The candidate of the People’s Power Party (PPP), the main right-wing opposition party, won with 48.59% of the vote against 47.79% for his Democratic Party rival Lee Jae-myung.
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Conservative Yoon Suk-yeol was elected president of South Korea, narrowly ahead of center-left ruling party candidate Lee Jae-myung, who conceded defeat, the agency reported Thursday (March 10). press Yonhap.
With 98% of the ballots counted at the end of this single-round ballot, Yoon Suk-yeol won with 48.59% of the vote against 47.79% for Lee Jae-myung, according to Yonhap. “I did my best, but I didn’t live up to expectations”the latter told his Democratic Party supporters.
The win over Yoon Suk-yeol, 61, marks a dramatic comeback for the PPP, hard hit in 2017 by the dismissal and then imprisonment for abuse of power of President Park Gung-hye, who belonged to this formation. Paradoxically, Yoon Suk-yeol, then prosecutor in Seoul, had played a key role in the investigation which had led to the fall of Park Gung-hye.