South Korea’s newly elected President, Lee Jae-myung, brings to office a personal history marked by hardship and an agenda shaped by reform. Rising from a child labourer to the nation’s highest post, Mr. Lee assumes leadership in the wake of Yoon Suk-yeol’s impeachment, with the immediate task of stabilising a democracy shaken by political crisis and public distrust.
Born in 1963 in a poor rural family in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province, Lee Jae-myung grew up as one of seven children in a home with no running water or electricity. At the age of 13, he abandoned school to work full time in an industrial plant to support his family. Mr. Lee, unrelenting, studied on his own and passed equivalency tests to return to school. He eventually earned a law degree from Chung-Ang University and passed the bar exam in 1986.
