 28, Mr Lee clinched 46 per cent, followed by ruling People Power Party's (PPP) candidate, Mr Kim Moon-soo, at 37 per cent, and minor conservative Reform Party's Mr Lee Jun-seok at 11 per cent.
In a media briefing on May 27, Gallup Korea research director Heo Jin-jae told journalists that it is quite rare in South Korean politics to see a near-10 percentage point difference between the top two leading candidates, and that based on precedent, it is unlikely for the second leading candidate to close such a gap in just a few days.
Kyonggi University's political science and law expert Professor Hahm Sung-deuk predicts that it will be a landslide victory for Mr Lee Jae-myung, with his riding the tide of public anger over the martial law fiasco to the presidential Blue House.
'Mr Lee is a very lucky man. He will get elected not because he is popular, not because of his abilities, but simply because of the martial law incident. In a way, you can say that Yoon turned out to be Mr Lee's biggest supporter because he caused this snap election,' said Prof Hahm.
He added that while Mr Lee's legal troubles and past controversies once made voters hesitant about picking him to lead the country, the post-martial law political turmoil has left voters angry and yearning for stability.
'The moderates who make up 30 per cent of the electorate are always the key to winning the election. Even if they have doubts about Mr Lee, they hate Yoon even more because of the martial law,' said Prof Hahm. The rest of the electorate is split equally between conservatives and liberals, with 35 per cent each.
Salt was further rubbed into South Korean's martial law wounds when the police suspected that former prime minister Han Duck-soo and former deputy prime minister Choi Sang-mok had made false statements regarding their involvement in Yoon's actions, and slapped travel bans on both of them on May 27.
The pair, who were both acting presidents at different periods of Yoon's four-month suspension, had previously denied knowledge of Yoon's martial law plans, but recent CCTV footage obtained by the authorities appeared to show otherwise. Yoon is currently undergoing a criminal trial on insurrection charges, while Mr Han attempted to run in the presidential election but eventually dropped out.
Prof Hahm believes this development will only push more people to support DP's Mr Lee, while Gallup Korea's Mr Heo, who has overseen polls and analysed results for the past seven presidential elections, said such 'situational factors' would likely play a decisive role in the election.
'Considering how 69 per cent of South Koreans had supported the former president's impeachment, you can say that the conditions are all favourable towards DP and Mr Lee,' said Mr Heo.
While the ruling conservative camp is still holding out hopes for a campaign merger with minor conservative Reform Party's Mr Lee Jun-seok, both parties had failed to reach an agreement before early voting took place on May 29 and 30.
The PPP and Mr Kim believe that unifying the conservatives' votes would place Mr Kim in a better position to compete against DP's Mr Lee.
But Prof Hahm believes such a merger would work only if Mr Lee Jun-seok leads the conservatives and not former labour minister Mr Kim, who is struggling to emerge from Yoon's shadow. As the only Cabinet minister who refused to apologise in Parliament for the martial law fiasco, he is seen as a Yoon supporter.
Prof Hahm said: 'Lee Jun-seok represents the future of South Korea politics because he is younger and not tainted by the martial law scandal. The PPP and Mr Kim, on the other hand, made the crucial mistake of not denouncing Yoon and his martial law action right from the start.'
In the last of three sessions of the presidential debate on May 28, which was predominated by mudslinging rather than policy debates, Mr Kim was attacked for just that, with DP's Mr Lee calling him Yoon's 'avatar'.
Taxi driver Yoon Chung-rae, in his 60s, has been a card-carrying PPP member for more than 20 years but cannot bring himself to vote for PPP's Mr Kim this time round.
'First, we had martial law and then we had the party infighting over the candidate. We look so bad in comparison with the DP, which has supported its candidate Lee Jae-myung since the beginning and never once wavered,' he told The Straits Times.
'I told myself I should give Mr Lee a chance. We need to set things right in this country and I don't have confidence in PPP right now.'
The most decisive factor shaping voter sentiment, said Sogang University's Associate Professor Hannah Kim, lies in Yoon's martial law bungle and his subsequent impeachment.
'In the wake of this political turmoil, many voters are looking for a new president who can restore stability, pursue democratic reforms, and tackle pressing economic and foreign policy issues that were sidelined during the crisis,' the academic from the Graduate School of International Studies in Seoul told ST.
Domestic woes have seen South Korea's economic growth forecast for 2025 adjusted downwards for the third time this year, from 1.9 per cent to 1.5 per cent and now 0.8 per cent, as announced by the Bank of Korea on May 29. This was on account of tariff talks with the United States not being resolved yet, and domestic consumption remaining in a slump.
DP's Mr Lee has pledged that, if elected, among his first tasks would be to lead an emergency task force to fight the domestic recession head-on.
For this purpose, there is talk that Mr Lee has identified current Bank of Korea governor Rhee Chang-yong as his prime minister candidate.
Wendy Teo is The Straits Times' South Korea correspondent based in Seoul. She covers issues concerning the two Koreas.
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