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Alexander M. Hynd

On Tuesday, South Koreans will head to the polls to choose the country’s new president. The election may draw to a close one of the most chaotic and contentious periods in the country’s post-1987 democratic era.
South Korea has been embroiled in a political crisis since December, when former president Yoon Suk-yeol disastrously declared martial law.
Yoon ordered security forces to block lawmakers from entering the National Assembly, leading to a dramatic late-night confrontation. His unconstitutional decree was overturned after just six hours.
The fallout was equally dramatic: Yoon was impeached and removed from office in a drawn-out process that was not finally resolved until April.
This period coincided with massive street demonstrations both opposing and supporting Yoon, a far-right assault on a courthouse, and a physical stand-off between investigators and Yoon’s personal security team.
The country, meanwhile, has cycled through three short-lived caretaker leaders.
With weak economic growth and high costs of living, in addition to an equally challenging security environment, South Korea is in desperate need of bold and effective leadership.

Who are the candidates?
The Democratic Party’s Lee Jae-myung is the clear front runner to be the next president, after finishing a close second in the previous 2022 election.
Recent polling put the veteran left-leaning politician at about 49 per cent support as the race entered the final week.
This is a double-digit lead over his main conservative opponent, Kim Moon-soo, polling at 35 per cent. Another conservative candidate, Lee Jun-seok, is polling at 11 per cent. Notably, for the first time since 2007, there are no female candidates standing to be president.
The high levels of support for Lee Jae-myung suggest a widespread desire among the public to repudiate Yoon’s martial law declaration.
Kim, the labour minister in Yoon’s administration, has apologised for December’s declaration. But his opponents have continued to question him about it.
Kim’s challenge has been to build a coalition of moderates and mainstream conservatives who firmly opposed the martial-law declaration, while also winning support from those who believe far-right conspiracy theories around election fraud. Yoon, the former president, is continuing to promote these narratives.

Lee Jae-myung’s compelling background
Lee Jae-myung’s personal story has uplifting parallels with South Korea’s own history of economic and political development.
Lee was born into poverty; the exact date of his birth is not known. He worked in factories from a very young age and permanently injured his left arm in an industrial accident when he was still a child.
He went on to earn a scholarship to study law and, by the late 1980s, had established himself as a labour lawyer and activist.
This activist image was highlighted when he live-streamed himself dramatically scaling a fence to enter the National Assembly and vote down Yoon’s martial-law declaration in December. He has previously compared himself to populist, progressive US Senator Bernie Sanders.
More recently, however, he has moderated his political rhetoric and policy platform to appeal to centrists and even some conservative voters.
This shift may also help shield Lee from the “red-baiting” claims left-leaning South Korean candidates typically face from conservative opponents that they are “communists”, “pro-China”, or “pro-North Korea”.
But Lee is also plagued by legal troubles, including corruption charges linked to a land development project. These charges, frequently highlighted by his opponents, risk derailing his administration if he wins the election.

What are the main issues?
Some international commentators have focused on how the next president will handle North Korea. South Koreans, however, are more interested in the candidates’ plans to fix the country’s troubled economy.
Lee Jae-myung has pledged to immediately establish an emergency economic task force if he takes office.
There has also been a vigorous debate over South Korea’s future energy policy. Kim favours expanding nuclear-energy production to about 60 per cent of the country’s energy mix. Lee has voiced safety concerns about nuclear power, arguing “the era of building more reactors should come to an end”.
Additionally, questions remain over potential constitutional reform to end South Korea’s so-called imperial presidency system, which has been blamed for centralising too much power in the hands of the president.
The system dates back to the rewriting of the constitution following mass protests in 1987. This established direct presidential elections and a single, five-year term.
Both Lee and Kim support changing this to a four-year, two-term presidential system, similar to the United States.


Big challenges ahead
On the international stage, the new leader will face an uphill battle negotiating with US President Donald Trump over his punitive tariffs. Trump imposed 25 per cent tariffs on South Korean goods in April, but lowered them temporarily to 10 per cent until early July.
Before his impeachment, Yoon was widely reported to be practising his golf skills to attempt to find common ground with Trump, much as former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe did.
The new leader will also face massive challenges bringing South Korean society together in the current climate. Political polarisation and the spread of disinformation worsened under Yoon’s presidency – and these trends will be hard to reverse.
Alexander M. Hynd is a lecturer of Korean politics and international relations at the University of Melbourne. This article was first published by The Conversation.




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High levels of support for front runner Lee Jae-myung suggest a widespread desire to repudiate Yoon Suk-yeol’s martial law declaration


High levels of support for front runner Lee Jae-myung suggest a widespread desire to repudiate Yoon Suk-yeol’s martial law declaration.


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}High levels of support for front runner Lee Jae-myung suggest a widespread desire to repudiate Yoon Suk-yeol’s martial law declaration

High levels of support for front runner Lee Jae-myung suggest a widespread desire to repudiate Yoon Suk-yeol’s martial law declaration