The Koreas | Politics | East Asia

Lee Jae-myung Is a New Kind of President – and South Koreans Approve

Lee has redefined the South Korean executive by trading imperial secrecy for radical transparency and focusing on tangible results.

While the first year of a South Korean presidency is often dismissed as a mere “honeymoon” period fueled by high public expectations, the sustained popularity of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung – whose approval ratings are hovering around 60 percent – suggests a different catalyst: administrative competence. 

As of March 2026, Lee’s approval ratings are increasingly viewed not as a byproduct of his recent inauguration, but as a direct result of a governance style that prioritizes tangible results over ceremonial rhetoric. Since taking office last June, Lee has utilized his executive mandate to implement a high-velocity administrative agenda. To international observers, his popularity might appear as a populist anomaly, but a detailed analysis suggests a more methodical cause. Lee has successfully rebranded the presidency as a high-performance contract built on four distinct pillars: policy consistency, transactional diplomacy, radical communication, and a servant-leader philosophy.

The bedrock of Lee’s political identity is an almost obsessive adherence to policy consistency. Unlike previous leaders, whose campaign promises often dissolved into bureaucratic inertia, Lee arrived at the Blue House with a proven track record of administrative efficacy. During his tenure as mayor of Seongnam (2010 to 2018) and then Gyeonggi Province governor (2018 to 2021), his campaign promise fulfillment rate was documented at between 94 percent to 96 by the Korea Manifesto Center. 

Making this credibility all the more impressive, Lee inherited a Seongnam on the brink of bankruptcy. In a move that shocked the political establishment, he declared a moratorium on more than 500 billion won (roughly $370 million) in debt run up by his predecessor. He then implemented a fiscal austerity program, moving his own office to a lower floor of the city hall and cutting administrative perks to prioritize debt repayment.

Crucially, Lee’s approach to welfare is rooted not in debt-driven spending but in fiscal efficiency, as he showed in Seongnam. Rather than raising taxes or issuing new bonds, he funded signature welfare programs – such as the Basic Income policy and the Youth Dividend – by aggressively cutting administrative waste and eliminating leakage in the city budget. Framing welfare as the dividend of an honest government rather than a burden on the treasury is central to his appeal. By the time Lee graduated the city from the debt moratorium three-and-a-half years later, he had proven that fiscal responsibility and social expansion are not mutually exclusive.

His transition to the governorship of Gyeonggi Province in 2018 served as a critical laboratory for scaling these principles to a population of 13 million. It was here that Lee cemented his reputation as a legal breaker of entrenched interests. He gained national acclaim for the forceful restoration of public valleys, where he dismantled illegal structures operated by local cartels that had monopolized natural resources for decades. Furthermore, he pioneered the mandate for CCTVs in operating rooms – a move aimed at ensuring patient safety and medical transparency. Despite fierce opposition from powerful professional lobbies, Lee’s refusal to blink in the face of institutional pushback reinforced his image as a leader who prioritizes public interest over bureaucratic or elite consensus.

His consistency is best exemplified by the transition of Basic Income from a provincial experiment to a national economic strategy. Following the 2025 election, his administration implemented a universal stimulus of 250,000 won ($185) per citizen. The funds were issued in local currency, usable only at neighborhood businesses and traditional markets. While critics warned of a fiscal crisis, Lee pointed to his Seongnam record, arguing that welfare is a strategic economic stimulus funded by streamlined government operations. According to reports from state-run research institutes and local media, this mechanism has triggered a sharp increase in the money multiplier effect within local districts, validating a narrative of fiscally neutral growth.

Beyond domestic policy, Lee has displayed an unexpected mastery of........

© The Diplomat