Sungnam, South Korea – Lee Jae-myeon, the presidential election in South Korea, has always described his politics as a deep and personal born out of the “miserability” of his youth.
In his last presidential run three years ago, when his conservative opponent, Yoon Sook Yeol, a former prosecutor, appealed to the rule of law, Lee recounted his story from his childhood: how poverty in his family pushed him into the factory assembly line while his peers were in middle school – and his mother walked him to work every morning, holding his hand.
“Behind all the policies I have implemented was my own poor and poor life, the everyday struggles of ordinary Koreans,” he said in March 2022.
Lee Jae-myeon of the Foreground Centre will be attending a rally with then-President Yoon Sook Yeol in the Seoul National Assembly in December 2024.
(Ahn Young-Joon/Applications)
Lee lost that race by 0.73 points, or 247,077 votes, but it was Yun who set the stage for Lee’s comeback. The former president, who was fired in the middle of his term in December due to the declaration of martial law, is now on trial for the riots.
Liberal Lee was the winner in the SNAP presidential election on Tuesday, with three major South Korean television stations calling the race just before midnight here.
On the campaign trail, Lee framed his run as a mission to restore the country’s democratic norms. However, he also returned to a theme that has evolved over the years from a childhood into his distinctive political brand. It is the promise of society that provides the most vulnerable “thick safety mats”: a way out of the puddles.
Born in December 1963 and fifth of seven siblings, Lee grew up in Sungnam, a city near the southeastern edge of Seoul, which was known as a neighbourhood for those who had left the capital Shanti Town by the time the family settled there in 1976.
The family rented a single semi-base room at a local market. There, his father made a living as a cleaner. Sometimes his family lived on discarded fruits that they had picked up along his route. Lee’s mother worked as an attendant in the bathroom around the corner.
Lee spent her teen years jumping from one factory to another. His first job, at the 13-year-old, was soldered for 12 hours a day at a jewelry maker, breathing irritating smoke. In another job, the owner skipped Lee without paying three months’ wages.
A few years later, while operating a press machine at a baseball glove factory, Lee was in an accident that made his left arm look permanent. In despair, Lee attempts to end her life. He survived because the pharmacist who went for sleeping pills captured the wind of his intentions and gave him digestive pills instead.
The banner featuring the ruling and opposition presidential candidates is hanging on the streets of Seoul before the March 2022 election.
(Ahn Young-Joon/Applications)
After quitting his job, Lee began studying for middle and high school in the evening. He has proven to be a talented student and is fully on the Jeonggan University to study the law.
After passing the Korean bar exam in 1986, he was moved by a lecture by Roh Moo-Hyun, a human rights lawyer who became president in 2003, and Lee, 26, opened up his own legal practices to do the same.
Seongnam had developed rapidly by then, becoming the site for several projects, and Lee threw herself into local watchdog activism.
Hadongen, 73, who organized the decade in the city with Lee, recalled the day they met. The latter wore a great expression of urgency.
He added: “He wasn’t afraid of anyone else thinking about him.”
Ha remembered Lee as a keen strategic mind, with the tricks to “finding the opponent’s weaknesses.” However, despite the noise they made, substantial changes proved to be more difficult to achieve, leading to Lee’s political awakening in 2004.
A year ago, two major hospitals in the city were closed, threatening the accessibility of emergency care in the poorest areas. However, Lee’s campaign gathered nearly 20,000 signatures from residents to build a public hospital for them, which was almost immediately shattered by the city council.
“Powers of power don’t care about people’s health and life unless they benefit,” Lee wrote about his reaction in 2021. “If they don’t do that, do it yourself. Instead of asking someone else to do it, I’ll become the mayor and do it with my own hands.”
Lee Jae-myeon was attacked and injured while visiting Busan, South Korea in January 2024.
(Sohn Hyung-Joo/Yonhap/ap)
Lee was mayor of Seongnam from 2010 to 2018. Meanwhile, he repaid more than $400 million in local government debt left by his predecessor. He moved his office from 9th to 2nd floors and frequently appeared on the site of questions and complaints from citizens.
However, he was best known for his welfare policy. He unfolded despite intense opposition from the conservative central government of the time. Free school lunches, free school uniforms for middle school students, and financial support for new mothers seeking postpartum care. To all 24-year-old citizens, the city also provided base income of approximately $720 a year in the form of cash vouchers that can be used by local businesses.
In 2016, when a light-shaped high school student who couldn’t afford hygiene pads using shoe insoles instead made a national headline, the city also added a program that offered cash to underprivileged teenage girls in feminine hygiene products. A few years later, Lee also did good things about his campaign promise to build a public hospital that first promoted him into politics.
“My personal experience made me realize how cruel this world is for people who have nothing,” he said in 2021.
Years have passed since Lee left town to become governor of Kyoto Province and a three-stage presidential election, but his track record still inspires the intense loyalty in Sungnam’s working-class neighborhood, remembered as a play where Lee cared for small things.
“His openness and desire to communicate resonated with many people,” said Kim Seung-man, 67, a shop owner at Sandawon Market, where Lee’s family made a living in the 1970s. “Working class people identify with him because he had a very difficult childhood.”
During the rally on April 4, 2025, people cried out slogans and congratulated South Korean President Yoon Sak Yeol, who was appointed by the Constitutional Court.
(Lee Jinman / Associated Press)
And while the Seongnam Citizens Medical Center, which opened in 2020, has been deep in red and has been targeted by Lee’s critics who dismiss his welfare policy as cheap populism, Kim says it’s a lifeline to this working-class neighborhood.
“This was a treatment hub for covid patients during the pandemic,” he said. “Serving a public good means doing so regardless of whether it is a profit or not.”
Beyond Seongnam’s working-class neighborhood, Lee has caused a fierce disgust for many as well. This is a fact that cannot be explained by his policies alone.
This is due to his cruel, sometimes confrontational attitudes, and others to classificationist prejudices. Lee pointed out his position as an “outsider” in the world of Korea’s founding politics. There, the paths of most ambitious young politicians follow the script he shuns.
“I’ve never benefited anyone in the political era,” Lee said at a press conference last month.
He faces attacks from within his own party, with conservatives casting him as a tyrant and criminal, focusing on allegations against him in legal cases. Former President Yoon cited the opposition “legislative tyranny” of the Lee-led Liberal Party as justification for declaring martial law in December.
“There is still a debate over the character and ethics that Lee continues,” said Cho Jin-man, a political scientist at Duxun Women’s University. “He doesn’t have any pretty squealing images.”
Since losing the 2022 election, Lee has faced trial on numerous charges, including violations of election laws and mistreatment of real estate development projects as mayor of Song Nam.
Lee Jae Myung will talk about President Yoon Sook Yeol’s blast each at a press conference on December 15th.
(Lee Jinman / Associated Press)
Most of the allegations against Lee are not stuck. Others are technical, where politicians often refuse to stand mostly when enacted consistently, like election law provisions that prohibit candidates from lying during campaigns.
“On the contrary, these just led to the realization that there was a problem with the prosecutor’s office,” Cho said.
Over the past few months, Lee has vowed to smooth out the rough edges of his public persona and repair the country’s increasingly flammable partisan rift.
After he survived an attempt to assassinate last year, in which the attacker’s blades damaged a huge vein on his neck, Lee denounced the “politics of hatred” rooted in the country, calling for a new era of mutual respect and coexistence.
In a recent campaign, Lee has requested a welfare agenda. This includes pledges for better labor protection, more public housing and public health. It reflects not as a class war, but rather an effort to win over moderate conservatives.
However, it remains questionable whether Lee will be successful, as the party currently manages both the executive and legislative divisions.
“He now has a clear path to pushing what he wants very efficiently,” Cho said. “But the nature of power is like those who hold it do not necessarily exercise restraint.”
Lee has promised not to seek retaliation against his political opponents as president, but he also made it clear that those who worked with former President Yoon’s illegal power Grub are responsible.
His working-class background does not hide criticism from labor activists. Labor activists say his proposal to boost the domestic semiconductor industry will regain workers’ rights.
That background would also be of little use to Lee’s first and most pressing agenda items: tariffs on South Korean cars, steel and aluminum deal with President Trump, which is expected to come into full force in July.
“I don’t think Lee and Trump have good chemistry,” Cho said.
“Both have such strong personalities, but they are very different in terms of political ideology and personal development.”
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