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Moon Jae-in easily wins South Korea’s presidential election
Mr Moon’s victory was no surprise: he had led the polls for four months. Support for his liberal Minjoo party hit a record during the campaign
HE WAS imprisoned for months for protesting, as a student, against the dictatorship of Park Chung-hee in the 1970s. But it was mass demonstrations against the late strongman’s daughter, Park Geun-hye, that brought Moon Jae-in to the presidency. On May 9th South Koreans chose the former dissident as their new president, after the constitutional court prompted a snap election by removing Ms Park from office. Mr Moon, who was sworn in as soon as the votes had been counted, is South Korea’s first left-of-centre president in almost a decade. He won 41% of the vote in a field of 13 candidates. His 17 percentage-point lead over the runner-up, a conservative, is the biggest winning margin ever in a South Korean presidential election.
Support for his liberal Minjoo party hit a record during the campaign, which reaped the benefits of South Koreans’ bitter disappointment with Ms Park, a conservative, who was elected in 2012. Parliament impeached her in December, following revelations that she had divulged state secrets to a friend, let her meddle in policy and colluded with her to extort bribes from big companies Ms Park is now in jail, while a trial related to those charges proceeds. Over 77% of citizens voted in the election, the highest turnout in 20 years. (Ms Park, in her cell, chose not to.)
Kim Hyung-jun, a young father who took his toddler to a polling station in central Seoul on May 9th, said that he was voting to create a better society for his daughter: one “where everyone begins at the same line”, not where “the rich and powerful have a head start”. Kim Hyung-jun, a young father who took his toddler to a polling station in central Seoul on May 9th, said that he was voting to create a better society for his daughter: one “where everyone begins at the same line”, not where “the rich and powerful have a head start”.
At home, Mr Moon also faces difficult negotiations: Minjoo does not hold a majority in parliament, and the next elections do not take place until 2020. It may rejoin forces with the People’s Party, a centrist group that split from it last year. But the splittists support THAAD and oppose Mr Moon’s plan to reopen the Kaesong industrial complex on the border with North Korea, a sunshine initiative that Ms Park shut.
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