South Korea election results 2025 live: Lee Jae-myung projected to win
Exit polls show Lee Jae-myung of the opposition Democratic Party of Korea winning more than 50 percent of the vote in today's snap election while Kim Moon-soo of the governing conservative People Power Party trails behind with about 39 percent.The snap vote was called after former leader Yoon Suk-yeol was impeached and removed from office over his shock martial law decree.Vote counting is under way across the country, and the winner is expected to become clear when 70 percent of votes are counted, at about midnight local time.South Koreans turned out in large numbers for the vote, with a turnout of 79.4 percent, the highest in a presidential election since 1997.
Update:
Date: 3m ago (14:40 GMT)
Title: Lee's supporters gather outside his home
Content: Hundreds of people have congregated outside Lee's home in the city of Incheon, near the capital, Seul, to celebrate his projected victory, according to the Yonhap news agency.
The crowds are urging Lee to come out and address them.
Lee is believed to be following the results at the residence, which has been cordoned off, Yonhap reported.
Update:
Date: 13m ago (14:30 GMT)
Title: What challenges await South Korea's new president?
Content: At the top of the issues is tariff negotiations with the United States.
The next leader will have little time to negotiate with Washington before July 9, when President Donald Trump's 90-day pause on global tariffs expires, potentially exposing South Korean products to 25 percent tax rates.
The new leader will also struggle to ease tensions with neighbouring North Korea and balance relations between the US, South Korea's most important security guarantor, and China, its biggest trade partner.
On the domestic front, the new president will need to spur stalled economic growth and unify a nation that is deeply divided over Yoon's failed martial law bid.
For months, millions of people have rallied for months to either support or denounce Yoon.
Yoon's legal saga is also likely to overshadow the early months of Seoul's next government, as the former president continues to stand trial on high-stakes rebellion charges, which carry a possible sentence of death or life in prison.
Update:
Date: 23m ago (14:20 GMT)
Title: Voters want to show 'democracy is not broken in South Korea'
Content: Many Koreans say they wanted this election to be about getting democracy back on track.
To show the world that democracy is not broken in South Korea, following the startling message that a few hours of martial law sent out back in December.
In private, many people concede that democracy narrowly [withstood that test]. What if lawmakers had not climbed over the National Assembly fence and pushed their way through soldiers, some of whom pointed weapons at them, to hold a vote in the chamber to end martial law? What if then-President Yoon had not accepted [their vote]? And what if just one of those soldiers had fired a shot?
Things could have turned out very differently.
That is why Lee Jae-myung has said one of his top priorities will be changing the constitution to ensure it is much harder to enact martial law.
There are many other big priorities for Korean voters – mostly regarding the economy.
The uniting force behind so many swing voters and even conservatives who wouldn't normally vote for Lee to come out was not so much to support Lee but to punish the ruling party.
Update:
Date: 33m ago (14:10 GMT)
Title: New Reform Party candidate concedes defeat
Content: Lee Jun-seok, who is projected to finish third according to exit polls, has conceded defeat in today's vote.
'The exit polls suggest Lee Jae-myung will be elected as the president, and I expect him to make careful and accurate decisions on national unity and the economy,' the conservative politician said at the National Assembly in Seoul.
Lee, who is 40, added that his New Reform Party will 'continue to fulfil its role as an opposition party' and that he had no regrets about refusing Kim's overtures to merge candidacies.
'Unification was never something we seriously considered,' he said.
'Judging by the results, the burden now facing the conservative bloc is to prioritise innovation over mere alliances.'
Update:
Date: 42m ago (14:00 GMT)
Title: Lee leads in early vote count
Content: Preliminary results are rolling in.
According to the NEC, 23.83 percent of votes have been counted nationwide.
Lee has won 47.81 percent of the ballots while Kim has 43.99 percent.
Update:
Date: 48m ago (13:55 GMT)
Title: If you're just joining us
Content: Let's bring you up to speed:
Update:
Date: 58m ago (13:45 GMT)
Title: Tears as Lee's supporters celebrate projected win
Content: We've been speaking to Lee's supporters in the Cheonggye Plaza in Seoul.
Park Jung-hwan is here with his group who play traditional Korean instruments. He plans to play his traditional Korean drum after the vote results come in.
'In 2022, I cried because Yoon Suk-yeol won by the smallest margins and I knew that our country was headed into disaster. I was so worried about the future generation of our country that I couldn't go to work for a month,' said the physical therapist from Seoul's Geumcheon-gu district.
'But tonight, I cried as our country showed hope again.'
Another supporter said she also cried when the exit poll came out
Kim Jeong-hee, who flew all the way from her home in France on the day Yoon was impeached back in April, said she hoped for change in South Korea.
'Our country is known as a democracy, but recent events have showed how a few of the elite maintain unjustified power over the [masses],' she said. 'It's going to continue being the job of civilians like the crowd here tonight to protect our new president and our society while working for change.'
Update:
Date: 1h ago (13:35 GMT)
Title: NEC expects 70 percent of vote to be counted by midnight
Content: As we've reported, vote counting is now under way across South Korea.
The National Election Commission expects 70-80 percent of the ballots to be tallied by midnight local time (15:00 GMT), likely offering a clear picture of the winner, according to the Yonhap news agency.
Vote counting will continue into Wednesday morning.
Update:
Date: 1h ago (13:25 GMT)
Title: People Power Party official calls projected loss 'very disappointing'
Content: Na Kyung-won, co-chair of the conservative party's election campaign, has called the projected defeat 'somewhat shocking,' saying she had expected a much closer race.
'It is very disappointing that there is such a large difference,' she said in comments carried by the Yonhap news agency.
Na blamed 'confusion within the party' for delays in the campaign and expressed frustration that 'negative news' about Lee Jae-myung had not reached the public early enough to affect the result.
Update:
Date: 1h ago (13:15 GMT)
Title: Photos: Vote counting under way in Seoul
Content:
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Lee Jae-myung's hardscrabble path to the South Korean presidency mirrors his country's stratospheric rise from grinding poverty to one of the world's leading economies. When Lee, a scandal-prone school dropout-turned-lawyer who was elected in a landslide on Tuesday, was born in 1963, South Korea's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was comparable with sub-Saharan African nations. South Korea was so poor, in fact, that Lee's exact birthday is a mystery – his parents, like many families alert to the sky-high infant mortality of the era, took about a year to register his birth. Yet even by the standards of the day, Lee's early years were marked by deprivation and adversity, including stints as an underage factory labourer. Known for his populist and outspoken style, Lee, the standard bearer for the left-leaning Democratic Party, has often credited his humble beginnings with moulding his progressive beliefs. 'Poverty is not a sin, but I was always particularly sensitive to the injustices I experienced because of poverty,' Lee said in a speech in 2022. 'The reason I am in politics now is to help those still suffering in the pit of poverty and despair that I managed to escape, by building a fair society and a world with hope.' The fifth of seven children, Lee dropped out of school in his early teens to move to Seongnam, a satellite city of Seoul, and take up employment to support his family. At age 15, Lee was injured in an accident at a factory making baseball gloves, leaving him permanently unable to straighten his left arm. Despite missing years of formal education, Lee graduated from middle and high school by studying for the exams outside of work hours. In 1982, he gained admission to Chung-Ang University in Seoul to study law and went on to pass the bar exam four years later. During his law career, Lee was known for championing the rights of the underdog, including victims of industrial accidents and residents facing eviction due to urban redevelopment projects. In 2006, Lee made his first foray into politics with an unsuccessful bid for the mayorship of Seongnam, which he followed two years later with a failed run for a parliamentary seat in the city. In 2010, he finally broke into politics by winning Seongnam's mayoral election on his second attempt and went on to earn re-election four years later. From 2018 to 2021, Lee served as governor of Gyeonggi, the country's most populous province, which surrounds Seoul. Both as mayor and governor, Lee attracted attention beyond his immediate electorate by rolling out a series of populist-flavoured economic policies, including a limited form of universal basic income. After stepping down as governor, Lee entered the national stage as the Democratic Party candidate in the 2022 presidential election, which he lost to Yoon Suk-yeol by 0.73 percent of the vote – the narrowest margin in South Korean history. Despite facing a slew of political and personal scandals, culminating in at least five legal cases, Lee led the Democratic Party to one of its best results in last year's parliamentary elections, delivering it 173 seats in the 300-seat National Assembly. After Yoon's impeachment and removal from the presidential office following his short-lived declaration of martial law in December, Lee earned his party's nomination without serious challenge, garnering nearly 90 percent of the primary vote. 'His communication style is direct and straightforward, and he is astute at recognising social and political trends, which is a rare quality among politicians of his generation in Korea,' Lee Myung-hee, an expert on South Korean politics at Michigan State University, told Al Jazeera. 'However, this direct communication style can sometimes hinder his political advancement, as it may easily offend his opponents.' During his election campaign, Lee played down his progressive credentials in favour of a more pragmatic persona and a milder iteration of the populist economic agenda that powered his rise to national prominence. In the weeks leading to the vote, Lee's victory was rarely in doubt, with his closest competitor, Kim Moon-soo, of the conservative People Power Party, often trailing the candidate by more than 20 points in opinion polls. As president, Lee has pledged to prioritise the economy, proposing, among other things, a major boost in investment in artificial intelligence, the introduction of a four-and-a-half-day work week, and tax deductions for parents in proportion to the number of children they have. On foreign affairs, he has promised to mend relations with North Korea while pushing for its ultimate denuclearisation – in keeping with the traditional stance of his Democratic Party – and maintain the US-Korea security alliance without alienating China and Russia. 'I would call him a progressive pragmatist. I don't think he will stick to any consistent progressive lines or even conservative lines,' Yong-chool Ha, director of the Center for Korea Studies at the University of Washington, told Al Jazeera. 'Critics call him a kind of manipulator; his supporters call him flexible,' Ha said. 'I would say he is a survivor.' While Lee will enter office with the backing of a commanding majority in the National Assembly, he will take stewardship of a country that is deeply polarised and racked by divisions following Yoon's impeachment. 'The Korean political landscape remains highly polarised and confrontational, and his ability to navigate this environment will be crucial to his success,' said Lee, the Michigan State University professor. Lee will also have to navigate a volatile international environment shaped by the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, great power rivalries, and United States President Donald Trump's shake-up of international trade. For Lee personally, his election, after two unsuccessful bids for the presidency, marks an extraordinary comeback befitting the against-the-odds origin story that propelled his rise. Lee had been facing five criminal proceedings, including charges of election law violations and breach of trust in connection with a land corruption scandal. Following his election, Lee is all but certain to avoid trial during his five-year term in office. Under the South Korean constitution, sitting presidents enjoy immunity from prosecution, except in cases of insurrection or treason – although there is debate among legal scholars about whether the protection extends to proceedings that are already under way. To remove ambiguity, the Democratic Party last month passed an amendment to the criminal code stating that criminal proceedings against a person who is elected president must be suspended until the end of their term.
