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Lee Jae-myung

Lee Jae-myung (이재명, born December 22, 1964) is the 21st president of South Korea, having won the snap presidential election on June 3, 2025, and taken office the following day, following the removal and arrest of President Yoon Suk-yeol in the December 2024 constitutional crisis. A career politician and member of the Democratic Party, Lee rose to national prominence as governor of Gyeonggi Province (2018–2022), where he became known for progressive “livelihood” economic policies and populist appeals to younger voters. His victory in June 2025 marked a further transfer of power from a conservative to a progressive administration — following Kim Dae-jung’s 1998 and Moon Jae-in’s 2017 victories — and took place amid extraordinary circumstances of presidential removal and impeachment.

Early Life and Career

Lee Jae-myung was born on December 22, 1964, in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province, into a poor rural family with several siblings. His early childhood was marked by economic deprivation: he entered factory work while still a child to help support his family, suffering a permanent arm injury from an industrial accident in his early teens — an injury that became a symbol of South Korea’s brutal postwar industrial development and that Lee later cited as foundational to his political consciousness. The injury also exempted him from standard military service.

Lee later attended Chung-Ang University on a scholarship, earning a law degree and passing the bar examination in 1986. He worked as a human rights and labor lawyer from the late 1980s through the 1990s, representing workers, tenant farmers, and those harassed by corporate employers and government authorities. This legal advocacy gave him deep familiarity with the machinery of state coercion and economic inequality that would define his political rhetoric.

Lee entered local politics in Seongnam, the satellite city south of Seoul in Gyeonggi Province, where his early activism centered on tenants’ rights, small-business protections, local accountability, and a long-running campaign for a public municipal medical center. He ran unsuccessfully for Seongnam mayor in 2006 before winning the office in 2010. By the mid-2000s, Lee had developed a reputation for confrontational, populist advocacy — refusing to defer to established party hierarchies.

Lee’s political alignment placed him in the progressive Democratic Party orbit, although his native North Gyeongsang Province was traditionally conservative stronghold territory. He built his career in Gyeonggi Province, where demographic diversity and a more competitive political environment enabled his rise. He cultivated younger voters and working-class constituencies dissatisfied with the incumbent chaebol-aligned conservative economic management model.

Mayor of Seongnam (2010–2018)

Lee’s first major executive office was Mayor of Seongnam, one of South Korea’s largest satellite cities (population approximately 950,000), which he held from 2010 to 2018 in two terms. His mayoralty became nationally notable for confrontational approaches to local governance: he publicly refused to pay a Seongnam debt that he argued had been fraudulently incurred by a predecessor, clashing with the central government and provoking accusations of fiscal insubordination. He championed affordable housing construction, small-business support, and expanded local welfare programs. Seongnam also became the site of the Daejang-dong land development project (2015), a public-private partnership for a large residential development district — a project that would later become the central allegation in criminal investigations against Lee under the Yoon administration.

Governor of Gyeonggi Province (2018–2022)

Lee’s breakthrough came with his election as governor of Gyeonggi Province in June 2018, the largest province by population (approximately 13 million residents) in South Korea. His administration (2018–2022) became known for populist economic experiments:

  • “Gyeonggi Youth Basic Income” program (from 2019): unconditional quarterly cash grants of 250,000 won (up to 1 million won per year), paid in local currency, to all 24-year-old residents regardless of income. The initiative was controversial; supporters hailed it as a prefigurement of universal basic income to offset technological unemployment, while critics charged it was fiscally unsustainable and politically calculated to boost Lee’s national profile
  • Affordable housing initiatives: Lee prioritized public housing construction and rent-control policies
  • Commercial tenant protections: Policies to limit rent increases for small shops and local businesses, reflecting populist anti-corporate sentiment
  • COVID-19 pandemic response coordination: Lee’s province coordinated testing and vaccination rollout during Moon Jae-in’s presidency

His policies attracted national attention and presidential ambitions. Polling by 2021–2022 showed Lee as the leading contender for the Democratic Party’s 2022 presidential nomination. He won the party’s primary and stood as the Democratic candidate in the March 2022 presidential election, the most closely contested in South Korean history: Lee received approximately 47.83% of the vote against Yoon Suk-yeol’s 48.56%, a margin of approximately 247,000 votes out of 34 million cast (roughly 0.73 percentage points). The loss — a near-miss that energized Lee’s base — reinforced his position as the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer and effectively made him leader of the parliamentary opposition.

After Yoon Suk-yeol’s May 2022 inauguration, Lee remained the Democratic Party’s highest-profile opposition figure. His Gyeonggi governorship ended in 2022, but he retained party prominence and mobilized popular support through social media and local organizing.

However, Lee became the subject of multiple legal investigations during the Yoon administration, including:

  • Daejang-dong land development scandal (2022–2023): The central allegation was that Lee, as Seongnam mayor, had improperly designed the public-private partnership for the Daejang-dong (대장동) residential development district to benefit private investors connected to his political network — specifically that the public share of development profits was deliberately structured to be minimal, allowing private partners to reap enormous returns. Critics estimated the private investors earned billions of won in windfall profits at public expense. Lee denied wrongdoing, arguing the project had generated public benefit and the profits were within agreed terms.
  • North Korean cryptocurrency allegations (2023–2024): Prosecutors alleged that associates of Lee had conspired with figures connected to North Korean cyber operations involving cryptocurrency; Lee denied knowledge or involvement.
  • Obstruction of justice and evidence destruction charges related to allegations of witness tampering in the Daejang-dong investigation.
  • Corruption investigation into his wife Kim Hye-kyung’s business dealings.

In September 2023, Lee undertook a 24-day hunger strike protesting his indictment on the land development charges and the arrest of a Democratic Party colleague, which he characterized as political persecution. The hunger strike galvanized his base but also drew concern over his health; he was eventually hospitalized and ended the fast after medical intervention. In January 2024, Lee survived a knife stabbing attack in the port city of Busan — an event that prompted mass sympathy and accusations of a politically-charged environment of violent hostility.

Lee’s legal jeopardy mirrored the cyclical pattern of South Korean presidential politics, where successive administrations prosecuted predecessors and opposition leaders, yet Lee characterized himself as the victim of a conservative witch-hunt. The prosecutions energized his supporters, who viewed them as proof of authoritarian backsliding and political prosecution. His survival through legal attacks while sustaining opposition party leadership — including the Democratic Party’s landslide victory in the April 2024 National Assembly elections, where progressives captured approximately 192 of 300 seats — positioned him for the 2025 snap election.

December 2024 Constitutional Crisis and the Snap Election

The political landscape shifted dramatically on December 3, 2024, when President Yoon Suk-yeol declared martial law for approximately six hours in response to what he characterized as National Assembly obstruction of his legislative agenda. The National Assembly voted unanimously (190–0, with some absent) to reject the martial law declaration. The assembly then impeached Yoon on December 14, 2024. Yoon was detained on insurrection charges in January 2025. After weeks of legal proceedings, the Constitutional Court unanimously voted 8–0 on April 4, 2025, to uphold the impeachment and remove Yoon from office permanently.

The constitutional crisis triggered a snap presidential election within 60 days of Yoon’s removal, set for June 3, 2025. The election took place amid extraordinary national polarization and questions about the viability of South Korea’s constitutional order.

June 2025 Presidential Election Victory

Lee Jae-myung emerged as the frontrunner for the Democratic Party’s nomination and ran as the progressive candidate. The conservative bloc, fractured and demoralized by Yoon’s removal, split its support between the People Power Party’s Kim Moon-soo and the Reform Party’s Lee Jun-seok. In the June 3, 2025, election, Lee won with approximately 49.4% of the vote against Kim Moon-soo’s roughly 41% and Lee Jun-seok’s roughly 8%; he was inaugurated the next day, June 4, 2025. His victory represented:

  • Rejection of conservative rule: a further transfer of power from conservative to progressive control, following Kim Dae-jung’s 1998 and Moon Jae-in’s 2017 victories
  • Generational realignment: Lee attracted majority support from voters under age 50, who viewed the Yoon administration as authoritarian and economically mismanaged
  • Regional politics: Lee consolidated expected progressive support in the Honam region (Jeolla provinces) while making gains in the Seoul metropolitan area, though the conservative TK bloc (Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province) remained resistant

Political Positioning and Agenda

Lee’s campaign emphasized economic populism and progressive social policy:

  • “Livelihood first” economic agenda: Job creation, wage support, and small-business protections, building on his Gyeonggi provincial platform
  • Inter-Korean reconciliation: Signaled a return to a dialogue-based North Korea policy closer to Moon Jae-in’s Sunshine Policy, in contrast to Yoon’s deterrence-first security stance
  • Generational change: Framed his presidency as a break from the authoritarian remnants of the Park-Chun era and a reset of South Korea’s democratic institutions
  • Gender and social policy: Pledged support for LGBTQ+ civil rights protections and gender-equality initiatives, differing from Yoon’s conservative social agenda

As of June 2025, Lee faced continuing legal proceedings on some charges while others had been dismissed or resolved. His assumption of the presidency occurred under the shadow of potential future prosecutions, raising questions about whether the prosecutorial cycle of South Korean politics would continue. Constitutional scholars and opposition figures called for a “grand amnesty” or prosecutorial moratorium to break the cycle, but such measures remained politically contested.

Legacy and Historical Significance

Lee Jae-myung’s 2025 victory occurred under extraordinary constitutional circumstances—the first presidential removal by the Constitutional Court since Park Geun-hye’s impeachment in 2017. His election represented a rejection of Yoon’s security-focused foreign policy and market-oriented domestic economics in favor of progressive prioritization of livelihood and diplomacy. However, his presidency also inherited severe institutional challenges: fractured party politics, pervasive regional divisions, high household debt, and the persistent legal-political cycles that had characterized South Korean governance since the democratization of 1987.

The civic culture that propelled Lee to the presidency has deep roots in earlier crises: the Sewol Ferry Disaster of April 2014, the Gwangju Uprising of 1980, and the Candlelight Revolution of 2016–2017 all contributed to a political generation — Lee’s core 40-something-and-under base — for whom state accountability and institutional trust were not abstract concerns but visceral personal experiences. Lee’s political language of “livelihood first” and constitutional redemption drew on this civic reservoir of democratic aspiration.