South Korea’s new leader Lee has lived a turbulent life. Now, big challenges await him

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Lee Jae-myung was a child laborer with an arm deformity. He attempted suicide. He later made his way through university and became a highly divisive politician who survived a stabbing attack and struggles with numerous criminal charges.

His turbulent life climaxed on Wednesday, as Lee, 60, the candidate of the main liberal Democratic Party, was confirmed as South Korea’s new president to succeed his conservative archrival Yoon Suk Yeol, who was ousted over his stunning imposition of martial law.

There are both hopes and fears about Lee’s win. Supporters think he’s an able leader who can get things done and fix the country’s deep-rooted economic inequality and corruption. But critics say Lee will likely oppress political opponents and intensify a domestic division.

Here’s a look at Lee, whose single, five-year presidency begins on Wednesday:

Childhood poverty

After graduating from an elementary school, Lee had to work at various factories in Seongnam, a city near Seoul, because his family couldn’t afford his secondary education.

At a factory manufacturing baseball gloves, he had his left forearm crushed by a press machine, getting a permanent arm disability. Lee said he suffered beating at his factories and hated encountering a girl who was a neighbor when he helped his garbage collector father’s work at a traditional market.

Despaired, Lee tried to kill himself twice, both unsuccessfully. He later got back on his feet and entered Seoul’s Chung-Ang University with a full scholarship, before he became a human rights lawyer.

“Hopes and ordeals always come together. The roles of ordeals are not getting people to surrender, but testing how serious and desperate their hopes are,” Lee said in a memoir published in 2017.

Liberal firebrand

Lee later entered politics and became Seongnam mayor and governor of Gyeonggi province. Once a political outsider, Lee rose to prominence in 2016 after he made a series of fiery street speeches criticizing then conservative President Park Geun-hye, who was later removed from office over a corruption scandal.

“Let’s seize her with our hands and consign her to history,” Lee said during one rally in December 2016.

Many of his comments have since sharply polarized South Koreans.

Lee vilified South Korea’s conservative establishment as greedy “fake conservatives.” He slammed a U.S. missile defense system in South Korea as a source of tensions and likened strengthening U.S.-Japan ties to a 1905 Washington-Tokyo agreement that he said helped Japan colonize the Korean Peninsula later.

Lee’s proposal of giving a universal basic income to all citizens have invited accusations that he’s a populist.

In 2022, he lost the hotly contested presidential election to Yoon. In 2024, Lee was attacked by a man who told investigators that he wanted to kill Lee to prevent him from becoming president.

Foreign policy challenges

Recently, Lee has made few contentious or radical comments on foreign policy and security issues, and rather has promised to pursue pragmatic diplomacy.

He’s repeatedly described South Korea’s alliance with the U.S. as the foundation of the country’s foreign policy and stressed the need to maintain a trilateral Seoul-Washington-Tokyo security partnership.

“When it comes to what Lee said in the past, we don’t know whether he made such comments only to appeal to his supporters or whether they showed his true nature,” said Shin Yul, a politics professor at Seoul’s Myonggi University.

The major issues that Lee will immediately face is U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war and other “America First” policies, and North Korea’s advancing nuclear program. They are both vital issues for South Korea, but many experts say there isn’t much diplomatic room for South Korea to maneuver in to produce major changes in its favor in both matters.

Paik Wooyeal, a professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University, said that Trump is “too overwhelming and dominant,” so that whoever is in South Korean leadership, the country’s dealings with the U.S. won’t be much different. He said that foreign policy advisers for Lee would also know that North Korea won’t voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons.

Legal woods

Lee comes to office under the shadow of his own legal troubles.

He stands accused in five trials over corruption and other charges, and at one point, some of his legal battles threatened his bid for presidency.

Lee celebrated in March when the Seoul High Court overturned a suspended prison sentence against him for violating the election law during the 2022 race. But he fumed in May when the Supreme Court quashed that ruling and sent the case back to the high court, citing a strong likelihood of his guilt. Hearings at the high court were eventually postponed until after the election.

Had his conviction been finalized, Lee would have been barred from running for president.

Other trials center around his roles in dubious development projects and illegal money transfers to North Korea, and his alleged misuse of official funds and persuading of a witness to commit perjury.

Lee’s five trials will likely stop as South Korea’s constitution prevents a sitting president from being charged with most crimes. But his rivals will take issue with it, because the constitution doesn’t clearly state whether a president can be convicted for crimes in which indictments came before taking up office.

Lee’s Democratic Party, which holds a majority in the National Assembly, has been pushing to revise the criminal procedure law to suspend ongoing criminal trials involving a sitting president until the end of their term. Conservatives have harshly lambasted the move.

National split

During the presidential campaign, Lee vowed not to pursue a vendetta against conservatives. However, he has also called for a thorough investigation into Yoon and his inner circle over rebellion allegations.

Lee’s opponents worry he could use those investigations to clamp down on Yoon associates and prosecutors who he thinks orchestrated inquiries involving his criminal charges.

Yoon’s martial law stunt intensified a domestic divide.

Declaring martial law, Yoon portrayed Lee’s party as “anti-state” forces influenced by North Korea and China. He has also endorsed baseless election fraud theories to discredit the liberals’ legislative majority, prompting his angry supporters to pour onto the streets with “Stop the Steal” signs. Anti-Yoon activists and citizens, for their part, also rallied for weeks to demand his immediate dismissal.

With liberals remaining in control of the legislature, Lee faces a far more favorable environment to advance his policies. Conservatives have voiced concern that Lee and the Democratic Party will wield virtually unchecked power to pass legislation previously blocked by Yoon’s administration, including bills aimed at strengthening protections for labor unionists against corporate lawsuits and shielding farmers from volatile rice prices.