Seoul, Korea
CNN
–
At 14 years old, he was a poor factory worker. On Wednesday, he became the leader of one of Asia’s most powerful economies: the US allies and cultural juggernauts.
But Lee Jae Myung faces a tough job as he heads towards a decisive victory over conservative rival Kim Moon So on Tuesday. South Korea remains deeply divided, with Lee’s predecessor gaining short-lived power in December and declared martial law, causing many voters to worry about their democratic state.
Six months of political turmoil settled the existing rifts and was protested in protest against both former President Yok Yeol and his people’s power parties.
The choppy international situation exacerbates domestic uncertainty. President Donald Trump’s global tariffs have hit South Korea’s trade-dependent economy violently.
Wang Jo Hee, a law professor at Honggik University in Seoul, said Lee’s election may ultimately provide much needed stability after the revolving door of interim leaders over the past six months.
“We can’t even engage with Trump in the tariff war and it’s a serious problem because of an export-driven economy,” Cho said. She added that the election, which saw the highest voter turnout since 1997, represents a stinging public responsibilities to people’s power parties.
“For a lot of people, I think this election was about putting the country in charge of chaos,” she said.
One voter Kim Yong-gu-gun told CNN he was very pleased with Lee’s victory, which made him feel like he was flying. He drove from his home to the capital for two hours on the night of martial law. Before becoming a democracy, Korea has a bloody oppression share in its authoritarian past.
“So I told my wife to call me and tell my kids that I was going to (Parliament) for my grandchildren,” he said. “To create a better world for their generation, we need to stop martial law. I can’t ignore it and sleep.”
However, it remains to be seen whether Lee (60) can heal political divisions. In particular, he has been caught up in a variety of legal challenges, in the face of allegations of corruption and abuse of power.
It is not clear what will happen in his ongoing criminal trial. The sitting president is usually immune from the prosecutor, but there is disagreement as to whether this applies to cases that begin before taking office.
However, at his inauguration ceremony on Wednesday, Lee tried to cast herself as unity and a new start for over 50 million people.
“Now is the time to replace hatred and conflict with coexistence, reconciliation and solidarity. Open an age of happiness, dreams and hope for the nation,” he said in his speech. “I answer the serious call to build a completely new country.”
Lee’s epic rise is well documented.
Born in the mid-1960s, he was the fifth of seven children in a poor family from Andong, a riverside city southeast of Seoul. His father, according to a biography that includes excerpts from his office and Lee’s diary, shows that his mother was a public bathroom rate collector, while his father worked as a market cleaner.
In the early suffering of rapid industrialization that significantly transformed Korea, Korea transformed into a major power, Lee began working in the factory as a teenager, from gem plants to refrigerator assembly lines. While working in a factory that made baseball gloves, he permanently injured his left arm.
In his diary, Lee will write about the vy wish of a student who saw him wearing a school uniform and a student who saw enough students to eat.
Despite his humble beginnings, he eventually passed his school exams and won a full scholarship to study law at Cheonggan University, one of Seoul’s top private universities.
From there, Lee became a human rights lawyer and joined politics in 2010 as mayor of Seoon Nam, just outside Seoul, and as mayor of Song Nam, representing the liberal Democratic Party. It led to another, more important stint from 2018 as governor of Kyoto, the most populous country surrounding the capital.
By then, he had his eyes on the presidency – and left the runner-up governor in the 2022 election, losing to Yoon by less than a percentage point.
Lee then became a lawmaker and survived an attempted assassination in January 2024, when a man stabbed him in the neck during a public event that his party denounced as an “act of political horror.”
Later that year, Yoon’s unfortunate power glove came. Lee rushed back to Congress and made another headline as one of the lawmakers who pushed past soldiers to drive away past soldiers and lift martial law. He jumped the fence to enter the building and streamed live on a viral video that was viewed tens of millions of times.
Despite his growing popularity, Lee is being watched with suspicion by many enemies due to the criminal trial.
Separately, he was convicted of violating the election law by intentionally making a false statement during discussions during the 2022 presidential election. The case was sent to the Court of Appeal.
Lee denies all charges against him. Speaking to CNN in December, he allegedly had been charged with various charges “without evidence or basis,” claiming the allegations were politically motivated.
Yoon’s martial law was driven partly by frustration that spanned a month-long political stalemate, with Lee’s Democrats preventing the president from moving forward with many of his campaign promises and policies.
Today, Democrats control both Congress and the presidency. This allowed us to see a “return to normal politics.”
“It might be easier to push through policies than it was under President Yun, the Berlin-Each,” she added.
And Lee has a lot to do right away. This includes dealing with slowing the economy and participating in US-Korea trade talks.
“I will soon be revitalizing the Emergency Economic Response Task Force Team to restore people’s livelihoods and revitalizing the economy,” he said in his inauguration speech on Wednesday. He added that it will turn the global economic and security crisis into an opportunity to maximize our national interests and strengthen trilateral cooperation between the US and Japan.
Arlington added that Lee clearly sees the US South Korean alliance as the “backbone” of the country’s national security, but that must be balanced with relations with China. The US rival is also South Korea’s largest trading partner.
Yoon took the famous hardline in North Korea and relations plummeted. In contrast, Lee comes from a political party that has historically adopted a more reconciliatory approach to South Korea’s authoritarian neighbours.
Lee reiterated his long-standing peace goals on the Korean Peninsula, vowing to “keep communication channels open while responding firmly to North Korea’s nuclear threat.”
But most of all, Lee emphasized the importance of rebuilding public trust by being so severely damaged by the martial law crisis and punishing those responsible.
“I will rebuild everything that has been destroyed by the riots and create a society that continues to grow and develop,” he said Wednesday. “Please don’t wake up again to use the power of the military to seize the sovereignty of the people.”
