Two candidates fighting it to win the election when South Korea's next president overcomes the big odds to get where they are. Lee Jae Myung was a teenage sweat shop worker and his family survived with rotten fruit. Kim Moon Thor was imprisoned and tortured for anti-government activities. Both survived weeks of political and legal turbulence that threatened to overturn the president's bid.
Now, when the official June 3 poll campaign begins on Monday, Lee and Kim have emerged as two main candidates. Despite their commitment to pursue national unity when elected, they represent the opposite side of political disparities that are unlikely to be bridged.
The election follows the removal of former President Yuk Yeol, who was fired last month in a short-lived attempt to put South Korea under martial law. So the campaign is being fought less on policy as a referendum for Yoon and his right-wing People Power Party.
The party has not broken ties with Yun, who is facing trial over the charges of the rebellion. Instead, it's even more right by selecting Een's former labor minister Kim as his presidential candidate. When members of Yoon's Cabinet were asked to apologise for the imposition of martial law during a parliamentary session in December, Kim was the only one to stand up and refuse a bow.
His main rival, Lee, 60, leads the pre-election investigation. After winning the Democratic presidential nomination with his unprecedented 89.77% votes, he said:
Lee and 73-year-old Kim have to clear last-minute hurdles to run for the president, adding to the uncertainty that has permeated South Korean politics in recent months.
The criminal charges he denied against Lee threatened his eligibility until the Seoul Court postponed the ruling of the suit until after the election.
Conversely, Kim won the main race, with People Power Party leadership attempting to cancel his candidacy and replace him with former prime minister and acting president Handak. Kim took legal action against his own party leaders, calling them “monsters” and denounced them in a “political coup.”
However, over the weekend, party members voted to recover Kim's candidacy, and Han bowed from the race.
Kim struggled to heal the broken party, calling for the same right-wing terror and digging that Yun had driven him to send troops to the Democratic-controlled parliament to impose martial law.
Kim warned that if Lee wins a majority-held presidency in Congress, he would become a leftist giant and make South Korea more friendly to China and North Korea at the expense of his alliance with the US.
“He's already a dictator,” Kim said. He compared Lee to North Korean and Chinese leaders. “Who will get 89.77% of the support of the parties other than Kim Jong-un and XI Jinping?”
The June election is an extension of the political struggle unleashed by Yoon's martial law.
“For progressives, ending the rebellion is the dominant theme of elections,” said Song Duk Hahm, a political scientist at Kyoto University. “But fear drives conservatives. If Lee Jae-myeon is elected, he is very much afraid of becoming the president of the empire and destroying their ranks.”
Rising from poverty
Lee's life story resonates with many people in Korea. When he was a teenager, his eight-person family moved to a one-room semi-underground shed in a slum south of Seoul. His parents made a living collecting trash and cleaning public toilets. After elementary school he went to work at baseball glove factories and other sweat shops. His left arm was permanently transformed when crushed by a press machine.
“I was so embarrassed when I saw a girl go to school while I was pushing my dad's dirty cart from behind, I hid behind the street corner,” Lee said. “But my miserable life has given me the strength to overcome difficulties.”
He never attended middle school or high school, but Lee passed the university entrance exam. He is a human rights lawyer, mayor, governor, lawmaker and head of South Korea's biggest political party, twice as many as his presidential candidate. He survived his life's attempts and criminal charges that have almost derailed his political career.
When he was mayor, Lee provided free school uniforms and free postnatal care services. As governor, he handed out cash bonuses to help young people find jobs and pay tuition. He was the first governor to eliminate pandemic relief payments for all residents.
He also had an offensive side. During the pandemic, his populous province of Kyoto implemented strict social drive measures later adopted by the central government. He also cleaned up the scenic valley by driving illegal restaurants.
When Lee stood on the president for the second time (losing his first bid for Yun in 2022), he tried to expand the appeal among voters along the way by not seeking political revenge and committing to work for the unity of the people. He emphasized efficiency and pragmatism over ideology.
“A cat is a good cat as long as it catches a mouse well,” he said.
To counter the Conservative accusations that he is “pro-country and anti-American,” Lee emphasized the importance of his country's alliance with Washington and trilateral cooperation with the US and Japan for regional security.
Progressive was conservative
However, his conservative enemies remain unconvinced, calling him a ruthless “populist.” Kim has curbed such unease about election favourites in order to attract conservative support. He went on a long zigzag journey to reach the position he was in.
Kim was a well-known progressive activist in the 1970s and 1980s. He was expelled twice from Seoul National University for anti-government activities. He led a wave of student activists who disguised themselves as workers to build unions. And he refused to escape the place of his running fellow activists, even under torture by military agents.
But Kim was also a heretic.
Many former activists became members of the Democrats in the 1990s after democratization in the 1990s, but Kim joined the conservative camp and became lawmakers and governor. He said he has since given up on his “revolutionary” and “anti-American” views after observing the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
However, he has led to a series of election defeats over the past decade. He was mostly known for his extreme right-wing comments – he once called the Korean and former liberal president before he deserved to be “executed” – Before Yoon chose him as Minister of Labor last year.
Kim called Yoon's martial law a mistake. But he also denounced the left-wing opposition's hindering tactics in parliament for pushing Yun to extreme measures. If elected, he said that South Korea would make it all Y's more reliable for Washington and would increase its deterrent against North Korea. He also said he also works for the harmony of the nation.
“If you look at the trajectory of my life, there's no one I've tried, no one I can understand, no one can accept,” Kim said.
