South Korea’s leading liberal candidate, Lee Jae-myung, started his presidential bid with a speech that spoke squarely to the country’s simmering angst and its struggling middle class.
“We’ve got to usher in a world where all can live well together, take care of the weak, and curb the vanity of the strong, who often resort to privilege and foul play,” Mr. Lee said in a video address last summer.
But the greatest challenge for the labor-lawyer-turned-politician in this race, experts say, is his need to represent the ruling Democratic Party while also distinguishing himself from President Moon Jae-in.
Though Mr. Moon has enjoyed high approval ratings compared to most South Korean presidents, the country has continued to suffer from runaway housing prices and a youth unemployment crisis under his watch.
Born in 1964 in the small eastern town of Andong, in North Gyeongsang Province, Mr. Lee became known as the former “factory boy” and the son of a house cleaner who rose out of poverty to become a successful mayor and governor.
One of seven children, he skipped middle school to work at various factories in the northwestern city of Seongnam, roughly 12.5 miles from Seoul. According to Mr. Lee, several workplace accidents — including one where his arm was caught in a press machine — left him legally disabled by his late teens, when South Korea exempted him from its mandatory military service.
Mr. Lee then earned a high school equivalency degree and won a scholarship to Seoul’s Chung-Ang University. After graduating, he returned to the town he worked in as a child to open his own office as a labor lawyer.
On the stump, he has long credited those experiences as his inspiration for entering politics. He was elected Seongnam’s mayor in 2010, a post he held for about eight years. During that time, he created a citywide social welfare program, introduced a modest universal basic income program for young adults, and provided free access to school uniforms and postnatal care.
As the governor of Gyeonggi, South Korea’s most populous province, from 2018 to 2021, Mr. Lee impressed voters by swiftly addressing a series of issues that became hot political topics. Among them: He pushed for expanding the use of surveillance cameras in hospital operating rooms after the discovery that some doctors were assigning unlicensed staff to perform surgery. He also led successful efforts to provide residents with stimulus money during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Unlike his main rival, the firebrand former chief prosecutor Yoon Suk-yeol, Mr. Lee has spoken in favor of economic cooperation with North Korea. He is the only candidate to have promised a universal basic income plan that would eventually distribute at least 1 million won (about $814) to all citizens per year.
His plan would also scale up to offer a higher sum of 2 million won — at least $1,629 per year — to 19- to 29-year-olds annually, a demographic that both candidates are vigorously competing for.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
