Lee Jae-myung, left, South Korea's Democratic Party presidential candidate, greets supporters with his wife Kim Hea Kyung outside the National Assembly in Seoul early on June 4, 2025.Ahn Young-joon/The Associated Press
South Korean opposition candidate Lee Jae-myung will be the country’s next president after a snap election to replace impeached leader Yoon Suk Yeol.
Mr. Yoon was removed from office after a botched declaration of martial law in December, plunging South Korea into months of political limbo as the country’s top court took longer than expected to issue a verdict on his impeachment.
After months of protests demanding Mr. Yoon’s removal, and growing chaos as an interim government grappled with a hostile legislature amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war and threats from North Korea, the court unanimously ruled in favour of impeachment in April, setting the stage for this month’s election.
A joint poll by the country’s three main broadcasters predicted Mr. Lee would win Tuesday’s election handily, returning to power his centre-left Democratic Party, which previously governed South Korea from 2017 to 2022, after its candidate Moon Jae-in was victorious in an election to replace another impeached conservative president, Park Geun-hye.
Even before Mr. Lee’s win was formally declared, People Power Party candidate Kim Moon-soo conceded, telling journalists he “humbly accepts the people’s choice” and congratulated Mr. Lee.
A voter casts his ballot in Seoul Tuesday.Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters
Earlier, Mr. Lee appeared before thousands of cheering supporters in the streets of Seoul. He didn’t formally claim victory but reiterated his major policy goals such as revitalizing the economy, promoting peace with North Korea and easing a domestic divide.
“Let us move forward with hope and make a fresh start from this moment on,” he said. “Though we may have clashed for some time, even those who did not support us are still our fellow citizens of the Republic of Korea.”
The winning candidate will immediately be sworn in as president Wednesday for a single, full term of five years without the typical two-month transition period.
Mr. Lee had sought to succeed Mr. Moon in 2022, when the latter’s single five-year term was up, but lost to Mr. Yoon by just 0.73 per cent, the narrowest margin in South Korean history. The country remains bitterly divided across a host of issues, and any victor in Tuesday’s election is sure to face intense opposition in the legislature and in the streets.
While all candidates have called for “national unity,” they have not been shy to accuse each other of misdeeds.
Mr. Lee and many other leading Democratic lawmakers – who barricaded themselves inside the National Assembly to block Mr. Yoon’s martial law edict – want to hold members of the former president’s PPP to account for their role in the crisis. Conservatives, including Mr. Kim of the PPP, have accused Mr. Lee of seeking “dictatorial” powers and stoked fears of North Korean and Chinese interference.
South Korea’s next president will face major challenges, many of which have only grown worse in the months that followed Mr. Yoon’s attempted coup.
Once the leading Asian Tiger, South Korea has experienced stagnating economic growth in recent years, and income inequality is growing rapidly. Youth unemployment is high and many people struggle to afford housing, both of which have contributed to South Korea having the lowest birth rate in the world, a problem that consecutive governments have failed to remedy, despite spending upwards of US$275-billion on the issue.
Democratic Party lawmakers cheered on Tuesday after a joint exit poll showed its liberal candidate Lee Jae-myung was forecast to win the South Korean presidential election.
The Associated Press
A survey last month by the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper found 40 per cent of respondents believed boosting economic growth should be the next government’s primary task. Just more than 21 per cent said “resolving social conflict” should take priority.
“The economy has gotten so much worse since Dec. 3, not just for me but I hear that from everybody,” voter Kim Kwang-ma, 81, told Reuters in Seoul. “And we as a people have become so polarized.”
Beyond its borders, South Korea faces an emboldened and better-armed-than-ever North Korea, which has grown closer to Russia since the war in Ukraine and largely cut off communications with Seoul, after the collapse of a peace process pursued by former leader Mr. Moon.
Washington, Seoul’s most important ally, has become a wild card under Mr. Trump, who has questioned whether the U.S. should have troops in South Korea and imposed steep tariffs on key exports, including cars and steel.
With reports from Associated Press and Reuters