In the two years since he was elected, President Yoon Suk Yeol has made his mark in foreign policy, forging deeper ties with the United States and Japan. But his business-friendly domestic agenda has been stalled by his own missteps and an opposition-controlled Parliament.
Now, Mr. Yoon is facing the threat of being a lame duck for the remainder of his single, five-year term.
In a parliamentary election held on Wednesday, voters were projected to have handed Mr. Yoon and his party a crushing defeat, giving the opposition one of its biggest electoral victories in recent decades. Polls closed at 6 p.m. and official results were expected on Thursday morning.
Dozens of parties were vying for the 300 seats in the National Assembly, South Korea’s single-chamber legislature. However, the contest was largely between Mr. Yoon’s conservative People Power Party and the main opposition camp, the liberal Democratic Party.
This was the first general election since Mr. Yoon won the presidency in 2022, beating Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party by a razor-thin margin. While the results will decide the makeup of the Assembly for the next four years, they also serve as a verdict on the two rival leaders.
Exit polls conducted Wednesday by South Korea’s three major TV stations predicted that Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party and an affiliate would win no more than 105 of the 300 seats in the Assembly. Mr. Lee’s Democratic Party and a partner were projected to garner as many 197. A separate exit poll by the cable channel JTBC predicted a similar outcome.
For the past two weeks, candidates have greeted voters at subway stations, woven through their districts on trucks mounted with loudspeakers, and even knelt and bowed before voters, as is customary in the country. All that canvassing stopped as voters began filing into balloting stations across the country at 6 a.m. on Wednesday, which was declared a national holiday for the election.
The outcome of the contest is unlikely to have any immediate impact on Mr. Yoon’s efforts to expand security cooperation with Washington and Tokyo to deter North Korea, as foreign policy is concentrated in the hands of the president.
But Mr. Yoon’s long-stalled domestic agenda — corporate tax cuts and other business-friendly measures as well as his efforts to drastically increase the number of doctors — looks increasingly imperiled.
In contrast, Mr. Lee is likely to get a big push from the election if the exit poll projections are accurate. He hopes to run for president again in 2027.
The rivalry between the two leaders has become symptomatic of the deep political polarization in South Korea.
Mr. Lee’s party billed the election as an opportunity for South Koreans to punish Mr. Yoon over everything from rising consumer prices to allegations of corruption and abuse of power involving his family and the government.
“We must serve a warning that if the worker is not faithful enough, he can be driven out of his job,” Mr. Lee said this week, a comment that South Korean news media said hinted at the possibility of impeaching Mr. Yoon if the opposition wins enough seats.
Under Mr. Yoon, Mr. Lee and his wife have been scrutinized by prosecutors and now face various criminal charges. The opposition for its part has passed bills that mandate investigations into allegations of corruption involving Mr. Yoon’s family and former prosecutors and judges. The president has vetoed those bills.
Each side, analysts said, focused on demonizing the other instead of offering policy proposals. Mr. Yoon’s party called Mr. Lee and his party “criminals.” The opposition warned that South Korea under Mr. Yoon was turning into a “dictatorship,” accusing him of using prosecutors and state regulators to suppress unfriendly journalists and politicians; at times, Mr. Yoon’s bodyguards have even gagged and carried away citizens who shouted criticism at him.
“I have never seen an election like this: No campaign promise or policy has become an election issue, except for the forces from the opposite poles clashing to win at all costs,” said Heo Jinjae, an analyst at Gallup Korea.
For one voter, in Seoul, the capital, the choice was between bad and worse.
“Instead of it being a battle of good policy, the election is about picking the least worst candidate,” said the voter, Hong Yoongi, 28, who lives in the city of Seongnam, just outside Seoul. “It’s a shame.”
Kim Eun-joo, a resident in her early 40s, voiced a similar notion but said she cast her vote as a warning against Mr. Yoon’s government.
“I don’t trust any party,” she said. “But I know that the economy has worsened and politics have become more disruptive under President Yoon.”
Nearly a third of the country’s 44 million eligible voters had already cast their ballots in early voting on Friday and Saturday. Experts said that the election would be decided largely by two overlapping blocs of swing voters. The first was people in their 20s and 30s. The second was the roughly 20 percent of eligible voters who hold the middle ground between progressives and conservatives. Many voters in their 40s and 50s are progressives, while people in their 60s and older tend to vote conservative.
The two main rival parties competed for swing voters by playing up their enemies’ gaffes and past remarks.
Mr. Yoon committed one such gaffe when he visited a grocery store last month and made a comment that left South Koreans wondering whether he knew how much green onions, a staple, cost amid inflation. Since then, opposition candidates have brandished green onions at campaign rallies as a symbol of Mr. Yoon’s supposed disconnect from everyday life.
Pre-election surveys showed that a majority of voters in their 20s and 30s and those who called themselves moderates disapproved of Mr. Yoon’s performance.
“If anything, this election serves as a report card on Yoon Suk Yeol’s two years in office,” said Jaung Hoon, a political science professor at Chung-Ang University in Seoul.
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