Overview

• Lee Jae-myung secured 49.2 percent of the vote against 41.4 percent for Kim Moon-soo in a snap election that saw a 79.4 percent turnout, the highest since 1997.
• Lee was sworn in Wednesday by parliament, closing a six-month leadership gap since his predecessor’s removal from office following a failed martial law declaration.
• His decisive win has been interpreted as a public repudiation of Yoon Suk-yeol’s brief martial law move last December.
• He inherits a deeply polarized society split along political, generational and gender lines, an economy that contracted in the first quarter and a nuclear-armed North Korea as a regional threat.
• Lee has pledged to pursue renewed high-level talks with North Korea and China, signaling a shift from the previous administration’s confrontational diplomacy.