South Koreans are finally voting for a new president, after the last one lost his job for trying to declare martial law 6 months ago

The southern Koreans flocked to the polls on Tuesday to elect a new president, six months after the day after the former commander Yun Suk Yol, in the political chaos by announcing the disastrous law.

After months of turmoil and spinning chapter on the leaders of the call, many South Koreans are eager to move forward in the country.

All major opinion polls Liberal Lee Jay Meong put in the foreground, where the latest survey in Gallup showed that 49 % of the respondents looked at him as the best candidate.

Kim Moon Soo, of the Conservative Energy Party (PPP), follows me in the polls and was 35 % in the Gallup survey.

Everyone who appears victorious will take office almost immediately and faces a swollen part in the part, including global trade fluctuations that expel the economy that is driven by export, and some of the lowest birth rates in the world and honor North Korea quickly expand its military conscience.

But experts are the repercussions of the Yun combat law, which has left South Korea without leadership effectively for the first months of US President Donald Trump, is the highest concern for voters.

Voters Park Dong Shein, 79, told AFP that he was voting “to create a new country again.”

He said that Yun’s declaration in military law “was the type of thing that was done during the old days of dictatorship in our country.”

He was voting for the candidate who would make sure that the officials “were dealt with properly.”

“The power of the Korean people”

A handful of elderly voters at a polling station in the Monra-Dong area of ​​Seoul lined up at 6:00 am (2100 GMT) to make their cards at the start of the vote.

“We were the first to arrive in the hope of electing our candidate,” said Yu Bonn Dul, 80 years old, to Agence France-Presse, adding that she was voting for the Pakistani People’s Party former Yun Party.

The voters are expected to be high.

As of midday, the National Committee of the National Seoul said that a total of 62.1 % of qualified voters has made their votes, including the first and foreign voters – from 61.3 % at the same point in the previous elections.

Campaign campaigns on election day are not allowed, but I have posted on Facebook that the vote “will appear the power of the Korean people”, after months of turmoil.

“The polls show that the elections are largely considered as a referendum on the previous administration,” Kang Joe Hyun, a professor of political science at the Sogkyung University for Women, told AFP.

“The combat rulings and the accountability crisis were not only affected by moderates, but also break the conservative rule.”

Yun’s isolation over the fighting law attempt, which witnessed the deployment of armed soldiers in parliament, made the second conservative president to be stripped of his post after Park Jeon Hayy in 2017.

Conservative candidate Kim failed to persuade a third party’s candidate, Lee John-Sock, from the Islah party, to unify and avoid dividing the right-wing vote.

‘turning point’

Opinion polls conducted by the main broadcasters in South Korea will be issued at approximately 8:00 pm – immediately after opinion polls – and it is expected that it will provide a fairly accurate image of the one who won.

In the 2022 presidential elections, they expected the result to be precisely to the first decimal place.

The streets of Seoul were peaceful, where people achieved the utmost benefit from good weather and spending a public holiday, but the police issued the highest level of alert and deployed thousands of officers to ensure the continuation of the elections smoothly.

The liberal candidate Lee-who survived the assassination attempt last year-was carrying out a campaign in a bullet resistant jacket and giving letters behind a protective shield of glass.

Former commander Yoon and his wife Kim Keon threw their votes at a polling station near their residence, but they did not answer questions from journalists.

Southern Korean presidents serve one term for five years.

With regular presidential elections, there is a transitional period for months, and the new leader begins in the middle of the night after the last predecessor day.

But in early elections, the winner becomes president, as soon as the National Elections Committee believed the voting balance.

The taxi driver, Choi Song Wook, 68, said he was voting for me, and this is partly attributed to his poor childhood, which he believed would “have a great impact on how to serve people.”

“I thought Yoon would fulfill a good performance, but he betrayed people. I hope that the next president will create an atmosphere of peace and unity instead of ideological war.”

This story was originally shown on Fortune.com

Don’t miss more hot News like this! Click here to discover the latest in Business news!

2025-06-03 07:28:00