The new president of South Korea, Yoon Suk-yeol, is sworn in on Tuesday, elected in March on a conservative platform in the tightest election in Korean history, with just 0.73% of the vote ahead of the runner-up. .
A former prosecutor who has become a star in the country, Yoon formally entered party politics less than a year ago, but he still shook South Korean power structures, both with the impeachment and imprisonment of former President Park Geun. -hye and with their controversial proposals.
The son of university professors, Yoon, 62, studied law at the prestigious Seoul National University — he only managed to pass the exam to become a lawyer nine years after graduation, after a series of failures.
His trajectory has been compared, in Brazil, to that of former judge and former Minister of Justice Sergio Moro. In addition to having spent most of their careers in the Judiciary, the two worked in cases that ended in the impeachment of a president in 2016 — in Brazil, indirectly, as the Lava Jato operation cost the popularity of former president Dilma Rousseff, but it was not the official cause of his departure from the government.
Yoon led the team investigating crimes that led to the ouster of South Korea’s first female president, Park Geun-hye, arrested and sentenced in 2018 to 24 years in prison for a series of violations involving corruption and abuse of power. After the twists and turns that politics takes, Park, released from prison after a presidential pardon on December 31, has become an ally of her former tormentor.
With the projection he gained in the case, Yoon was appointed attorney general by the then president, Moon Jae-in, in 2019, six months after Moro took over the Ministry of Justice in Brazil — and both left the governments to which they were little invited. after.
“The two also made a dramatic break with the same governments that raised them in the public sphere and made their own political journey possible,” says Thiago Mattos, a master in international relations at Uerj and a specialist in South Korea who has lived in the country for four years.
Moro broke with the Bolsonaro government in April 2020, and Yoon left the progressive Moon administration in early 2021, after accusations of abuse of power and clashes with the Minister of Justice, who was trying to reform the country’s Prosecutor’s Office. Outside the government, Yoon turned to the right and ran on behalf of the opposition to the government.
The political movements of the former Brazilian judge, who ended up being obliterated by the political field of the right and is not expected to run for president in October, show that the similarities with the former prosecutor do not go much further.
Yoon and Moro distance themselves, says Mattos, because the Korean “has in fact managed to establish himself as the main voice of opposition at a time when the South Korean right was in pieces”, gathering support from different currents around him. , which did not occur with the Brazilian.
For the expert, Yoon’s profile is actually closer to that of Jair Bolsonaro, since both managed to “surf the conservative wave through multiple controversies” with praise for the dictatorial period in both countries and with contempt for feminist agendas. .
During the campaign, Yoon even claimed that feminism was most responsible for the country’s low birth rate and promised to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and the Family – which, after being elected, he has already said he will not do so immediately.
In the transition period, he also announced that he would not rule from the Blue House, the residence and seat of South Korean power, which he said represents an imperial power too far removed from the people. The opposition criticized the decision, which would have been taken because of the president’s alleged belief in feng shui, a Chinese spiritual practice of harmonizing environments. Yoon promises to start the government by dispatching from the Ministry of Defense.
Winning by a narrow margin of votes, Yoon will have to work hard to win over the opposition from the start, assesses Yong-Chool Ha, professor of international relations at the University of Washington, USA, starting with the audiences to which his first -minister and government members were submitted in Parliament. “Declarations of commitment to justice and honesty have raised the moral bar of the government, and the opposition tries to exploit this in public hearings,” he says.
For Ha, however, Yoon’s biggest challenge will be to boost the country’s economy in the post-Covid-19 period, in addition to dealing with the problems of rising domestic debt and a serious housing crisis, which have helped him. to be elected.
Government data show that property values have risen 17% on average since the beginning of the Moon administration, but independent research has come to compute an increase of between 75% and 93%. In the campaign, Yoon promised to build 2.5 million homes over the next five years in the country.
There should also be a clear shift in foreign policy, already expressed in rising tensions with North Korea in recent weeks. Yoon vows to speak more aggressively with Pyongyang, and analysts point out that channels open throughout the Moon administration should close.
The outgoing president has now capitalized on pro-unification sentiment and gained popularity by mediating contacts between then-President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, but has seen his approval drop as northern neighbors drifted away and the dictator resumed military tests.
Under Yoon, South Korea is expected to be much closer to the United States than to China, and US President Joe Biden has already scheduled a visit to the country for the end of the month.
_143209.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1)
