South Korea is amid a high-stakes political moment, and Lee Jae-myung is front and center. President Yoon Suk-yeol faces potential removal from office by the Constitutional Court, which is deliberating impeachment charges stemming from his attempt to impose martial law in December 2024. The impeachment motion accuses Yoon of violating constitutional order, with the court’s pending decision set to determine his political fate. As of this writing, at the end of March 2025, the Constitutional Court still has not issued its ruling in Yoon’s impeachment case.
If the court upholds Yoon’s impeachment, thus removing him from office, there will be a snap presidential election. Lee, leader of the liberal opposition Democratic Party (DP), has positioned himself as the frontrunner to represent his party if such an election occurs. His supporters celebrate him as a defender of democracy, ready to take the presidency if Yoon is removed, while conservatives see him as a polarizing, ideological firebrand.
Lee enjoys substantial leads in hypothetical polling matchups against all likely opponents, strongly suggesting he would be the favorite to win a snap presidential election, but his overall appeal faces notable constraints due to intense negative partisanship and persistent unease among moderate voters.
How exactly did Lee reach this pivotal moment? Understanding his rise as the liberal frontrunner requires examining his formative background, political career, and especially his strategic consolidation of power following his defeat in the 2022 presidential election.
Lee Jae-myung’s political trajectory since 2022 can be defined as one of rapid recovery and power consolidation. After his razor-thin defeat to Yoon in the presidential election, Lee worked stridently to remain politically relevant. He ran for and won a seat in the National Assembly just months later, giving him a parliamentary platform despite losing the presidency. By August 2022, he had leveraged his popularity within the party to win the DP’s chairmanship. Once at the helm, Lee moved to consolidate control and cement his preferred policy and political agenda as the party’s platform.
As party leader, Lee pursued a dual strategy: aggressively confronting the ruling conservatives in the legislature while promoting pragmatic and populist policies to the public. He initiated an economic agenda focused on people’s livelihoods, captured in the slogan “meoksanism” – derived from a Korean phrase concerning “eating and living” issues. The goal was to make practical concerns like jobs, housing, and social welfare – rather than abstract ideals or ideology – the party’s issues-based foundation and primary public focus. This emphasis on everyday economic matters aimed to broaden the DP’s appeal to moderate voters, even as Lee maintained a tough – and arguably ideological – stance against the Yoon administration in daily politics.
Lee’s takeover, however, was not without resistance.