Ruling party nominates maverick for national vote
SEOUL — South Korea’s ruling liberal party on Sunday nominated its candidate for next year’s presidential elections, selecting a maverick politician known for his outspoken views who is currently the race’s frontrunner.
Lee Jae-myung’s nomination as the Democratic Party presidential candidate comes despite his rivals’ efforts to depict him as a dangerous populist and link him to a snowballing real estate scandal.
Lee has vowed to fight economic inequality, introduce a universal basic income and resume reconciliation projects with North Korea.
In his acceptance speech, Lee bowed deeply several times and said he would carry out a program to “root out unfairness, inequality and corruption” and carry out other sweeping reforms.
“I’d restrain the excessive desires by the strong and protect the lives of the weak. I’d protect the people’s jobs, income and welfare,” Lee said.
Party officials announced Lee had collected about 50.3% of all votes cast during the race, defeating three challengers in a party primary that ended Sunday.
Lee, 56, is the governor of South Korea’s most populous Gyeonggi province that surrounds the capital of Seoul. He is known as a tough-speaking liberal who has built up an image as an antiestablishment figure. He’s also famous for his selfmade success story as he worked as a boy in a factory, which left him with an arm disability, before later making his own way through school and passing the country’s notoriously difficult bar exam to work as a human rights lawyer.
Before becoming governor in 2018, Lee worked as mayor of Seongnam, a city inside Geyonggi, for eight years. Previously a political outsider, he rose sharply amid public anger over an explosive 2016-17 corruption scandal that eventually led to the ouster of the conservative President Park Geun-hye.
Lee has said that if elected, he would focus on easing South Korea’s deep-rooted economic polarization and inequality that he says causes other social problems, as well as hurting South Korea’s economic growth.
Lee has also faced an escalating political offensive by his opponents over a dubious property development project in Seongnam that began when he served as mayor. One former senior city official has been arrested over the scandal.
Next year’s March 9 election will likely be a two-way race between Lee and whoever wins the main conservative opposition People Power Party’s nomination in November. Most recent surveys put Lee ahead of either of the two main conservative presidential hopefuls.
The election will select a successor to current President Moon Jae-in, a Democratic Party member whose single five-year term has been marked by dramatic ups and downs in relations with North Korea, a deepening conservative-liberal divide at home and various economic woes.
On North Korea, Lee said he would seek a relief of international sanctions on the North to resume stalled interKorean cooperation projects.