1 year in, South Korea’s Lee enjoys strong support but faces legal shadow

(SEOUL, South Korea) -- South Korea's ruling Democratic Party swept nationwide local elections Wednesday, tightening President Lee Jae Myung's grip on power one year into his term, though the conservative opposition captured Seoul's mayor's office.

The vote drew 61% turnout, the highest for a local election in three decades.

Lee enters his second year Thursday with approval ratings around 60%, according to South Korea's major pollsters. That is the second-highest at the one-year mark since 1987, behind only former President Moon Jae-in.

When South Koreans elected Lee a year ago, they did so in the wreckage of a constitutional crisis after then-President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Dec. 3, 2024, vowing to "eradicate the anti-state forces."

He sent troops toward the National Assembly to stop lawmakers from voting it down. The attempt failed within hours, and Yoon was impeached and removed by the Constitutional Court four months later, triggering the snap election that made Lee president.

Governing out loud

Lee has made the presidency unusually public. He live-streams weekly cabinet meetings, a first in Korean history, and his office briefs on camera far more than its predecessor.

Lee also uses social media to announce policy, rebut coverage he disputes, take questions and air his opinions -- often without the vetting a formal statement would get. Aides call it a deliberate effort to reach citizens directly rather than through the traditional layers of staff that usually filter a president.

"Unlike politicians before him, he's citizen-friendly -- clearly distinct," said Park Myoung-ho, a political science professor at Dongguk University.

His style has drawn criticism, however. In May, Lee used social media to attack Starbucks Korea over a promotion that critics linked to a 1980 massacre of pro-democracy protesters, branding the company "low-grade profiteers" guilty of "gutter-level behavior."

"Given how much power a president holds, it's too direct and too unfiltered," said Lee Hyun-woo, who teaches political process at Sogang University and warned that the president's posts are often misread because Koreans are used to presidents speaking in measured, formal language.

A record-breaking market

The benchmark KOSPI, which bottomed out near 2,300 in April 2025 after President Donald Trump's tariffs, has surged to a record high above 8,700, blowing past Lee's campaign pledge to reach 5,000. The rally has been catalyzed by a global boom in semiconductors and AI infrastructure that has lifted companies like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.

But rising share prices have not reached many ordinary households across the country and home prices around Seoul are starting to climbing again and is testing one of Lee's central promises.

Walking the line between Washington and Beijing

Lee's central foreign-policy bet has been that South Korea no longer has to choose between its U.S. alliance and its largest trading partner, China -- an approach his government calls "national-interest-centered pragmatism" -- and within seven months of taking office, he had held summits with the leaders of the United States, China and Japan.

"On foreign policy, he's done better than expected," said Shin Yul, a political science and diplomacy professor at Myongji University.

But the results have been mixed. Lee repaired ties with Japan, but his January state visit to Beijing largely fell flat.

His pragmatism faced a major test in February when the war between Iran and a U.S.-Israeli coalition threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the route for much of South Korea's oil imports.

Lee's government leaned on national reserves, increased purchases of U.S. crude and secured replacement supplies from outside the region. A senior presidential official said the effort, together with the market's resilience, helped keep Lee's approval ratings steady through the spring.

Two presidents, two reckonings

In February, a Seoul court sentenced former President Yoon to life in prison for the martial-law attempt; his former defense minister got 30 years. To Lee's supporters it was accountability for an assault on democracy. To Yoon's base, it felt like political revenge.

But Lee carries his own legal shadow. He took office facing five criminal trials, including corruption, subornation of perjury and illegal fund transfers to North Korea, which were all frozen once he became president.

His Democratic Party then went further by pushing a special counsel that could cancel the charges against him outright -- a move Lee declined to endorse or oppose publicly.

To Shin, the silence was strategic. Lee's side, he said, "will try to get the charges dropped," likely using the special counsel "to pursue cancellation of the cases against him."

The push drew public backlash and many analysts read the local-election result as a warning from voters wary of a governing party clearing its own leader.

"This may be President Lee's Achilles' heel," said Park. "I suspect he himself feels a real burden over it."

For Lee Hyun-woo, the principle is simple: "Serving well and being remembered as a great president, and paying for crimes committed in the past, are entirely separate matters."

ABC News' Hakyung Kate Lee contributed to this report.

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