South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office on Wednesday vowing to heal the deep political rift in the country caused by his predecessor’s attempt to impose military rule — and to attempt “dialogue” with the rogue North Korean regime.
Lee, the hard-left leader of the Democratic Party, decisively won a special election on Tuesday to replace former President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was impeached and ousted after attempting unsuccessfully to impose martial law on December 3. A bombastic leader who lost narrowly in a bitter election against Yoon in 2022, Lee survived a stabbing attempt in January 2024 immediately followed by a wave of defections from disenchanted Democrat lawmakers. During the martial law attempt, Lee made headlines by livestreaming video of himself breaking into the National Assembly headquarters, climbing over fences and dodging fully armed soldiers to vote down the imposition of military rule.
Lee is South Korea’s fifth president in the past six months. His term is scheduled to last five years.
During his remarks following a hasty inauguration on Wednesday — intended to allow for maximum time to stabilize the country’s executive branch — Lee emphasized restoring unity to the country and boosting economic development. An inauguration celebration is scheduled to take place on July 17 to mark the occasion, but Lee is at press time actively the president of the country.
On foreign policy, an issue on which he has had limited political experience, he hinted to seeking friendlier ties with South Korea’s communist neighbors, particularly North Korea.
“It is time to restore security and peace, which have been reduced to tools of political strife;” Lee declared, “to rebuild livelihoods and the economy damaged by indifference, incompetence, and irresponsibility; and to revive democracy undermined by armored vehicles and automatic rifles.”
“No matter whom you supported in this election, I will serve as a president for all to embrace and serve every citizen,” he promised.
“I will make a government that supports and encourages, not one that controls and manages,” he continued, apparently referencing conservative concerns that a solidly leftist administration would stifle individual and economic freedom.
Lee emphasized his hope to strengthen relations with South Korea’s most important ally, the United States, but made time to promise that he would attempt to seek dialogue and cooperation with the North. North and South Korea have been at war since 1950; active hostilities concluded with an armistice agreement in 1953, but the war never formally ended.
“We will strengthen South Korea-U.S.-Japan cooperation based on a solid Korea-U.S. alliance and approach relations with neighboring countries from the perspective of practicality and national interest,” Lee vowed.
“We will open channels of communication and pursue dialogue and cooperation with the North to build lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula,” he added, according to a translation by the Yonhap News Agency. The Korea JoongAng Daily translated his remarks as promising “peace on the Korean Peninsula through dialogue and cooperation.”
Calls for dialogue with North Korea represent a marked departure from the Yoon administration, which addressed the North Korean threat by welcoming a larger American military presence in the country, emphasizing support for North Korean defectors and human rights activists advocating for the rights of those repressed in the country. Prior to Yoon, fellow Democrat President Moon Jae-in actively antagonized human rights activists, preventing them from sending leaflets with inspiring messages into North Korea.
Moon also visited North Korea on several occasions, climbing the culturally significant Mount Paektu alongside totalitarian dictator Kim Jong-un.
Moon’s policies resulted in no meaningful softening of North Korea’s belligerent tone. In 2020, following Moon’s visits to the country, North Korea bombed the joint liaison office in Kaesong, built on South Korea’s dime to allow for more direct communication between the two governments.
“The sector concerned of the north side took a step of completely destroying the inter-Korean joint liaison office in the Kaesong Industrial Zone after cutting off all the communication lines between the north and the south,” North Korean state media reported at the time, “meeting the demand of the enraged people for making the human scum [South Koreans] and those who connived at them pay dearly for their crimes.”
“Albeit not exactly the same as the Moon government, Lee is expected, first and foremost, to take measures to foster an atmosphere for inter-Korean dialogue and ease tensions,” researcher Hong Min of the Korea Institute for National Unification told Yonhap. Hong predicted that Lee would reimpose the ban on sending pro-democracy leaflets into North Korea and engage in symbolic gestures such as public statements congratulating North Korea on communist holidays.
JoongAng also expected in its analysis of Lee’s foreign policy that he would eschew what Yoon called a “values-based” foreign policy, aligning South Korea with countries that respect human rights, beginning with the United States, over dictatorships.
“Lee has been critical of that approach, arguing it led to ‘the worst state’ of Seoul-Beijing relations in years,” the newspaper recalled. “He has vowed to ‘stably manage’ and repair ties with China, which suffered amid U.S.-China strategic rivalry and the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) system in South Korea in 2017.”
Lee also reportedly condemned Yoon’s suggestion that South Korea could build its own nuclear weapons — which alarmed then-President Joe Biden into sending a nuclear-armed submarine to Busan — and calls for a greater American nuclear presence in the South.
South Korean news outlets predicted that, following the establishment of his cabinet, Lee would quickly make time to call President Donald Trump — possibly as early as Wednesday. The State Department was quick to congratulate Lee on Tuesday, celebrating the “ironclad commitment” between the two countries.
