Rabat – South Korea has been through a difficult and tumultuous period over the last six months, after President Yoon Suk-yeol introduced martial law and was impeached.
Yet now, the uncertainty seems to be over after a snap presidential election led to Democratic Party opposition leader Lee Jae-Myung winning the presidency with 49.42% of the vote.
This election comes after a period of instability due to President Yeol introducing martial law on December 3, 2024, which was introduced because he was unable to pass his parties’ legislation through the National Assembly led by the Democratic Party.
This lasted six hours before a unanimous emergency vote was taken in the National Assembly to stop the use of martial law, and Yeol was arrested.
This was the first time that martial law had been introduced since the military coup in 1980.
Soon after, the country turned into a crisis with large-scale protests in major cities and settlements, and opposition within the National Assembly calling for impeachment. On December 14, President Yeol was impeached in a vote that was passed by 204 out of 300 legislators. This decision was debated and upheld on April 4 by the Constitutional Court, leading to snap elections.
There were three main competitors in the presidential election: Lee Jae-Myung; the chairman of the Democratic Party and central opposition leader to martial law, People Power Party candidate Moon-Soo; who had served as the minister of employment and labor, and Lee Jun-Seok, leader of the smaller right-wing party Reform.
Newly elected Jae-Myung has a rags-to-riches story in South Korea. He was forced as a teenager to skip middle school and work at factories to help secure money for his factory, where he sustained an injury and was left with a permanent deformity.
He later pushed himself through university, studying law and becoming a human rights lawyer before going into politics in 2005.Jae-Myung notably served as mayor of Seongnam and governor of Gyeonggi province, with both posts providing him with a stage to rapidly grow in popularity thanks to his more socialist policies.
The election result
The snap Presidential Elections were held on Tuesday and Jae-Myung won the vote by 49.42%. Kim Moon-Soo came second receiving 41.15%. This was a much stronger result than the 2022 election victory for President Yeol who won by less than a 1% lead.
This was also the highest turnout election in Korea since 1997 with 79.38% of the 44.39 million eligible voters casting their ballots. This demonstrated how passionate this election was for the South Korean people.
There were several economic and foreign policy issues that also had an effect on the election, such as the rapidly slowing economy and position on Trump’s tariffs.
Jae-Myung has committed himself to a pragmatic foreign policy which will seek to retain strong alliances with Washington and Tokyo. But he also stated that he wants to build a stronger relationship with Beijing and has a controversial policy on re-starting dialogue with North Korea.
Korea’s difficult martial law chapter may be coming to a close when the newly elected president takes office as early as Wednesday. But as president, Jae-Myung needs to address many challenges to reunite a divided nation.
