From Trump to domestic turmoil: South Korea’s new president has his hands full

Asia Watch – A bimonthly column by Professor Swaran Singh in which he analyses major developments across Asia

Asia Watch
By Swaran Singh
Jun 05, 2025

South Korea’s snap elections, originally slated for 2027, have brought a ‘liberal’ leader, Lee Jae-myung, to the Blue House in Seoul, after months of political turmoil. Lee had taken centre stage since the December insurrection following former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s failed attempt to impose martial law, culminating in his impeachment. This landslide victory of Lee, however, has also created high expectations among the South Koreans who expect him to bridge the fierce ideological fault lines at home and handle the challenges posed by Trump and Lee's own ‘soft’ approach towards China. Lee, though, has been a survivor and is likely to stay on course, says Professor Swaran Singh, in this first edition of Asia Watch.

This Wednesday South Korea elected a centre-left leaning liberal, Lee Jae-Myung, of the Democratic Party, as its 21st President. This has ended the political turmoil over the last many months that gripped the East Asian nation.

The crisis was triggered by former President Yoon Suk Yeol of the conservative People’s Power Party trying to impose martial law in early December. This had unleashed a popular uprising with people taking to the streets and members of the National Assembly braving soldiers to jump over fences to vote against Yoon’s decree and finally removing him through a complex process of impeachment.

In normal circumstances, these elections were to be held two years later in 2027.

Image: Calls for President Yoon Suk Yul to resign at the National Assembly on 4 December 2024: Photo courtesy: Daily Minjoo

This political crisis of December 2024, their biggest since the June Uprising of 1988, had also pulled Lee Jae-myung to the centre stage of national politics, finally contributing to his landslide victory with game-changing connotations. At the most visible level, reflecting this popular mood of people, this election saw an unprecedented voter turnout of 79.4 percent, their highest since 1997.

While this outcome of a clear victory for Lee Jae-Myung reinforces the trust in democracy having developed deeper roots in South Korean society, it also presents formidable challenges for his presidency. These flow both from the deeper socio-political divide and dysfunctional inertia corroding state institutions and could also be attributed to the populace being low on patience and high on expectations.

A new journey begins…

To begin with, heralding this new democratic experience, the initial elections of 1987, 1992 and 1997 marked an end to South Korea’s long tryst with dictators, including periods of martial law. These three elections saw voter turnout above 80 percent, which was also seen as influenced by their preceding authoritarian traditions.

But over time, each of these elections contributed to institutionalising a robust democratic polity in South Korea.

While the 1987 election was South Korea’s first democratic election following their June Uprising, the 1992 election had brought to power their first non-military president. The elections in 1997, which further strengthened their democratic credentials, saw the first opposition candidate being elected as President.

The 1997 election also took place against the backdrop of the disastrous East Asian financial crisis. This was a major hit for the South Korean economic rise that had begun to take off in the early 1990s. This economic miracle, however, was overshadowed by the bigger one in their communist neighbour, China.

But even in those elections of 1997, the newly elected President Kim Dae-jung had received no more than 40 percent of the popular vote. Compared to that, Lee Jae-Myung, this Wednesday, secured 51.7 percent of votes, making his election an inflection point for the South Korean brand of people’s democracy.

This also marks South Korea’s robust return to progressive politics following a brief period of conservative authoritarianism that carried glimpses and symptoms of a possible return to military dictatorship.

Lee’s humble beginnings

How President Lee stands apart from his predecessors is his humble beginnings and how astutely he cultivated this in building a loyal support base of people who see him as part of their own struggles of underprivileged masses. This cadre of supporters has ensured his piecemeal rise in politics.

Starting with his decade-long stint as Mayor of Seongnam during 2010-2018, he had hit media headlines for shutting down South Korea’s largest dog meat market, ending a trade that involved over 80,000 canines per annum.

Then, during the 2018-2021 period, he was to become the Governor of Gyeonggi Province—a highly populous region surrounding the capital Seoul—and finally the presidential candidate during the 2022 elections, which he had lost by a razor-thin margin. To add to it, Lee’s Democratic Party majority in the National Assembly kept him in the limelight during the national protests against President Yoon Suk Yeol’s political overreach.

Image: National Assembly of South Korea in Seoul. Photo courtesy: Frakorea

These factors, among others, facilitated his landslide victory and cast in stone his rags-to-riches story into iconic folklore.

Second, Lee’s victory was also facilitated by the fact that the sitting President Yoon was disqualified from contesting. This allowed Lee Jae Myung to defeat his conservative rival Kim Moon-soo, who was seen as a close ally of the impeached president and part of his People’s Power Party leadership.

This made Lee a clear choice of the people. Furthermore, the iconizing of his humble beginnings as a former factory worker-turned-lawyer who has come this far despite court cases and an assassination attempt last year was also a key driver for his electoral prospects.

Lee’s life of hardship had seen him start as a young man from his small hometown of Andong. As a school dropout, he was to muddle through life, suffering serious and disabling elbow injuries as a teenage factory worker. During the presidential elections, this was to present him in contrast with the authoritarian Yoon Suk Yeol.

Yeol, who was born to a privileged urbanite family and received elite education to later emerge as a celebrated lawyer, had, in 2016, led the impeachment proceedings against President Park Geun-hye.

Third, the elections saw Lee focusing on articulating his commitment to overcoming insurrection and restoring democracy. He had also promised to make South Korea one of the top three global leaders in Artificial Intelligence. Only, the same political landscape also threatens to squeeze his period of honeymoon period with the presidency to just a few days or weeks.

What makes Lee’s election unique is that, unlike the conventional two months of gradual transitions at the presidential Blue House, President Lee has hit the ground running. Lee took over the reins of office immediately after being sworn in as president on 4th June for a term of five years till 2030.

But such a dramatic victory also creates expectations that will add to his challenges that have also been in the making.

The American ambivalence

While the Mutual Defence Agreement between the United States and the Republic of Korea and the presence of American forces undergird South Korea’s security and prosperity, this most allied ally has also shown ambivalence with strings attached.

Both terms of President Trump have witnessed uncomfortable questions creeping into US-ROK ties. During the first term, Trump’s three summits with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un had ignited speculations of the withdrawal of US forces and abandonment of their annual military exercises.

In the wake of these elections, once again, commentaries from American officials and US representatives in Seoul have repeatedly underlined expectations that South Korea needs to support Trump’s hardline stance on China.

This is especially so because President Lee is expected to mark a shift from President Yoon’s propagation of pro-US and anti-China postures. However, following former President Yoon’s attempted overreach to parliament in early December, President Trump had sought to remain aloof, not even appointing a full-time Ambassador despite the envoy’s ‘very special’ role in Seoul.

Image: Collage images of former South Korean Presidents Moon Jae-in and Yoon Suk Yeol with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and former US President Joseph Biden respectively

Lee’s Challenges

No doubt, the White House has officially called these presidential elections fair. However, it has also expressed concerns about Lee’s centre-left politics opening doors for potential Chinese interference, which, in turn, will be a nightmare for Trump.

In recent weeks, Trump’s right-wing supporters had targeted candidate Lee for emphasising the importance of maintaining a balanced relationship with both Washington and Beijing. That concern can be seen lingering in their official commentaries as well.

For instance, in its immediate response to Lee’s landslide victory, the White House underlined how the US-Korea alliance remains ironclad. Secretary of State Marco Rubio congratulated Lee and said the United States will continue to deepen trilateral cooperation with South Korea and Japan “to bolster regional security, enhance economic resilience, and defence our shared democratic principles.”

All this alludes to US concerns about regional security with China being viewed as the most important challenge for the Trump team.

Adding to the precipice was Lee having to assume charge from the day of his inauguration. This is unlike the usual protocol when a newly-elected president gets two months of a transition period to build his/her team and to fine-tune and articulate her/his future vision and policy priorities.

Also, like the rest of the world, Lee must tackle the tumultuous Trumpian tantrums, watching the world bracing against his daily turns and twists, with unpredictability being the only predictable trait of this world leader and his unorthodox style of diplomacy that has had its run so far.

Recent months have seen Trump not just slap heavy tariffs on South Korea’s export-led economy but also demand that they pay more to keep US forces on their soil.

Image: American and South Korean soldiers during a joint exercise. Photo courtesy: US Department of Defence

The domestic fault lines

Last, but not least, President Lee has to bring national unity among the divided and confused citizenry. Even the political elite in South Korea is confronting fierce ideological divides.

The images of members of the Parliament jumping over the fences at midnight, even as common citizens faced the armed forces during their vigil outside the National Assembly, have been a traumatic experience for South Korea’s national psyche. Even on the eve of the presidential elections, thousands were protesting in the streets for and against Yoon.

Yoon had come to power by asserting stronger ties with the United States. Given the traditional affinity of the conservatives with the United States, the “Stop the Steal” rhetoric of Yoon supporters echoed their expectation of a last-minute intervention by the American president.

The liberal Lee, in turn, had accused the second Trump presidency of bringing “the law of the jungle” to international politics. Lee will now have to cultivate the same Trump and his cronies in the American administration. At the same time, Lee believes that South Korea has a few cards to play as part of a give-and-take in foreign policy, including with the Trump Administration.

Image: Collage images of the June Uprising of 1988 and the 2024 protests against imposition of martial law

Likewise, Lee’s Democratic Party has a majority in the National Assembly. This should allow the newly elected president to push through his liberal legislation, which includes supporting welfare schemes to address people’s core concerns about corruption, rising living costs, joblessness, falling birth rates and so on.

Time is on a premium, though, which reminds an old saying: when the going gets tough, only the tough get going.