John Delury

South Korea’s new president could transform the Korean Peninsula

How Lee Jae-myung Can Push Trump and Kim Back to Real Diplomacy

The debilitating political vacuum that has reigned in Seoul since South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s impeachment on December 14 has finally ended. On June 3, Lee Jae-myung won South Korea’s presidential election by a decisive margin. Lee, a liberal who narrowly lost the country’s last election to Yoon, has promised to fix both his society’s broken politics and its mounting economic problems with a domestic agenda that includes improving conditions for workers, shoring up the public sector, and boosting growth in strategic areas such as AI and defense.