The Conservative candidate won the March 9 election with less than 250,000 votes. This former attorney general was elected just eight months after entering politics, recalls the South Korean press.
Yoon Suk-yeol, candidate of the People’s Power Party, was elected president of South Korea with 48.56% of the vote in the March 9 poll. His opponent Lee Jae-myung, of the Democratic Party, party of outgoing President Moon Jae-in, obtained 47.83%. Only 247,077 votes out of the 44,190,692 voters in total separate them. “In the entire history of South Korea, never has a candidate won with such a short lead”, points out the daily Hankook Ilbo. Further to the left than Mr. Lee, Sim Sang-jung, candidate of the Justice Party, obtained 2.37%.
Mr. Yoon’s victory was not announced until around 4 a.m. the day after the poll (around 8 p.m. on March 9, French time). Residents with Covid-19 had to wait until the end of the day to vote, as the number of contaminations is about to reach a peak, with more than 300,000 new cases per day since the day before the elections.
The participation rate was very high: 77.1%. This figure is very close to that of the 2017 presidential election (77.2%), organized in a context of great mobilization. “The Democratic Party, which came to power in 2017 following a wave of protests against President Park Geun-hye and her dismissal [pour de nombreux abus de pouvoir]thus returns power after barely five years”, abstract Hankook Ilbo.
Penalty vote
According to the newspaper, “it is a sanction vote against the current government”. “In addition to the province of
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Jeong Eun-Jin