His other half: Lee and his wife attending the inauguration ceremony at the National Assembly in Seoul.— AFP
Lawsuits, scandals, armed troops and a knife-wielding attacker all failed to deter Lee Jae-myung’s ascendancy from sweatshop worker to the South Korean presidency.
After losing by a razor-thin margin in 2022, the left-leaning Democratic Party candidate has taken office after winning a landslide victory.
Opponents decry Lee, 60, for his populist style.
But his rags-to-riches personal story sets him apart from many of South Korea’s political elite.
After dropping out of school to work at a factory to support his family, he suffered a disabling elbow injury in an industrial accident. He earned a scholarship to read law and passed the bar to become an attorney.
Lee has used this origin story to cultivate a loyal support base and frame himself as understanding the struggles of the underprivileged.
“You can worry about people outside shivering in the cold while you sit in your warm living room,” Lee said in a 2022 interview.
“But you can never really understand their pain.”
Lee takes power after lawmakers suspended his predecessor, Yoon Suk-yeol, for deploying armed troops to parliament in his failed attempt to suspend civilian rule six months ago.
During the tense minutes following that move, Lee live-streamed his frantic scramble over the perimeter fence as he and other lawmakers rushed to vote down the martial law decree.
“It was a race against time,” he recalled in an interview.
Lee previously served as mayor of Seongnam, south of Seoul, for eight years.
In that role, he helped shut down what had been the country’s largest dog meat market –ending a trade that had once involved 80,000 canines a year.
He later served as governor of Gyeonggi province – the country’s most populous region surrounding the capital – for more than three years.
In 2024, he was stabbed in the neck by a man posing as a supporter and was airlifted to hospital for emergency surgery.
The attacker later confessed that his intention was to kill Lee to prevent him from becoming president.
Lee has vowed, among other things, to boost South Korea’s artificial intelligence industry, with the goal of making the country one of the top three global leaders in the field.
He has also called for holding those involved in the martial law attempt accountable – promising to “bring insurrection elements to justice”.
During his early days in politics, Lee drew criticism for his confrontational attacks on political opponents.
But Kim Hye-kyung, his wife of 34 years with whom he shares two children, insists Lee speaks with “deliberation”.
“He’s someone who’s come up from the margins, from the very bottom,” she said in a 2017 interview.
“Just like how a flea has to jump to be noticed, I hope people can understand and view him in that context.” — AFP
