The hard path of Lee Jae-Myung towards the presidency of South Korea reflects the stratospheric ascent of his country of grinding poverty to one of the main economies of the world.
When he reads, an abandonment of the school prone to scandals turned into a lawyer who was chosen in a landslide on Tuesday, was born in 1963, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of South Korea was comparable to the nations of the sub -Saharan Africa.
South Korea was so poor, in fact, that Lee's exact birthday is a mystery: her parents, as many families alert infant mortality of the time, took approximately one year to register her birth.
However, even for the standards of the day, Lee's first years were marked by deprivation and adversity, including periods as worker of the minor factory.
Known for his populist and open style, Lee, the standard bearer of the leftist Democratic Party, has often accredited his humble beginnings for shaping his progressive beliefs.
“Poverty is not a sin, but I was always particularly sensitive to the injustices I experienced due to poverty,” Lee said in a speech in 2022.
“The reason I am in politics is now to help those who still suffer in the well of poverty and despair that I managed to escape, building a fair society and a world with hope.”
The fifth of seven children, Lee left school in his adolescence to move to Seongnam, a Seoul satellite city, and take a job to keep his family.
At age 15, Lee was injured in an accident in a factory making baseball gloves, leaving him permanently unable to straighten his left arm.
Despite the missing years of formal education, Lee graduated from the intermediate and secondary school when studying for exams outside work hours.
In 1982, he obtained admission to the University of Chung-Ang in Seoul to study law and spent the bar exam four years later.
During his legal career, Lee was known for defending the rights of the helpless, including victims of industrial accidents and residents who face eviction due to urban redeegy projects.
In 2006, Lee made his first foray into politics with an offer failed by the Mayor's Office of Seongnam, which continued two years later with a failed race for a parliamentary seat in the city.
In 2010, he finally broke into politics by winning the elections of Mayor of Seongnam in his second attempt and won re -election four years later.
From 2018 to 2021, Lee served as governor of Gyeonggi, the most populous province in the country, which surrounds Seoul.
As much as mayor and governor, Lee attracted attention beyond his immediate electorate by implementing a series of economic policies with populist flavor, including a limited form of universal basic income.
After renouncing as governor, Lee entered the national stage as a candidate for the Democratic Party in the 2022 presidential elections, which he lost to Yoon Suk-Yool for 0.73 percent of the votes, the closest margin in the history of South Korea.
Despite facing a series of political and personal scandals, which culminated in at least five legal cases, Lee took the Democratic Party to one of its best results in the parliamentary elections last year, delivering it 173 seats in the National Assembly of 300 seats.
After the dismissal and elimination of Yoon from the presidential office after his short statement of martial law in December, Lee obtained the nomination of his party without a serious challenge, obtaining almost 90 percent of the main vote.
“His communication style is direct and direct, and it is cunning to recognize social and political trends, which is a rare quality among the politicians of his generation in Korea,” said Lee Myung-Hee, an expert in South Korean policy at Michigan State University, Al Jazeera.
“However, this direct communication style can sometimes hinder your political progress, since it can easily offend your opponents.”
During his electoral campaign, Lee made his progressive credentials in favor of a more pragmatic personality and a softer iteration of the populist economic agenda that promoted his rise to national prominence.
In the weeks that led to the vote, Lee's victory was rarely in doubt, with his closest competitor, Kim Moon-Soo, of the Conservative Popular Power Party, often following the candidate for more than 20 points in opinion surveys.
'A progressive pragmatic'
As president, Lee has promised to prioritize the economy, proposing, among other things, a great boost in investment in artificial intelligence, the introduction of a four and a half days work week and tax deductions for parents in proportion to the number of children they have.
In foreign matters, he has promised to repair relations with North Korea while pressing his last denuclearization, according to the traditional position of his Democratic Party, and maintaining the United States Korean security alliance without alienating China and Russia.
“I would call it a progressive pragmatic. I don't think it remains in consistent progressive lines or even conservative lines,” Yong-Chool Ha, director of the Korean Studies Center at the University of Washington, told Al Washington.
“Critics call it a kind of manipulator; his followers call him flexible,” Ha said.
“I would say she is a survivor.”
While Lee will enter the position with the support of a dominant majority in the National Assembly, it will take the administration of a country that is deeply polarized and accumulated by divisions after Yoon's accusation.
“The Korean political panorama is still highly polarized and confrontational, and its ability to navigate this environment will be crucial for its success,” said Lee, a professor at Michigan State University.
Lee will also have to navigate an international volatile environment formed by wars in Gaza and Ukraine, great rivalries of power and the shaking of the international trade of the president of the United States.
To read personally, his choice, after two offers failed by the presidency, marks an extraordinary return with the history of origin against those who promoted his ascent.
Lee had faced five criminal procedures, including the positions of violations of the electoral law and the breach of confidence in relation to a scandal of corruption of the Earth.
After his choice, Lee is sure to avoid the trial during his five -year term in office.
According to the Constitution of South Korea, acting presidents enjoy the immunity of prosecution, except in cases of insurrection or betrayal, although there is a debate among legal academics on whether protection extends to the procedures that are already underway.
To eliminate ambiguity, the Democratic Party last month approved an amendment to the Criminal Code that indicates that the criminal procedures against a person who is elected president must be suspended until the end of his mandate.
