South Koreans headed to the polls on Tuesday to elect a new president, marking the culmination of six turbulent months of political unrest triggered by former leader Yoon Suk Yeol’s controversial imposition of martial law.
A handful of elderly voters lined up at a polling station in Seoul’s Munrae-dong area at 6:00 am (2100 GMT) to cast their ballots.
“We were the first to arrive with the hope our candidate gets elected, and because the presidential election is the most important,” Yu Bun-dol, 80, told AFP, adding she was voting for the conservative People Power Party (PPP) candidate.
Millions have already cast their ballots in the snap election, with more than a third of registered voters doing so last week during two days of early voting, the National Election Commission said.
All major polls have put liberal Lee Jae-myung well ahead, with the latest Gallup survey showing 49 percent of respondents viewed him as the best candidate.
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Kim Moon-soo, from the conservative PPP — Yoon’s former party — trailed Lee on 35 percent.
Analysts have identified the aftermath of martial law — which has effectively left South Korea without stable leadership during the early months of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term — as the dominant concern shaping voter sentiment. Kang Joo-hyun, a political science professor at Sookmyung Women’s University, remarked that the election was largely being viewed as a referendum on the previous administration. She noted that the martial law crisis and subsequent impeachment had alienated centrist voters and deepened divisions within the conservative camp.
Observers pointed out that South Korea’s conservative bloc was undergoing a significant internal reckoning. The removal of President Yoon from office, following his controversial imposition of martial law and the deployment of armed forces to the National Assembly, was seen as a major blow — marking the second consecutive conservative president to be ousted, following Park Geun-hye’s downfall in 2017.
Further complicating the political landscape, conservative candidate Kim had reportedly failed to form an alliance with Reform Party leader Lee Jun-seok, resulting in a splintered right-wing vote.