South Korean President Lee Jae-myung walks with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva following a group photo for leaders attending the Group of Seven summit in Kananaskis, Canada, on June 17, 2025. (Kim Tae-hyeong/Hankyoreh)
Two presidents, two continents, and two strangely similar lives.Korean President Lee Jae-myung and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva held a bilateral meeting in Kananaskis, Alberta, on Tuesday while attending the Group of Seven summit hosted by Canada. This was the first summit that leaders from the two countries have held in 10 years.There was something evocative about Lee and Lula shaking hands and wrapping an arm around each other’s backs. Members of Lee’s Democratic Party were overcome with emotion, including former party leader Park Chan-dae, who remarked, “To think this day would finally come!”Lee and Lula’s meeting was viewed with such interest because of the remarkable similarities between their lives, including their upbringings, their reasons for entering politics, and the way they surmounted political oppression to reach the presidency.
Lee and Lula greet each other warmly. (from KTV)
The factory boy and the shoeshine boyPoverty and disability are key threads that weave through Lee’s and Lula’s lives.Lee, who grew up in an impoverished neighborhood in Seongnam, couldn’t afford to pay tuition for middle school, so at the age of 12, he took on a factory job.Lula was also born into grinding poverty. Since he dropped out of elementary school in the fifth grade, he doesn’t have a single diploma to his name. He began selling peanuts and shining shoes at the age of 7 and became a lathe operator at the age of 14.Lee and Lula became factory workers around the same age, and their jobs presented similar challenges.At Lee’s fifth workplace, a factory making ski gloves and baseball mitts, his left wrist was caught in a press, leaving him disabled and his arm permanently disfigured.Lula was in his third year working the lathe at a machine shop near São Paulo when he lost the little finger on his left hand while doing an overnight shift.Lee regarded his twisted arm as having been “made by a twisted world,” while Lula’s missing finger has been a source of “sadness and resentment” for his whole life.No wonder Lula eagerly inquired about how old Lee had been at the time of his industrial accident when Lee related the anecdote during the summit.
