The emphatic win for Lee Jae-myung, the left-wing Democratic Party (DP) leader, as South Korea’s president, shines a bright light on the country’s resilient democratic credentials. The verdict in Tuesday’s snap poll follows months of political upheaval when the ousted former president, Yoon Suk Yeol of the conservative People Power Party, declared martial law in December.

The naked power grab on that dark night, which Yoon justified on grounds of threats to national security and deployed troops to bar legislators’ entry into the National Assembly, only enraged them to have the order revoked within hours. The intense outrage that enveloped the country over the following fortnight led parliament to impeach Yoon by the year end, a decision........

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