An electorate discontented with the self-satisfied political classes can rarely resist the temptation of an ‘anti-politics’ politician, posing as a new broom to sweep away the old corruptions, and promising a new dawn. Take the new president of South Korea, 61-year-old Yoon Suk-yeol. On election day (10 March) the odds were too close to call in the rambunctious contest between Yoon, the candidate of the conservative People Power Party, and the liberal Lee Jae-myung of the governing Democratic Party. In the end Yoon edged out Lee by a hair – 48.56 per cent to 47.83 per cent.
Much like the ‘lesser evil’ electoral theatre in many countries, neither candidate was particularly inspiring to Korean voters, causing media outlets to dub the whole poll ‘the election of the unfavourables’. Koreans take their politics seriously. Turnout was some 77 per cent – perhaps because, until 1987, the country had been ruled by a series of military despots backed by the US. South Koreans have always been willing to go the streets to defend their democratic rights, as they did in Gwangju in 1980 when an estimated 2,000 demonstrators were murdered by the Chun dictatorship, or more recently in 2016 when weeks of street demonstrations brought down Park Geun-hye for her corrupt political practices.
