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Conservative Yoon wins tight South Korean presidential race
After a bitter, hard-fought election campaign Yoon, formerly a top prosecutor who has never held elected office, was declared winner as rival Lee Jae-myung from the incumbent Democratic Party conceded defeat.
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South Korea's presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol of the main opposition People Power Party gestures to supporters during an election campaign rally in Seoul on March 8, 2022, ahead of the March 9 presidential election.
(AFP/Jung Yeon-je ).
Usage: 0 (AFP/Jung Yeon-je )
T
he opposition conservative Yoon Suk-yeol won South Korea's presidential election early Thursday, propelling a political novice and avowed anti-feminist to the helm of Asia's fourth largest economy.
After a bitter, hard-fought election campaign Yoon, formerly a top prosecutor who has never held elected office, was declared winner as rival Lee Jae-myung from the incumbent Democratic Party conceded defeat.
"This is a victory of the great South Korean people," Yoon told cheering supporters, who were chanting his name at the country's National Assembly.
His victory margin was razor-thin: Yoon had 48.56 percent of the vote against Lee's 47.83 percent, according to South Korea's National Election Commission.
Despite a campaign dominated by mud-slinging between Yoon and Lee, voter turnout was 77.1 percent, including record early voting, with interest strong and the policy stakes high in the country of some 52 million.
The two parties are ideologically poles apart, and Yoon's victory looks set to usher in a more hawkish, fiscally conservative regime after five years under outgoing President Moon Jae-in's dovish liberals.
It is also a dramatic victory for the opposition People Power party, who were left in disarray in 2017 after their president Park Geun-hye was impeached.
