The two candidates who will fight it out to win election as South Korea’s next president overcame great odds to get where they are. Lee Jae-myung was a teenage sweatshop worker whose family survived on rotten fruits. Kim Moon-soo was imprisoned and tortured for anti-government activism. Both survived weeks of political and legal turbulence that threatened to upend their presidential bid.
Now, as the official campaign for the June 3 poll kicks off on Monday, Mr. Lee and Mr. Kim have emerged as two main contenders. They represent opposite sides of a political divide that is unlikely to be bridged, even though both have promised to pursue national unity if elected.
The election follows the removal last month of former President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was impeached for his short-lived attempt to place South Korea under martial law. As such, the campaign is being fought less over policies and more as a referendum on Mr. Yoon and his right-wing People Power Party.
The party has not cut ties with Mr. Yoon, who is facing trial on insurrection charges. Instead, it has veered further to the right by choosing Mr. Kim, Mr. Yoon’s former labor minister, as its presidential candidate. When Mr. Yoon’s cabinet members were asked during a parliamentary session in December to apologize for the imposition of martial law, Mr. Kim was the only one who refused to stand and bow.
His main rival Mr. Lee, 60, has led in pre-election surveys. After winning his Democratic Party’s presidential nomination with an unprecedented 89.77 percent of the votes, he said: “I am ordered to end the old era of insurrection and regression and open a new era of hope.”
Both Mr. Lee and Mr. Kim, 73, had to clear last-minute hurdles to run for president, adding to the uncertainty that has pervaded South Korean politics in recent months.
A criminal charge of election law violations against Mr. Lee, which he denies, threatened his eligibility until a Seoul court postponed a ruling on the case until after the election.
On the opposite side, Mr. Kim won a primary race only to see the People Power Party’s leadership cancel his candidacy, moving to replace him with former Prime Minister and Acting President Han Duck-soo, who they claimed had a better chance against Mr. Lee. Mr. Kim took legal action against his own party’s leaders, calling them a “monster” and accusing them of a “political coup.”
But over the weekend, party members voted to restore Mr. Kim’s candidacy, and Mr. Han bowed out of the race.
Mr. Kim struggled to heal his torn party, invoking the same right-wing fear and indignation that drove Mr. Yoon to send military troops to the Democrat-controlled National Assembly to try to impose martial law.
Mr. Kim warned that if Mr. Lee won the presidency, with his party holding a majority in Parliament, he would become a left-wing behemoth and make South Korea more friendly toward China and North Korea at the cost of its alliance with the United States.
“He is already a dictator,” said Mr. Kim, comparing Mr. Lee to the leaders of North Korea and China. “Who gets 89.77 percent of his party’s support other than Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping?”
The June election is an extension of the political struggle unleashed by Mr. Yoon’s martial law.
“For progressives, ending the insurrection is the dominating theme in the election,” said Sung Deuk Hahm, a political scientist at Kyonggi University. “But fear is driving the conservatives — fear that if Lee Jae-myung is elected, he would become a super-imperial president and devastate their ranks.”
Rising From Poverty
Mr. Lee’s life story resonates with many in South Korea. When he was a teenager, his family of eight moved into a one-room semi-underground hut in a slum south of Seoul. His parents made a living collecting garbage and cleaning public toilets. After elementary school, he went to work in a baseball glove factory and other sweatshops. His left arm was permanently deformed when it was crushed in a press machine.
“When I saw girls going to school while pushing my father’s dirty cart from behind, I was so ashamed that I hid behind a street corner,” Mr. Lee said. “But my miserable life has given me the strength to push forward through difficulties.”
Although he never attended middle or high school, Mr. Lee passed college entrance exams. He became a human rights lawyer, mayor, provincial governor, lawmaker, the head of South Korea’s largest political party and twice its presidential candidate. He has survived an attempt on his life, as well as criminal charges that almost derailed his political career.
When he was a mayor, Mr. Lee provided free school uniforms and free postpartum care service. As a governor, he handed out cash bonuses to help young people find jobs or pay for tuition. He was the first governor to dole out pandemic relief payments to all residents.
He also had an aggressive side. During the pandemic, his populous Gyeonggi province enforced strict social-distancing steps that were later adopted by the central government. It also cleaned up scenic valleys by driving out illegal restaurants.
As Mr. Lee runs for president a second time (he lost his first bid to Mr. Yoon in 2022), he has tried to expand his appeal among voters in the middle by promising not to seek political revenge and to work for national unity. He emphasized efficiency and pragmatism over ideology.
“A cat is a good cat so long as it catches mice well,” he said.
To counter the conservatives’ accusations that he was “pro-China and anti-American,” Mr. Lee has emphasized the importance of his country’s alliance with Washington and trilateral cooperation with the United States and Japan for regional security.
A Progressive Turned Conservative
But his conservative enemies remain unconvinced, calling him a ruthless “populist.” Mr. Kim is tapping into such misgivings against the election favorite to rally conservative support. He has taken a long, zigzagging journey to reach the position he is in.
Mr. Kim was a famed progressive activist in the 1970s and ’80s. He was twice expelled from Seoul National University for his anti-government activism. He led a wave of student activists who disguised themselves as workers to build labor unions. And he refused to give away the whereabouts of fellow activists on the run, even under torture by military agents. The labor movement he helped found remains a potent left-wing political force.
But Mr. Kim was also a maverick.
While many former activists became members of the Democratic Party in the 1990s after the country’s democratization, Mr. Kim joined the conservative camp, becoming a lawmaker and provincial governor. He has since said he gave up his “revolutionist” and “anti-American” views after observing the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
But he suffered a series of electoral defeats in the past decade. He was mainly known for extreme right-wing comments — he once called a former liberal president a pro-North Korean who deserved to be “executed” — before Mr. Yoon picked him as his labor minister last year.
Mr. Kim called Mr. Yoon’s martial law a mistake. But he also blamed the left-wing opposition’s obstructive tactics in Parliament for driving Mr. Yoon to the extreme measure. If elected, he said he would make South Korea a more reliable ally for Washington and increase deterrence against North Korea. He said that he, too, would work for national harmony.
“If you look at my life trajectory, there is nothing I haven’t tried, nothing I cannot understand, no one I cannot embrace,” Mr. Kim said.
Choe Sang-Hun is the lead reporter for The Times in Seoul, covering South and North Korea.
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