President of South Korea, inaugurated on June 4th 2025. Leader of the liberal Democratic Party.
Born into poverty, Lee dropped out of school as a teenager to work in factories. He retrained as a lawyer, became a labour-rights activist and eventually governor of South Korea's most populous province. In 2022 he narrowly lost the presidential election to Yoon Suk Yeol. He survived after being stabbed in the neck in early 2024 by an extremist bent on preventing him from becoming president. Alleged election-law crimes threatened to derail his second presidential bid, but South Korean courts gave voters a chance to issue their own verdict.
On June 3rd 2025 Lee won the snap presidential election with 49.4% of the vote, replacing Yoon, who had been impeached for declaring martial law in December 2024. Yoon's ally, Kim Moon-soo of the conservative People Power Party, came second with 41.2%. Lee's Democratic Party controls a majority in parliament.
Lee has called himself a pragmatist. He compared South Korea to a dolphin, no longer the "shrimp among whales" of traditional proverb. He has called for constitutional amendments to allow presidents to serve two four-year terms instead of a single five-year term and to make it harder to impose martial law. He promised a fiscal stimulus package to boost the economy and pledged to raise South Korea's benchmark stockmarket index. He pledged $530bn over two decades for the chip industry, including a 100trn won ($73bn) public-private fund to develop AI and semiconductor infrastructure, and more state support for the creation and distribution of k-content through export financing and tax breaks. "Culture is the economy, and culture is international competitiveness," he declared in his inauguration speech. His campaign target of KOSPI 5,000 was fulfilled in late January 2026, less than eight months into his tenure; within another month the benchmark had burst through 6,000.
Since taking office, Lee has overseen a state-backed effort to "value up" South Korea's firms. Parliament has twice amended the Commercial Act, imposing a fiduciary duty to shareholders on managers (previously their duty was to their firms alone), mandating electronic shareholder meetings and shifting power towards minority investors. An expected further wave of amendments will probably oblige firms to retire "treasury shares" that dilute external shareholders. Lee has set a target of KOSPI 5,000 for the benchmark stockmarket index.
As leader of the opposition Democratic Party, Lee had hewed to familiar foreign-policy positions for his side, including openness to North Korea and wariness of Japan, the former imperial overlord. He led a hunger strike in part to protest against his predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol's conciliatory stance toward Japan. But as president he has proved pragmatic. He endorsed the alliance with America, pursued closer co-operation with Japan, and called for stabilising relations with China while pushing back against critics who label him pro-Chinese. He turned off loudspeakers that had been blasting propaganda across the North Korean border—one of his first acts as president—and the leafleting of North Korea by South Korean activists has mostly stopped. Within days of the loudspeaker switch-off, the North turned off its own noisemakers too. He also let South Korea's spy agency's radio broadcasts into North Korea go silent for the first time since 2010, defending the move by saying "everything's searchable on the internet"—though he doubtless knows North Koreans cannot freely access the internet. Lee appears to be hoping that such gestures can coax Kim Jong Un back to the negotiating table.
Lee has emphasised China's importance as a trading partner, an example of the regional balancing act many countries face during America's tariff confrontation.
Lee visited China in January 2026, the first trip by a South Korean leader since before the pandemic. The visit was intended to improve a relationship that had soured since China reacted harshly to the deployment of an American missile battery in South Korea in 2016. Lee raised the subject of Yellow Sea tensions, where China has placed large fish-farm structures and observation buoys in waters that South Korea also claims. He said China agreed to move one of the structures. He gave Xi Jinping a Go board carved from rare torreya wood.
His first call after taking office went to the White House: he and Trump pledged to work towards an agreement on tariffs and trade, and to play a round of golf. Second was Japan's prime minister, Ishiba Shigeru. Third was Xi Jinping, whom Lee formally invited to an APEC leaders' meeting in South Korea in autumn 2025; if Xi comes, it would be his first visit since 2014.
In October 2025 South Korea is due to host an APEC summit. The 60th anniversary of formal ties between South Korea and Japan fell on June 22nd 2025 and was marked by a festive reception at which Ishiba called for the countries to "join hands". On June 17th 2025 Lee and Ishiba held their first in-person meeting on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada. The following day, fighter jets from both countries flew alongside American F-16s in trilateral military exercises. Lee's new trade minister, Yeo Han-koo, has called for joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the mega-free-trade deal salvaged by Japan after Trump pulled America out during his first term.
As leader of the opposition Democratic Party, Lee had slammed his predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol for pursuing a rapprochement with Japan. But he made Japan his first foreign destination—the first South Korean leader to do so since the two countries normalised relations in 1965. In Tokyo he endorsed closer co-operation and, while he raised the bitter colonial past, did not dwell on it.
In Washington, Lee charmed Trump with personal gifts—echoing Abe Shinzo's approach during Trump's first term. He pledged to spend more on defence and declared that South Korea would no longer rely on America for security and on China for economic prosperity. Korean Air pledged to buy 103 new jets from Boeing, its largest-ever order. Trump backed off talk of withdrawing American troops. Lee asked Trump to help revive talks with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, and dispatched special envoys to Beijing bearing an invitation for Xi Jinping to attend a summit in South Korea in late October.
During the APEC meeting Lee held a first summit with Takaichi Sanae, Japan's right-wing prime minister. South Korean diplomats now speak of Japan as their best friend in the neighbourhood.
At the APEC gathering in South Korea, Lee and Trump formalised an agreement lowering tariffs on most South Korean imports from the 25% Trump had set to 15%, in exchange for $350bn worth of investments in America. (Before Trump returned to office, most goods faced no duties, thanks to a free-trade agreement signed in 2012.) Lee received Trump's approval to build nuclear-powered (but not nuclear-armed) submarines, a long-sought goal of South Korean leaders. The two countries are expected to renegotiate a nuclear agreement that barred South Korea from enriching or reprocessing nuclear fuel. In early October Lee said South Korea's defence budget would grow by 8.2% the following year, the largest annual hike since 2008.
In March 2026 America redeployed Patriot interceptor missiles and parts of a THAAD missile-defence system from South Korea to the Middle East. Lee expressed disappointment: when the THAAD system was first sent to South Korea in 2017, China had reacted furiously, encouraging consumer boycotts of South Korean goods and services that caused massive economic losses. South Korea held firm despite the costs—and now parts of the system had been whisked away. "The stark reality is that we cannot always get our way," Lee told ministers. He warned: "We must always consider what we will do if, for any reason, external support were to disappear." The Cheonghae anti-piracy unit, operating in the Gulf of Aden, could be redeployed to assist with the Strait of Hormuz, but that might require parliamentary approval; public backlash had already begun.
Early to bed and early to rise and you'll be groggy when everyone else is wide awake.