Lee Jae-myung, the candidate for the opposition Democratic Party, is poised to become South Korea’s next president after provisional results of a snap election showed him on course for a comfortable win.
The election was triggered by former President Yoon Suk-yeol’s short-lived imposition of martial law in December.
The 61-year-old Lee is expected to be sworn in on Wednesday, becoming the country’s 14th president after defeating Kim Moon-soo of the conservative People Power Party (PPP). The South Korean president serves a single five-year term without the possibility of re-election.
The PPP’s Yoon was impeached and removed from office in early April for his martial law debacle. The shock move sparked weeks of protests and investigations and made Yoon South Korea’s shortest-serving president.
Here is what you need to know about Tuesday’s election and its impact:
Who won South Korea’s presidential election?
With 85 percent of the ballots counted, the National Election Commission (NEC) said provisional results showed Lee winning more than 48 percent of the votes with Kim at 42.9 percent.
Although the NEC is yet to formally declare a winner, Kim has conceded defeat and congratulated Lee on his win.
Shortly before Kim’s concession, Lee emerged outside his house in Seoul, where throngs of supporters had gathered. Lee told them he was “highly likely to become the president”.
Nearly 80 percent of the country’s 44.4 million eligible voters cast ballots – the highest turnout since 1997, according to the NEC.
Earlier, exit polls by South Korea’s three major TV stations – KBS, MBC and SBS – projected a comfortable win for Lee. The exit polls projected more than 50 percent of the vote for the opposition candidate and 39 percent for Kim.
Trailing behind them was Lee Jun-seok of the conservative New Reform Party. Analysts said Kim underperformed, hurt by his ties to Yoon and his failure to persuade Lee Jun-seok to unify the right-wing vote. By late on Tuesday, Lee Jun-seok also had conceded defeat.
Who is Lee Jae-myung, South Korea’s new president?
Lee – who served as governor of South Korea’s most populous province, Gyeonggi, and mayor of Seongnam near the capital, Seoul – is a divisive figure. This election marked the human rights lawyer-turned-politician’s third attempt to secure the presidency.
Lee lost the last presidential election to Yoon by the slimmest margin in the country’s democratic history. He went on to lead the Democratic Party to a landslide victory in last year’s legislative elections and was the driving force behind the opposition-led campaign to remove Yoon from office.
During the six-hour martial law period, Lee scaled the National Assembly walls to bypass military blockades, livestreamed his entry and urged citizens to protest. Nearly two-thirds of the lawmakers ultimately made it past the barricades to vote unanimously to end the emergency measures.
Despite his critics calling him a dangerous populist, Lee has promised to pursue pragmatic diplomacy: calling South Korea’s alliance with the United States the foundation of its foreign policy and promising