South Korea: The shadow of a return to a dictatorial regime hangs over the presidential election

Voting has already begun on May 20th, in polling stations at South Korean embassies and consulates in 118 countries, reports the Arirang news channel . The 52 million non-expatriate South Koreans will go to the polls to elect their future president on June 3rd. This election is being organized in haste, following the validation by the Constitutional Court, on April 4th, of the parliamentary vote in favor of the dismissal of Yoon Suk-yeol , the former president, accused of having declared martial law on December 3rd, 2024 .

In consulates, some 260,000 voters are expected to participate in the vote – a “significant number,” comments Lee Jae-myung, the candidate of the center-left Democratic Party, quoted by Arirang. And for good reason: he was “beaten by a margin of barely 230,000 votes in the last elections [in 2022],” in which Yoon Suk-yeol, then candidate of the right-wing People Power Party (PPP), was elected.

According to a summary of various polls, regularly updated by the Hankyoreh daily , at the end of May, Lee Jae-myung was credited with nearly 51% of the vote, compared to 37% for the new PPP candidate, Kim Moon-soo.

In an article in the left-wing newspaper Kyunghyang Shinmun, Sociologist Song Du-yul compares the respective career paths of the main candidates – lamenting in passing a political culture that favors men to the detriment of ideas. On the right, he recalls the radical change of camp by Kim Moon-soo, a famous activist opposed to the dictatorship in place until 1988, who ultimately changed sides to join the conservative camp. Conversely, the sociologist's opinion of Lee Jae-myung is rather positive:

“Despite his humble origins, Lee Jae-myung has built himself