Lee Jae-myung Hopes to Heal South Korea. That Won't Be Easy

Time​ Magazine

04-06-2025

The result was never really in doubt. Lee Jae-myung is the new President of South Korea after winning a commanding 49% of the vote in Tuesday's snap election, which was called following the impeachment of former President Yoon Suk-yeol, who plunged Asia's fourth biggest economy into turmoil with his December declaration of martial law.
The real question is which version of Lee will now govern this highly polarized East Asian nation of 50 million. The former labor-rights lawyer and activist is a political chameleon who has lurched from being a U.S.-skeptic, China-friendly progressive to a pragmatic moderate on the campaign trail, lavishing praise on U.S. President Donald Trump in an exclusive interview with TIME.
At the least, South Koreans will hope Lee, 61, can restore stability following six months of political paralysis that has hampered efforts to negotiate a vital reprieve for this export-reliant economy from April's 'reciprocal' U.S. tariffs. Lee has promised a fiscal stimulus package to boost growth from just 2% last year, though tackling chaos in schools—both empty classrooms and teachers quitting in droves—and reversing the world's lowest fertility rate of just 0.75 births per woman won't have easy fixes.
Speaking to around 5,000 supporters gathered near Seoul's National Assembly, Lee promised to restore democracy, focus on mending a riven society, and work to alleviate rising costs of living to 'prevent people's livelihoods from further worsening.'
Other than reasserting South Korea's democratic foundation following the martial law debacle, Lee's victory has huge implications for America's East Asian security alliances, as well as South Korea's ties with China and relations with estranged, nuclear-armed sibling North Korea across the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that has split the peninsula since the 1950–53 Korean war.
'It's critical that we secure peace and stability on the Korean peninsula,' Lee told TIME in his only media interview on the campaign trail. 'And in so doing, the cornerstone is the military alliance between South Korea and the United States.'
In hailing links with Washington, Lee is going against Democratic Party orthodoxy, which has typically been skeptical of U.S. ties. Indeed, historically Lee had been colder towards the U.S. and more positive toward China, though he tempered these views on the campaign trail to keep his tent as wide as possible, declaring at the stump that the Democratic Party is 'originally center-right, not progressive.'
While domestic issues such as a cost of living crisis, stagnant economy, and record youth unemployment dominated the vote, inter-Korean relations as ever loom in the background. North Korean 'Supreme Leader' Kim Jong Un has sent troops, weapons, and ammunition to aid Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, while Pyongyang conducted 47 missile tests last year alone and has an estimated arsenal of some 70 nuclear bombs.
'The security environment in Northeast Asia is unfolding very unfavorably for us,' said Lee. 'South Korea and the U.S. need to keep a very close watch and make sure that we build on our deterrence and eventually move to disarmament of nuclear and missile capabilities and to denuclearization.'
Trump has indicated his willingness to restart negotiations with Kim following their failed 2019 Hanoi summit and Lee will want to ensure that his government doesn't get squeezed out of talks as happened under his Democratic Party predecessor, former President Moon Jae-in.
'When it comes to the U.S. and North Korea, the role the South Korean government can render regarding dialogue and cooperation will be required,' said Lee. 'I don't think there will be any need to sideline South Korea.'
It's not the only Moon misstep that Lee will be keen to avoid. A son of refugees from the North, Moon was so personally invested in rapprochement across the DMZ that he plowed endless time and political capital into that ultimately fruitless endeavor. The result was his own citizens felt overlooked and ignored, especially as the country was gripped by soaring real estate prices just as government officials were accused of leveraging insider information to profit from state land sales.
'A lot of people lost confidence in Moon's leadership because of the real estate issues,' says Youngmi Kim, a senior lecturer in the department of Asian studies at Edinburgh University. 'Lee Jae-myung won't want to repeat those mistakes and will likely focus more on economic sectors rather than North Korean politics.'
Another issue will be healing a nation that feels as polarized as at any time in living memory. When TIME sat down with Lee on May 25, the meeting room had to be swept for explosives by a sniffer dog, and the future President showed off the neck scar where he had been stabbed by a would-be assassin in January last year.
During campaign events, Lee, who grew up in an impoverished farming household and toiled in factories as a child, spoke from behind bullet-proof glass to crowds, which were surveyed by rooftop police snipers.
While Lee stressed the importance of 'engaging in dialogue and really understanding the differences of one another' while speaking to TIME, at the stump he attacked Yoon's People Power Party (PPP) as a 'far-right criminal organization' and warned how 'the return of rebellion forces' would lead to 'the destruction of democracy, the deprival of people's human rights, the normalization of martial law, and our country's downfall into a backward, third-world nation.'
Lee led the charge for Yoon's impeachment and successfully segued that perceived moral high ground into the subsequent presidential campaign despite himself being embroiled in a slew of criminal cases, including for alleged bribery, violating the nation's election law during his 2022 campaign for President, and corruption linked to a $1 billion property development scandal. (Lee denies any wrongdoing.)
Though Yoon was the first President in South Korean history to be detained on criminal charges while still in office, the position has long been a poisoned chalice, with four South Korean Presidents imprisoned, one killing himself amid a corruption investigation, and three now impeached.
After losing control of the National Assembly in April 2024 legislative elections, Yoon, a former prosecutor general, found it impossible to enact his agenda, even to pass a budget. This prompted him on Dec. 3 to declare martial law, calling the opposition-controlled legislature an anti-state 'monster' allied to North Korea that had 'paralyzed' his administration. The folly of his autogolpe, or self-coup, shouldn't disguise the fact that South Korean politics requires urgent reform.
South Korean Presidents serve a single five-year term, with lawmakers elected every four years. While separation of powers is a vital feature of democracies, critics argue that the propensity of South Korean leaders to quickly become lame ducks without any hope of redemption engenders a hyper-polarized system whereby the legislature is incentivized to thwart executive power at every turn.
Lee, who will enjoy a healthy legislative majority for at least three years, has advocated amending the constitution to allow two, four-year presidential terms mirroring the U.S., though this is a deeply contentious issue despite a constitutional provision barring an incumbent from benefiting from any amendments.
But looming in the background is Lee's case for violating South Korea's election law that could potentially bar him from politics for at least five years. In March, an appeals court cleared Lee only for the Supreme Court to overrule its verdict and send the case back for judgement, which is expected in coming months.
The potential for South Korea to be plunged into yet another constitutional crisis is deeply unsettling for a nation longing for a return to stability and the addressing of pocketbook issues. 'There's a lot of a lot of legal issues that will be parsed over the next six or eight months and we'll just have to see how the chips fall and if that has a great effect on Lee,' says Sean O'Malley, a professor and political scientist at Dongseo University in Busan.
The Democratic Party is trying to push through a new law that will protect Presidents from undergoing investigation and criminal prosecution during their term, which would solve Lee's problems but risks deepening fissures in South Korean society, especially as his predecessor is due in the dock over subsequent months to answer charges of insurrection.
On the final day of campaigning, Lee's PPP opponent Kim Moon-soo, a former labor minister under Yoon, told supporters in the southeastern city of Busan that Lee planned to 'seize all power in South Korea and establish a Hitler-like dictatorship' by using his party's legislative majority to shield him from prosecution while retaliating against his political opponents.
Speaking to TIME, Lee insisted that he has 'a very firm commitment not to resort to any retaliation. I will not be doing things that they have done to us.' While that sentiment is laudable, elections are no panacea, and Lee's evocation of 'they' and 'us' may portend tempestuous waters ahead.