On November 12, 2021, Yoon Seok-yue held a foreign media press conference at the Korea Press Center. Photo by Liu Xu
SEOUL, March 10 (Xinhua) -- The results of South Korea's 20th presidential election were released on march 10 local time, and Yoon Seok-yue, the candidate of the largest opposition party, the National Power Party, defeated Lee Jae-myung, the candidate of the ruling party's Common Democratic Party, with 48.56 percent of the vote, and was elected as the new president.
"Most Glued Election Ever"
The 20th South Korean presidential election was launched at 6 a.m. local time on the 9th. More than 44.19 million registered voters voted at more than 14,400 polling stations across South Korea to elect a new president. According to statistics released by the Central Election Management Committee, the final turnout of this presidential election was 77.1%, which was basically the same as the previous general election.
At 6:00 a.m. local time (5:00 a.m. Beijing time), the Central Election Management Commission of south Korea completed 100% of the votes in the presidential election. According to statistics, Yoon Seok-wook won 48.56% of the vote, followed by Lee Jae-myung, the candidate of the ruling party's Common Democratic Party, with a vote rating of 47.83%, a vote difference of less than one percentage point, making this election the most glued presidential election in South Korean history.
With 14 candidates registered in this presidential election, the two most popular presidential candidates, Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Common Democratic Party and Yoon Seok-yue, the largest opposition party, were evenly matched in support. Polls before the "unpredictable period" (19:30 local time from March 3 to 9) showed that the gap between the two people was within the margin of error. On March 2, Lee announced a unified cooperation with New Wave presidential candidate Kim Dong-yan. On the 3rd, Yin Xiyue and the Kuomintang candidate An Zhexiu jointly pushed a single candidate.
Pictured here are voters queuing outside a polling station in Seoul's Jongno-gu district. Photo by Liu Xu, a reporter of China News Service
In the counting process after the official vote on the 9th, the vote rate of Yin and Li has not been significantly different. According to the data of the Election Statistics System of the Central Election Management Commission, as of 2:05 a.m. on the 10th, when the vote count rate reached 83.46%, Yin Xiyue received 48.67% of the vote, which was only 0.91 percentage points higher than Li Zaiming's 47.76%.
In earlier periods, as of 22:20 on the 9th of the 5.02% of the votes, Li Zaiming had once led Yin Xiyue by 5.55 percentage points with a 51.21% vote, but after the sub-hour, the gap narrowed to less than 1 percentage point, and after 0:30, Yin Xiyue overtook Li Zaiming for the first time.
"Victory belongs to the great people"
Yin Xiyue said after winning the election on the 10th that today's election results are not so much the victory of me and the national forces, as well as the victory of An Zhexiu and the Kuomintang, but rather the victory of the great people.
After winning the election, Yin Xiyue went to the Library of Congress to thank the National Forces party officials and parliamentarians. He said it was a heated, unusually hot game. In the campaign, I learned what qualifications are needed to become the leaders of the country and how to listen to the voices of the people.
Yin Xiyue also said that in the process of preparing to form a cabinet as an elected person and formally performing his duties as president, he will respect the spirit of the Constitution, respect the National Assembly, govern the country in consultation with opposition parties, and serve the people well, and said that he will regard national unity as the primary task of ruling the country.
The ruling party's presidential candidate, Lee Jae-ming, also held a press conference at the Central Party Headquarters of the Common Democratic Party in the early hours of the same day, admitting defeat in the 20th presidential election. Lee Jae-ming said, "Everything is caused by my personal inadequacies, neither the failure of everyone nor the failure of the Democratic Party, all the responsibility lies with me." Lee also congratulated newly elected President Yin Xiyue, hoping that Yin Xiyue could open an era beyond division and contradiction.
The "political elite" who came out of the procuratorial system
Yoon Seok-wook was born in Seoul in 1960 to a family of high-ranking intellectuals and graduated from Seoul National University Law School. After passing the bar exam and completing the Judicial Training Institute course, Yoon Seok-yue has served as a prosecutor in the Daegu, Chuncheon, Shuion, Seoul, and Busan district procuratorates and the Central Prosecutor's Office since 1994, specializing in corruption cases and briefly serving as a lawyer.
Having played an important role in many major corruption and bribery cases, Yin Xiyue has been praised by the industry for her undaunted external pressure and vigorous style of acting. In 2013, Yin participated as the head of the investigation team in an investigation into the national intelligence agency's public opinion manipulation case during the 2012 election. He was demoted due to a conflict with the prosecution and moved to the local prosecutors' offices of Suwon, Daegu, and Daejeon from 2013 to 2017.
In 2016, Yoon Seok-wook began participating in the Choi Soon-sil investigation and impeaching then-president Park Geun-hye. In May 2017, Yoon Seok-wook was appointed by President Moon Jae-in as the head of the Seoul Central District Attorney General, directing the investigation into Park Geun-hye's "cronies interfering in the government" case, and leading a number of corruption and bribery cases involving politicians and large consortia. In 2019, Yin Xiyue was promoted to prosecutor general.
The picture shows voters who completed their votes taking photos outside a polling station in Jongno-gu, Seoul. Photo by Liu Xu, a reporter of China News Service
In 2020, the conflict between Yin Xiyue and the then minister of justice, Qiu Mei'ai, who pushed for the reform of the procuratorial system, intensified, and finally resigned in March 2021. In June 2021, Yoon Seok-yue announced that he would run for the 20th presidential election and join The National Power Party, South Korea's largest opposition party, at the end of July. On November 5, Yin Xiyue won the primary and became the Presidential Candidate of the National Forces Party. In early January 2022, Yin Xiyue announced the dissolution of the party's campaign team. During the campaign, Yin Xiyue was questioned for his mother-in-law's imprisonment for fraudulent insurance, his wife's resume was falsified, and his wife was deeply involved in the "7-hour recording door".
On a diplomatic stand, Yoon Seok-wook stressed that the ROK-US alliance is a priority and that security cooperation between South Korea and Japan should be strengthened. Yoon Seok-wook once said in a signed article in the US "Diplomacy" magazine that "building a strong ROK-US alliance is the central axis of consolidating Rok diplomacy" and that ROK-China cooperation in the new era "should be based on the principle that security issues cannot affect economic issues." He also proposed that South Korea should be open to expanding the deployment of the US THAAD system to deal with the North Korean nuclear threat.
Some analysts pointed out that Yin Xiyue's tough and radical remarks on sensitive and major diplomatic issues exposed his team's shortcomings in the field of diplomacy. (End)
Source: China News Network