Conservative Yoon Suk Yeol enjoyed a rapid rise in politics. Now he promises to do many things differently than the current government.
At the end, Yoon Suk Yeol’s party friends who were waiting in the parliament building in Seoul cheered and shouted “change of government, change of government”.
That was also the motto of 61-year-old Yoon during the week-long election campaign. It lasted until the early hours of the morning before the result of the 20th presidential election in South Korea was known. In the end, the conservative opposition candidate won by a razor-thin margin over left-liberal Lee Jae Myung of the ruling Democratic Party. The gap was less than a percentage point – it was the closest presidential election the country has ever seen.
According to experts, the close outcome of the election also reflects a deeply divided country. “One of the biggest problems in Korean society is the highly polarized political landscape,” says program manager Lim Sung Eun from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Seoul. This also applies to other areas such as gender equality. Social integration should be the first task of the election winner.
Controversial new politician
For the conservatives, who had suffered a clear defeat in the election five years ago, Yoon had become a beacon of hope. However, like Lee Jae Myung, he is not undisputed among large parts of the population. While Lee was criticized by his opponents as a populist, Yoon was accused of being politically inexperienced and not understanding foreign policy.
Yoon has also been repeatedly attacked for verbal carelessness, such as when he praised former military dictator Chun Doo Hwan for his political leadership. The election campaign itself was marked by political mudslinging between the two most important candidates. “It is a pity that Koreans have been pressured to choose between two ‘unpopulars’,” wrote The Korea Herald on Thursday.
Yoon experienced a meteoric rise into the political business. It was not until March 2021 that he resigned as the country’s chief prosecutor. He then registered as an independent presidential candidate in July, before later being named their nominee by the main opposition party.
Under the incumbent President Moon Jae In, he was appointed Attorney General. But their relationship soon soured when Yoon began investigating members of Moon’s inner circle. During the election campaign, Yoon accused the Moons government of “corruption and incompetence”. In a newspaper interview in February, Yoon said that if he won the elections he would launch investigations into the government’s “rooted evils”. The president accused Yoon of “baseless” allegations.
dissatisfaction with Moon
According to experts, Yoon’s election also shows the dissatisfaction of large parts of the population with the current government of reformist Moon. The galloping real estate prices in particular have left deep scars. As president – he will take office for five years in May – Yoon wants to have 2.5 million homes built to meet demand.
When it comes to creating jobs in Asia’s fourth-largest economy, Yoon relies more on corporate initiatives than government-led projects. He also wants to act as a deregulator. He also wants to reverse the government camp’s plans to phase out nuclear energy and abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.
However, one of the biggest challenges will be North Korea and how to proceed in the dispute over the neighboring country’s nuclear weapons program. Yoon wants to take tougher action against Pyongyang with a stronger alliance behind the US. His government will only prepare an inter-Korean peace treaty “if North Korea makes active efforts for complete and verifiable denuclearization”.
Source: Stern
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