By Ramon Pacheco Pardo
3.6.2025
Introduction
Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party of Korea (DP) has won the 3 June 2025 South Korean presidential election with 49.42% of the vote against 41.15% for Kim Moon-soo, from the People Power Party (PPP) and 8.34% for Lee Jun-seok, from the New Reform Party. This way, Lee has become the fourth liberal president in South Korea since the democratic transition of 1987. Lee was already considered the favourite to become South Korea’s new president following the impeachment of former president Yoon Suk-yeol after the latter’s failed martial law declaration of 3 December 2024, and once the Constitutional Court confirmed the impeachment in a unanimous vote on 4 April 2025. Throughout the election campaign, Lee consistently held double-digit or nearly double-digit leads over Kim in the polls conducted by different polling companies. Becoming president at the second time of asking following his defeat against Yoon in the 2022 presidential election, Lee starts his presidency with no transition period.
What explains Lee Jae-myung’s victory?
According to multiple polls and surveys conducted since Yoon’s martial law declaration – and especially once the Constitutional Court confirmed the former president’s impeachment – a majority of South Koreans felt that there was a need for a clean break from Yoon’s presidency. Voting for the main liberal candidate, the DP’s Lee, was the most certain way to make this break. Lee’s share of the vote and spread across the country suggests that not only hardcore liberal supporters voted for the DP candidate, but also a majority of centrist voters as well as even many conservatives. In addition, many conservative voters who think that Kim represented continuity rather than change from the Yoon presidency voted for Lee Jun-seok. The split in the conservative vote helped Lee to sweep to victory.
In addition, Lee was able to project an image as a pragmatic and centrist president-in-waiting, who would not rule in a partisan or an ideological way. Whether this is the case or not remains to be seen now that Lee has become president. But his past record as mayor of Seongnam (2010-2018) and governor of Gyeonggi Province (2018-2021) suggests that Lee may well take a pragmatic approach to the presidency, seeking to work with both the private sector and workers to boost South Korea’s economic growth rate. Most notably, Lee met with representatives from the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) – representing big South Korean firms –, as well as with several chaebol leaders during his campaign for his presidency. This was widely seen as a move to show that he will run a business-friendly platform.
It should be noted that Lee’s victory cannot be attributed to major policy differences with Kim. Both the DP and the PPP agree on the key elements of the economic and social policy that South Korea should pursue. There are some differences on specific issues, such as the balance between economic (de)regulation and labour rights, the speed with which South Korea should adopt renewable energies or the degree to which the government should support research, development and innovation. But policy was not the deciding factor behind Lee’s victory.
What are Lee Jae-myung’s key policy proposals?
Lee has presented himself as a pro-economic growth and business-friendly president. In this respect, his first priority will be to reach an agreement with the Trump administration to reduce, if not remove, the tariffs imposed on South Korea. At 25% and including sectors such as vehicles, vehicle parts and steel, Lee knows that his pro-growth agenda will stall unless Seoul reaches an agreement with Washington sooner rather than later. Arguably, Lee’s signature policy in relation to growth will be large amounts of government investment in technologies including semiconductors, AI, biotech or hydrogen energy. In other words, Lee proposes to continue South Korea’s decades-old approach to economic policymaking and innovation, with the government and the private sector working together to power the country’s economy ahead. It remains to be seen whether Lee will seek to roll out his signature universal basic income policy that he implemented while Gyeonggi governor. There is a split in South Korea about the benefits of such a policy given that it would significantly increase the national debt, and Lee has been mostly quiet about it during the campaign.
When it comes to social policy, Lee has indicated that he plans to boost support for newly married couples and new parents to increase South Korea’s birth rate; the birth rate went up in 2024 and will continue to do so in the future as the country’s marriage rate goes up as well, but it remains low. Lee is likely to offer more economic support to this group, including tax breaks and increasing the supply of the public rental housing stock. These are policies that both the DP and the PPP support. Lee also wants to strengthen the role of trade unions in wage negotiations and strengthen the right of workers to go on strike. This is a priority for many DP lawmakers, and Lee has also indicated his support. Lee has also floated the idea of reducing the working week to four days and a half. The average number of working hours has been declining for the past two decades in South Korea, and are now similar to the United States’ (US) average. Lee would like to bring the number of hours worked even further to below the OECD average.
As for foreign and security policy, Lee has indicated that he will prioritise the Republic of Korea-US alliance – in line with every single previous South Korean president. The Lee government, however, will need to discuss the Trump administration’s push to openly rebalance the purpose of the alliance to focus on China as much as if not more than North Korea. Lee has also made clear that he wants to resume engagement with North Korea, even if the new president himself has indicated that a new summit with Kim Jong-un seems unrealistic in the short term. But with Trump openly discussing a possible new summit with Kim, Lee will need to find a way to re-engage Pyongyang – otherwise Seoul could be bypassed on Korean Peninsula security matters. Lee has also indicated that he will seek to engage with China where possible, even if the relationship with the US will take precedence and there are structural constraints to Seoul-Beijing relations. When it comes to Japan, Lee has made clear that he wants to continue to engage at the bilateral and, especially, trilateral levels. However, Lee is less likely than Yoon to sideline issues such as World War II slave labour reparations for the sake of cooperation with Japan.
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This Korea Chair Explains note is part of a post-election series including notes on inter-Korean relations and perspectives from the United States, China and Japan.
The views expressed in this publication are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS) or the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).
