Lee Jae-myung's power play: Outsider's climb to top

Korea Herald

04-06-2025

From factory boy to president, the liberal winner of South Korea's election says he was driven by "anger" at inequality
The presidential victory of Lee Jae-myung has been cast as a "win for those who are not part of the establishment, and outside the mainstream" by the Democratic Party of Korea.
Lee's political journey that culminated with his being elected president has been rocky and drama-filled, to say the least.
"It's not easy working for Lee Jae-myung. Things always seem to happen to him. But he is a guy who gets up every time," one of his close aides told The Korea Herald.
At a campaign rally Saturday in Daejeon, one of the swing cities that was watched closely, Lee boasted that he has "dodged every bullet that came [his] way."
Over the campaign, Lee shrugged off his criminal trials, cited as one of his most critical liabilities, claiming he had been wrongfully charged by prosecutors.
Like he said, Lee glided past many controversies that would have disqualified any major politician.
Neither Lee's notorious foul-mouthed rant at his sister-in-law, the recording of which was leaked to the public, nor his alleged affair with an actress, significantly hurt his popularity, if his election win is any testament.
Anti-establishment outsider
Lee, who likes to describe himself as an outsider, started off at the Democratic Party in 2007 as a "lowly" deputy spokesperson, a role that is usually given to novice politicians who have not yet won public office.
Not many of the people who knew Lee from his very early days are still around. But the tale goes that even then, Lee was more ambitious than a typical deputy spokesperson.
Lee felt he was snubbed by mainstream Democratic Party lawmakers at the time, according to an insider account, and that it was what drove him.
"He remembers the humiliation," the insider, speaking anonymously, said. "But in the end, that only fueled him."
Lee left the Seoul stage for 11 years, serving as Seongnam mayor and then as Gyeonggi Province governor, until 2021.
When Lee won the Democratic Party's nomination for president in the 2022 race, at the second attempt, it was a political Cinderella story.
Past presidential nominees of the Democratic Party, more often than not, had made it to the top of the party before they could launch a bid, working their way up from the inside. Lee did it from the outside in.
"Do you know why they are so afraid of Lee Jae-myung? It's because I came from the fringes. I make the establishment uncomfortable," Lee told a roaring crowd of supporters on Saturday.
Policy bulldozer
Lee first made his name as fiery mayor of Seongnam, a city in the southern part of Gyeonggi, the province that surrounds Seoul, where he served for two consecutive terms from 2010 to 2018.
Lee's signature policy from his Seongnam era is his "free" welfare program that was taken to the Supreme Court for allegedly violating the laws on social security.
This is when Lee's experiment with universal basic income began, and when he learned of its popular appeal.
Lee, vowing to make Seongnam the "city of free welfare benefits," doled out vouchers that can be used like cash in the city in spite of fiscal concerns.
By 2018, when Lee became governor of Gyeonggi Province, the most populous of any local administration, with 13 million people, his name was more recognized nationally.
As governor, Lee was known for pushing through tough COVID-19 restrictions, which were cheered by people who were fed up with the pandemic, but also invited controversy over rights infringement.
In 2020, Lee live-streamed himself busting a church in Gyeonggi Province that became the site of an outbreak, and took a nasal swab from the pastor on tape for COVID-19 testing — a telling scene for which he still gets recognition for.
Unlikely hero
After his defeat to former President Yoon Suk Yeol three years ago, Lee ran for and won a seat on the National Assembly, which was criticized as a possible ploy to evade his legal problems, as sitting lawmakers have immunity from certain criminal proceedings.
Lee eventually sat on the top of the Democratic Party leadership ladder, and while he was the party's chair, almost had an arrest warrant out against him.
Lee is "more like a villain, albeit a popular villain, than a hero," a Democratic Party insider said. "Sure he may not play nice. But you know what? You can count on him to get things done."
At 54, he launched his first presidential bid in 2017 at the Seongnam factory where he had worked as a child to support his family. Standing beside his mother, he recalled losing function in one arm from an accident there.
Despite no formal schooling, Lee passed the bar, graduated from Chung-Ang University, and engaged in civic activism as a practicing lawyer before entering politics.
Lee once famously said he is motivated by anger.
"Perhaps because of how I was brought up, I have a lot of anger toward inequality. It's what motivates me, politically," Lee said in a press interview in 2020.