Liberal Lee Jae-myung wins South Korean presidential election

Japan Times

2 days ago

South Korea elected Lee Jae-myung as the country's new president Tuesday, with the liberal-leaning Democratic Party (DP) candidate riding a wave of unease about the economy and political instability to a victory that could have broad ramifications for Seoul's relations with Tokyo, Washington and Pyongyang.
Lee, the front-runner in the race since campaigning began May 12, secured 49.3% of the vote while his closest competitor, conservative rival Kim Moon-soo of the governing People Power Party (PPP), garnered 41.3% with more than 99% of the votes counted, local media reported, citing the National Election Commission.
In a brief speech near the National Assembly, Lee hailed the result, saying he would carry out a 'mission of restoring democracy.'
The snap election came exactly six months after then-President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law only to rescind it hours later, unsettling many South Koreans who saw the move as a stark reminder of the country's authoritarian past. Yoon was impeached by the National Assembly on Dec. 14, with the country's Constitutional Court upholding his ouster in April.
"Even if politics divides us, the people themselves should not need to be divided,' Lee said in his speech. 'It is the president's duty to unify the country.'
He added: "I will never forget that my responsibility is not to be a ruler, but to be a leader who brings people together.'
Lee also pledged to revive the country's flagging economy and seek peace with nuclear-armed North Korea through both dialogue and strength.
Kim Moon-soo, the presidential candidate for South Korea's conservative People Power Party, delivers a concession speech at the party's headquarters in Seoul on Wednesday. |
AFP-JIJI
The PPP's Kim, meanwhile, conceded defeat in the early hours of Wednesday, congratulating Lee on his victory and saying that he "humbly accepts the people's choice."
The commission said that 79.4% of the country's 44.39 million eligible voters had cast their ballots in the vote, the highest rate since the 1997 election, when the turnout hit 80.7%. The result will be certified later Wednesday and the new president's inauguration is expected within hours.
DP leaders and campaign officials had gathered at the National Assembly on Tuesday evening, erupting into cheers as the exit poll results showed Lee ahead by more than 12 percentage points, livestreamed footage showed.
Park Chan-dae, acting party leader, hailed the exit poll numbers, saying that voters had made a "fiery judgment against the insurrection regime," local media reported.
Speaking after the exit poll announcement, the co-chair of the PPP's election committee expressed dismay over Kim's electoral trouncing.
"We expected to be either slightly behind or in a slight lead but it is very disappointing that there is such a significant gap ... we find it to be somewhat shocking," local media quoted Rep. Na Kyung-won as saying.
Lee, who lost by a razor-thin margin to Yoon in the 2022 election, had consistently held commanding leads in opinion polls since entering the race, making his victory all but preordained.
Lee — who will take office immediately for a single, five-year term and will not have the advantage of a formal transition, unlike his predecessors — will face the immediate challenge of stabilizing the country after months of political turmoil that fractured South Korea along ideological lines and threw the economy into a state of limbo.
First and foremost, he will be expected to tackle a deepening economic downturn and shepherd through tough tariff negotiations with the United States, which has slapped its South Korean ally with tough levies on key exports such as steel, aluminum and automobiles.
In a nationwide survey conducted early last month by the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, 40.7% of respondents said 'revitalizing the economy and securing future growth engines' would be the next president's most pressing task. Resolving social conflict and promoting national unity was a distant second, at 21.7%.
Supporters of Lee Jae-myung, the presidential candidate for South Korea's Democratic Party, attend a rally as they await the final results of the election in Seoul on Wednesday. |
AFP-JIJI
The new president will also be thrust into tackling the country's rapidly graying population and plummeting birth rate, an urgent demographic crisis also seen in neighboring Japan and China. Young couples and singles commonly complain about the soaring costs of child care, discrimination against working parents and gender inequality.
But the results will also have far-ranging foreign policy implications, including for closer relations with Japan and the U.S., as well as soured ties with China. The result could also signal a shift in South Korea's approach to nuclear-armed North Korea.
Lee's ascendance to the nation's highest office was the culmination of an extraordinary effort to recast himself from a leftwing populist into a more palatable figure for moderate swing voters, observers said.
A key feature of this image shift had been his positive remarks about the U.S. alliance and the need for continued cooperation with neighboring Japan — a departure from his party's leftist-nationalist reputation and his history of seemingly anti-Japan rhetoric.
In the run-up to the election, Lee played down his hard-line views on South Korea's tumultuous relationship with Japan, including his fierce opposition to the Yoon administration's third-party compensation plan for Korean wartime laborers at Japanese factories and mines before and during World War II.
Tokyo's stance is that all such claims were settled 'completely and finally' under a 1965 agreement that normalized bilateral ties and saw Japan pay $500 million to South Korea.
Japanese officials will continue to watch for any signals of a potential shift on the wartime labor agreement or a broaching of the sensitive issue of 'comfort women,' a euphemism for those who suffered under Japan's wartime military brothel system.
Lee has said in recent months that he would take a 'pragmatic' approach to ties if elected and wouldn't reverse the agreements that led to a thaw in ties under Yoon, including boosted trilateral military cooperation with South Korea and Japan's mutual ally, the U.S.
'There is a preconception that I am hostile toward Japan,' Lee said two weeks ago. 'Japan is a neighboring country, and we must cooperate with each other to create synergy.'
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un leads a party meeting on strengthening the military in this image released on Friday. |
KCNA / via REUTERS
On North Korea, Lee said in his speech Wednesday that he would work to build a "peaceful and stable" Korean Peninsula.
"While maintaining strong national defense capabilities to deter North Korea, I will push for inter-Korean dialogue and communication, with the firm belief that true security lies not in winning wars, but in preventing the need to fight at all," Lee was quoted as saying.
"The two Koreas must coexist and cooperate to find a path to shared prosperity," he added. "I will work to stabilize the peninsula's situation to minimize the ... risk and ensure that national security issues do not worsen people's livelihoods."
In the run-up to the election, Lee had sought to appeal to U.S. President Donald Trump, backing any rekindling of summit diplomacy between the American leader and North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un. Trump met with Kim three times during his first stint in office. Though denuclearization talks ultimately faltered, Trump has expressed an interest in meeting with Kim again at some point during his second term.
The DP has also laid the groundwork for appealing to Trump's ego by filing paperwork recommending that the Norwegian Nobel Committee consider nominating the U.S. leader for this year's Nobel Peace Prize for his 'promotion of peace on the Korean Peninsula.'
U.S. President Donald Trump departs for Pennsylvania from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Friday. |
REUTERS
But it's unclear if this will be enough to stave off the threat of looming tariffs imposed by Trump, which are likely to prove a vexing issue for South Korea's next president.
"From the moment my victory is confirmed, I will devote all my efforts to reviving the economy and restoring people's livelihoods," Lee said in his victory speech.
Seoul has sought to secure an exemption from Washington on the tariffs, though without much success.
Trump said on Friday that he planned to hike tariffs on imported steel and aluminum to 50% from 25% starting Wednesday, ratcheting up pressure on Seoul. South Korea is the fourth-biggest exporter of steel to the U.S., according to data from the American Iron and Steel Institute.
The U.S. president was set to sign a directive on Tuesday in Washington formally raising the tariffs, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the same day without elaborating on the timing of the order.
South Korea had agreed in late April to draft a package deal on trade by the end of a 90-day pause on Trump's reciprocal tariffs in July, but negotiators in Seoul have emphasized the difficulty of reaching such a deal due to the political leadership vacuum there.
On China, Lee is expected to break from the policies of Yoon, who nudged Seoul closer to Washington's tough policies toward Beijing amid a growing Sino-U.S. rivalry. Lee has publicly signaled that he would have a softer touch with Beijing — a stance unlikely to engender goodwill from the Trump administration.