After months of political turmoil, South Korea has elected Lee Jae-myung, of the primary liberal occasion, as the brand new president.
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South Korea’s opposition occasion candidate has gained the nation’s presidential election by a strong margin. The snap election comes after six months of chaos, triggered by the declaration of martial legislation and the earlier president’s impeachment. NPR’s Anthony Kuhn studies from Seoul.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: In his victory speech, Lee Jae-myung pledged to revive democracy to South Korea.
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LEE JAE-MYUNG: (Talking Korean).
KUHN: “The primary mission you gave me is to beat the rebellion as soon as and for all,” he stated, “to make sure that there’ll by no means once more be a navy coup that threatens the individuals.” Martial legislation was a key situation for a lot of voters. Outdoors one polling place, we spoke to Park Seong-hwi, 32. She stated that within the final election in 2022, she voted for a liberal, third-party candidate who match her feminist views. As a substitute, Yoon Suk Yeol was elected, and he declared martial legislation. Park says this made her remorse voting for a minor-party candidate.
PARK SEONG-HWI: (Via interpreter) I feel waking as much as discover your nation in flames can be sufficient to make anybody rethink their alternative.
KUHN: So on this election, Park voted for Lee Jae-myung, pondering that he was not an excellent alternative however a practical one.
PARK: (Via interpreter) I felt I ought to vote for somebody from a celebration with the ability to maintain me alive and defend my security as a lady.
KUHN: Whereas conservative administrations have targeted on deterrence towards North Korea, Lee Jae-myung has promised diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang. However that does not go over so effectively with some older voters whose views have been formed by the legacy of the 1950-1953 Korean Battle. Sixty-year-old Nam Kyung-won says she went to a college constructed on a former Korean Battle battleground. Her college’s principal instructed college students that the spirits of patriots rested beneath their toes. Nam remembers seeing South Korean troopers’ stays exhumed from the college grounds.
NAM KYUNG-WON: (Via interpreter) Seeing the bones made me understand what the principal stated was true – that there have been individuals like me who died attempting to save lots of the nation mendacity proper there.
KUHN: Nam stated that have by no means left her, and her views of North Korea have not modified.
NAM: (Via interpreter) I feel that basically engraved in me that after rising up and enjoying in a faculty with such a tragic historical past, I might by no means help those that collaborate with or endorse North Korea.
KUHN: Lee Jae-myung has promised to have interaction with North Korea, however he is additionally pledged to maintain South Korea’s alliance with the U.S. ironclad. Search engine optimization Jungkun is a political scientist at Kyung Hee College in Seoul. He says that whereas Lee has proposed reaching out to North Korea, his marketing campaign is targeted extra on bread-and-butter points. That is partly as a result of North Korea seems unwilling to both interact with South Korea or quit its nuclear weapons.
search engine marketing JUNGKUN: A North Korea denuclearization isn’t thinkable anymore. I imply, that could be a large issue for any new management in South Korea to speak an increasing number of about home politics and the financial system.
KUHN: Lee Jae-myung has equally not spelled out how he plans to cope with the Trump administration’s tariffs or its prioritizing confronting China. Search engine optimization says that South Korea hasn’t actually discovered President Trump’s intentions, a lot much less the way it ought to reply to them.
search engine marketing: I do not assume we’re able to type of lay out the Korean model of international coverage in the direction of the two.0 Trump administration.
KUHN: He notes that Lee’s expertise as a mayor and provincial governor has made him right into a extra pragmatic administrator than a few of his liberal colleagues. However it’s laborious to understand how liberal or centrist Lee will actually be, Search engine optimization says, till he takes workplace. Anthony Kuhn, NPR Information, Seoul.
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