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South Korea's opposition party candidate has won the country's presidential election by a solid margin. The snap election comes after six months of chaos, triggered by the declaration of martial law and the previous president's impeachment. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from Seoul.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: In his victory speech, Lee Jae-myung pledged to restore democracy to South Korea.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LEE JAE-MYUNG: (Speaking Korean).
KUHN: "The first mission you gave me is to overcome the insurrection once and for all," he said, "to ensure that there will never again be a military coup that threatens the people." Martial law was a key issue for many voters. Outside one polling place, we spoke to Park Seong-hwi, 32. She said that in the last election in 2022, she voted for a liberal, third-party candidate who fit her feminist views. Instead, Yoon Suk Yeol was elected, and he declared martial law. Park says this made her regret voting for a minor-party candidate.
PARK SEONG-HWI: (Through interpreter) I think waking up to find your country in flames would be enough to make anyone rethink their choice.
KUHN: So in this election, Park voted for Lee Jae-myung, thinking that he was not an ideal choice but a realistic one.
PARK: (Through interpreter) I felt I should vote for someone from a party with the power to keep me alive and protect my safety as a woman.
KUHN: While conservative administrations have focused on deterrence against North Korea, Lee Jae-myung has promised diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang. But that doesn't go over so well with some older voters whose views were shaped by the legacy of the 1950-1953 Korean War. Sixty-year-old Nam Kyung-won says she went to a school built on a former Korean War battleground. Her school's principal told students that the spirits of patriots rested beneath their feet. Nam remembers seeing South Korean soldiers' remains exhumed from the school grounds.
NAM KYUNG-WON: (Through interpreter) Seeing the bones made me realize what the principal said was true - that there were people like me who died trying to save the country lying right there.
KUHN: Nam said that experience never left her, and her views of North Korea haven't changed.
NAM: (Through interpreter) I think that really engraved in me that after growing up and playing in a school with such a sad history, I could never support those who collaborate with or endorse North Korea.
KUHN: Lee Jae-myung has promised to engage with North Korea, but he's also pledged to keep South Korea's alliance with the U.S. ironclad. Seo Jungkun is a political scientist at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. He says that while Lee has proposed reaching out to North Korea, his campaign is focused more on bread-and-butter issues. That's partly because North Korea appears unwilling to either engage with South Korea or give up its nuclear weapons.
SEO JUNGKUN: A North Korea denuclearization is not thinkable anymore. I mean, that is a huge factor for any new leadership in South Korea to talk more and more about domestic politics and the economy.
KUHN: Lee Jae-myung has similarly not spelled out how he plans to deal with the Trump administration's tariffs or its prioritizing confronting China. Seo says that South Korea hasn't really figured out President Trump's intentions, much less how it should respond to them.
SEO: I don't think we are ready to sort of lay out the Korean version of foreign policy towards the 2.0 Trump administration.
KUHN: He notes that Lee's experience as a mayor and provincial governor has made him into a more pragmatic administrator than some of his liberal colleagues. But it's hard to know how liberal or centrist Lee will really be, Seo says, until he takes office. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Seoul.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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