Yoon Seok Yul, the new conservative president of South Korea, November 12, 2021 ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP
After a narrow victory for conservative opposition candidate Yun Seok Yul, South Korea is returning to a more liberal economic policy, rapprochement with the US and Japan, and tougher relations with North Korea and China. According to the results of the vote announced early Thursday morning, March 10, Mr. Yoon won with 48.56% of the vote, to 47.83% of his Democratic challenger Lee Jae-myung. In his winning speech, the former prosecutor with no political experience insisted on national unity: “Regardless of their region, their camp, or their class, South Koreans are equal citizens and should be treated fairly,” said the one who succeeded. Blue House (South Korean Presidency) to Democrat Moon Jae-in.
A purebred product of the South Korean elite, Mr. Yoon was born in Seoul in 1960. His father is a member of the Academy of Sciences and an honorary professor at Yonsei University, where he created the Department of Statistics. Her mother taught at the prestigious Ehwa Women’s University.
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A law graduate from the prestigious Seoul University, it took the new leader nine years to pass the bar exam. He would have been blacklisted for playing the role of prosecutor in the 1980 show trial of authoritarian President Chun Doo-hwan (1931-2021), who was in power during the massacre of the movement’s demonstrators. for Democracy in Gwangju (southwestern South Korea), May 1980. During this dramatization with his other comrades, Mr. Yun demanded the death penalty for the leader.
Very popular prosecutor
Officially appointed prosecutor of the Anti-Corruption Service in 1994, what his colleagues consider “an extrovert and loyal to friendship” does not hesitate to challenge the current government. Under the progressive presidents Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003) and Roh Moo-hyun (2003-2008), he arrested the second man in the national police and people close to power. In 2006, he charged Hyundai conglomerate chairman Chung Moon-koo with embezzlement. He then investigates conservative President Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013), whose associate was implicated in a corruption scandal, and then former head of state Park Geun-hye (2013-2017), whom he helped to fire. Pardoned at the end of 2021, the former president will spend four years in prison for corruption and abuse of power.
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Praising his neutrality, outgoing President Moon Jae-in appointed his future successor in 2017 as head of Seoul’s powerful prosecutor’s office and later in 2019 as attorney general. This does not prevent the petitioner from attacking the current administration, contributing to the downfall of Justice Minister Cho Kuk. This affair brought him great popularity among the conservative opposition in search of a resurgence after the Park scandal. In 2021, he launched the presidential race as an independent and then under the label of the People’s Power Party (PPP), the main component of the opposition.
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