Who is Lee Jae-myung, South Korea’s next president?

Lee Jae-myung of the liberal Democratic Party (DP) triumphed in the snap presidential election on June 3, completing a remarkable life journey that has seen the former child factory worker rise to Korea’s highest position of executive authority.

Lee, the 60-year-old two-term DP lawmaker, previously served two terms as Seongnam mayor and one term as Gyeonggi governor. He also was DP chief until earlier this year and is now set to serve five years in the highest office.

Lee was born to farmer parents in October 1963 in North Gyeongsang, a conservative stronghold.

In 1976, his family moved to Gyeonggi’s Seongnam, then an industrial city. At the age of 13, Lee began working in factories with hazardous working conditions as a child laborer. His left wrist was crushed by a machine in 1977, leaving him with a permanent disability.

However, Lee gradually climbed the social ladder as he continued his schooling. He earned a general education diploma, a high school equivalency certificate, in 1980 and later entered Chung-Ang University’s College of Law. He passed the state bar exam in 1986.

During his college years in the 1980s, when the nationwide pro-democracy movement was on the rise, he remained somewhat diffident despite his friends’ calls for him to engage in labor and political activism. Instead, he chose to pursue democratic reform from within the system.

Lee grew more vocal as he offered legal support for marginalized people in Seongnam. He volunteered as a legal counselor at a local YMCA branch. In 1989, he opened a legal office in Seongnam, which he called his “second hometown.” Lee claimed he was the city’s only “human rights attorney” at the time.

In 1995, Lee organized a civic group representing Seongnam’s residents. The group became a platform for Lee’s activism. Lee hunted land development corruption and led a collective petition to build a city-run hospital.

When Lee’s effort to construct the hospital was thwarted, some activists illegally occupied the council building. Lee was accused of orchestrating the action and faced an arrest order. Taking refuge in a church basement, he resolved to become mayor “to change realities” in the city in March 2004.

Although Lee entered politics in 2005 by joining the liberal Uri Party to become the Seongnam mayor, his first bid failed. However, he stayed in the political sphere as an aide to Chung Dong-young, the liberal presidential candidate, in 2007.

In 2010, Lee was elected as the Seongnam mayor, serving two terms until 2018.

In 2016, Lee rolled out a key initiative offering dividends in the form of local vouchers to Seongnam’s youth. Residents aged 19 to 24 who had lived in the city for three years or longer were eligible to receive 250,000 won ($180) in local vouchers every quarter. The policy appeared to be a predecessor of his presidential pledge — a handout of 250,000 won to every Korean.

However, Lee’s mayoral term left him with criminal charges: accusations of bribery and corruption tied to land development projects in Daejang-dong and the sponsorship of a local sports team.

Lee was indicted for breach of trust by excluding the city-owned developer from the Baekhyeon-dong development project in Gyeonggi, causing a loss of 20 billion won, and skewing the profit distribution scheme of the Daejang-dong development to favor minor investors.

Lee was also accused of taking bribes in the form of sponsorship for the local football team Seongnam FC from major companies like Doosan and Naver, totaling 18.3 billion won, in exchange for construction permits for their headquarters in Seongnam from 2014 to 2016.

In 2018, Lee was elected as the governor of Gyeonggi, Korea’s most populous region with 13.49 million residents at the time.

After the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Lee introduced a basic income scheme in the province — the distribution of 100,000 won vouchers to every Gyeonggi resident — to prevent an economic slowdown due to the pandemic. He also promoted a local voucher, which could be used instead of cash issued by the Bank of Korea, as his staple policy.

However, he faces two more criminal trials involving alleged crimes that occurred during his gubernatorial term.

Lee is currently on trial for alleged third-party bribery and violating the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act, with prosecutors accusing him of trying to curry favor with North Korea by enlisting underwear manufacturer Ssangbangwool to pay a total of $8 million to North Korea on his behalf.

In November, Lee was also indicted for misappropriating a state-issued credit card for his benefit. Lee was suspected of spending 165 million won of the Gyeonggi provincial government’s budget to buy fruit, sandwiches and food and pay laundry fees between July 2018 and October 2021.

Lee resigned from the governor position in October 2021 to run for president in the March 2022 election. He then lost to his rival, ousted President Yoon Suk Yeol, by a razor-thin margin of 0.73 percentage points.

Even after his defeat, Lee tightened his grip on the DP.

Instead of returning to Gyeonggi, he became a lawmaker representing Incheon’s Gyeyang-B district through the by-elections of June 2022. The electoral district leans heavily toward the DP. He was re-elected in the April general election last year for the same constituency.

In August 2022, three months after Yoon’s inauguration, Lee became the DP’s chief. Under his direction, the party adopted a resolute stance against Yoon until the president’s ouster in early April, railroading special counsel probe bills against first lady Kim Keon Hee and 30 impeachment motions against Yoon-appointed government officials and ministers.

In January last year, Lee was stabbed in the neck by a 67-year-old man during his visit to Busan. He recovered after receiving surgery to treat a 1.4-centimeter (0.55-inch) laceration in a vein in his neck at Seoul National University Hospital in Seoul.

Yoon’s earlier-than-expected exit from the presidential office gave Lee a new opportunity for a presidential bid. His approval rating in the DP’s primaries for the presidential election stood at 89.77 percent, a historic high.

He could also complete the race without legal uncertainties as the judiciary accepted his request to postpone proceedings until after the election.

Like his ousted predecessor, Lee hasn’t been free of family controversy. His wife, Kim Hye-kyung, was convicted of misappropriating the provincial government’s credit card and violating election laws as she spent the Gyeonggi provincial government’s money to offer meals to spouses of DP lawmakers in 2021. An appellate court sentenced her to pay a fine of 1.5 million won, though Kim has appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.

Lee’s first son was also found guilty of publishing sexually explicit online posts and online gambling and was ordered to pay a 5 million fine last year.

Overcoming such challenges and controversies, Lee as Korea’s 14th president, is now tasked with rebuilding a deeply divided nation.

BY LEE SOO-JUNG, MICHAEL LEE  [lee.soojung1@joongang.co.kr]