SEOUL, June 4 (Xinhua) -- In the 21st presidential election of South Korea held on Tuesday, Lee Jae-myung of the majority liberal Democratic Party won the snap election with 49.42 percent of the vote, beating his major rival Kim Moon-soo of the conservative People Power Party with 41.15 percent.
In the early morning of Wednesday, the newly elected president said in his speech that he will devote all efforts to reviving the economy from the moment his victory is confirmed.
Lee was born in 1964 in Andong, North Gyeongsang province. After his primary school graduation, he dropped out of school to make money, working as a factory boy. When he was 16 years old, Lee had an accident in which he got his left arm stuck in a press machine.
Working during the day and studying at night, he passed the general equivalency diploma (GED) test for high school and entered Chung-Ang University in Seoul to study law in 1982.
After passing a bar exam, Lee chose to work as a labor lawyer. He was elected Seongnam mayor in 2010 and reelected four years later.
Lee participated in the presidential primary of the Democratic Party in 2017, but he was defeated by former President Moon Jae-in.
He was elected Gyeonggi province governor in 2018, but he resigned to run for president in 2022 when he lost the election to former President Yoon Suk-yeol by the country's narrowest margin of 0.73 percentage points.
Lee continued his political journey by being elected a Democratic Party lawmaker in the parliamentary by-elections in 2022 and serving as the liberal party's leader after winning an overwhelming 77.77 percent of votes at the party convention in the same year.
Lee had criticized many times the shortened three-year Yoon government. In August 2023, he went on a 24-day hunger strike to demand a full-scale reform of the Yoon government. After 19 days, Lee was transferred to a hospital for his prolonged fasting.
After Yoon's martial law declaration on the night of Dec. 3 last year, Lee live-streamed himself and other lawmakers climbing over the walls of the parliamentary building to vote down the martial law hours later.
In his campaign, Lee pledged to intensively foster new growth industries, especially artificial intelligence, and expand the social safety net for merchants and microbusiness owners.
He advocates pursuing "pragmatic diplomacy" centered on national interests, expanding South Korea's diplomatic reach, and achieving diversification in foreign relations.
In terms of inter-Korean relations, Lee upholds the goal of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, advocates easing tensions on the peninsula, and promotes repairing inter-Korean relations and advancing toward reconciliation and cooperation. ■
