S Korean opposition picks former chief as candidate

• AP, SEOUL

South Korea’s main liberal opposition party yesterday tapped its former leader Lee Jae-myung as presidential candidate in the upcoming June 3 election.

The Democratic Party said Lee has won nearly 90 percent of the votes cast during the party’s primary that ended yesterday, defeating two competitors.

Lee, a liberal who wants greater economic parity in South Korea and warmer ties with North Korea, has solidified his position as front-runner to succeed recently ousted conservative former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol.

Lee had led the opposition-controlled parliament’s impeachment of Yoon over his imposition of martial law before the South Korean Constitutional Court formally dismissed him earlier this month. Yoon’s ouster prompted a snap election set for June 3 to find a new president, who would be given a full, single five-year term.

Lee, 60, lost the 2022 election to Yoon in the narrowest margin recorded in the country’s presidential election history.

He is the clear favorite to win the election.

In a Gallup Korea poll released Friday, 38 percent of respondents chose Lee as their preferred new president, while all other aspirants obtained single-digit support ratings.

The conservative People Power Party is to nominate its candidate next weekend, and its four presidential hopefuls competing for the party ticket won a combined 23 percent in the Gallup survey.

Lee, who served as the governor of South Korea’s most populous Gyeonggi province and mayor of Seongnam city, has established an image as an anti-establishment figure who could eliminate deep-rooted unfairness, inequality and corruption in South Korea.

His critics view him as a populist who relies on stoking divisions and demonizing opponents and worry his rule would likely end up intensifying a domestic division.