On May 12, the candidates officially kicked off their campaigns for the South Korean presidential election scheduled on June 3. The campaign will last for 21 days until 11:59 p.m. on June 2.
The snap presidential election was scheduled following the Constitutional Court’s unanimous verdict to remove Yoon Suk-yeol of the People Power Party (PPP) from the presidency in April. Accordingly, polls show a massive lead for Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate who had worked as a leader of the party for the past three years. His approval ratings have been hovering around 50 percent. Despite the Supreme Court’s explicit intervention in the presidential election by rushing through a ruling that could have barred Lee from running, his approval ratings have only climbed further.
In order to draw more support from the public, Lee has stressed his attention to fully focus on reviving the country’s economy. He has repeatedly mentioned that drawing stark lines between liberals and conservatives is pointless, and said he will work with the most well-qualified South Koreans, regardless of their backgrounds and ideologies.
Since then, some senior conservatives who had worked under the previous conservative administrations have joined Lee’s campaign team, demonstrating his efforts to broaden his support in the hopes of winning a landslide victory in the presidential election. Some supporters of Hong Joon-pyo on Wednesday announced their support for Lee, showing the success of his strategy to shift his position from a left-wing reformer to a centrist practitioner. Hong was the PPP’s presidential candidate in 2017 and ran unsuccessfully for the party’s nomination in the 2022 and 2025 elections.
Lee labeled the public’s movement to impeach Yoon following his illegitimate declaration of martial law on December 3 a “revolution of light,” and has said that this is the time to show the “real” South Korea.
“[I] will prove how the world can be changed only by one leader if you give Lee Jae-myung a chance to work,” Lee said during his speech in his first campaign rally. “Please vote for me [to use me] as a practical instrument and loyal worker.”
While the Democratic Party coalesced immediately around Lee and geared up to avenge their electoral defeat in 2022, the conservative People Power Party botched its primary process, further dimming its already distance electoral process.
Like the DP, the PPP also held a primary election to determine its candidate. Unlike the DP, however, the PPP process was fiercely contested, requiring multiple rounds of elimination. In the end, the PPP elected Kim Moon-soo, the former labor minister for the Yoon administration, as the party’s presidential candidate. However, the party attempted to award the candidacy to Han Duck-soo, the former acting president and prime minister who announced his bid to run for the presidency on May 1 (after the chance to enter the PPP primary had closed).
The PPP leadership wanted Kim to accept Han’s offer to field an unified candidate – essentially, for Kim to withdraw in favor of Han – by May 11, the deadline for presidential candidates to register with South Korea’s Election Commission. When Kim refused, on May 10 the PPP suddenly withdrew its nomination of Kim and re-opened the application for the presidential candidates – but only for a single hour, between 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. on Saturday. The end result was that Han was the only candidate who submitted more than 30 papers to verify his candidacy in the middle of the night. Kim apparently was not notified in advance of the new registration period.
Without Kim’s approval, the PPP unilaterally proceeded with the “unity” process by asking party members to vote on whether they wanted to change the party’s candidate from Kim to Han. Unlike the PPP and Han’s prediction, however, the majority of party members opposed the idea (the detailed results were not announced). To take responsibility for the unprecedented chaos, the party’s emergency measure committee leader announced his resignation, and Kim resecured his candidacy only a day before the presidential campaigns officially kicked off.
Han, meanwhile, dropped his presidential bid and vowed to support Kim, but refused to play any formal role in Kim’s campaign.
Due to the PPP’s explicit efforts to make Han its presidential candidate, Kim could not even wear a jacket inscribed with his name in his first scheduled appearance as the party’s presidential candidate on May 12. The uniforms for campaigners were also not inscribed with Kim’s name, while the vehicles were also not ready. Kim was elected as the party’s presidential candidate on May 3 – giving the PPP more than enough time to get the branding in order. That the PPP didn’t bother to have Kim’s name put on campaign materials is one more sign the party desperately wanted to make Han, who was not even a member of the party, its presidential candidate.
In total, there are seven presidential candidates running for the election. Lee has the most reason to expect to become Yoon’s successor on June 4. The only scenario that might challenge Lee would be another unity process carried out by the conservative camp.
Lee Jun-seok, the presidential candidate of the New Reform Party who was the leader of the PPP during the 2022 election, clearly said he would not accept any deal from the PPP regarding a unity process, due to the difference of views on Yoon’s impeachment and martial law between him and Kim. However, if Lee, not Kim, becomes the unified conservative presidential candidate, that could be the Democratic Party’s nightmare scenario.
Given the drama surrounding the first attempt to pick a “unity” candidate, however, there’s good reason to be skeptical.