A simple guide for the 2025 presidential election

South Korea will choose a new president on June 3 to replace Yoon Suk Yeol, who was removed from office for six hours in December for six hours after war law.

The winner is commissioned to manage the political and economic consequences of Yoons move, who plunged the country in deep turbulence and highlighted deep departments in society.

The choice is also held against the background of long -lasting challenges such as the threat of North Korea and combating the lowest birth rate in the world.

The East Asian nation of around 52 million people will choose its new guide for the next five years.

Yoon was supposed to act as President by 2027, but his term in office ended in shame.

He shocked the nation by declaring war law on December 3, and cited threats of “anti -state” and North Korea -but it soon became clear that he was stimulated by his own political problems.

A week later he was charged by the parliament. On April 4, a constitutional court confirmed his office survey and removed it from office permanently from office, whereby the conditions for an SNAP presidential election were set up within 60 days in accordance with legally required requirements.

In the five turbulent months since the Yoon war law of Yoon, the country had three acting presidents, the youngest was Lee Ju-Ho, the Minister of Labor, who took over the role a month before the election.

Lee replaced Prime Minister Han Duck Soo, who was charged with acting capacity just a few weeks after the takeover of Yoon. Finance Minister Choi Sang-Mok was the reigning president before Han was reinstated in March.

Yoon’s war law laid the deep political division between the supporters of Yoon and his conservative Volkskmt party (PPP) and those who support the opposition leader Lee Jae-Myung and the Liberal Democratic Party.

It also shaken the public’s trust in the economy at a critical time when US President Donald Trump unleashed his tariffs on America’s trading partners, with South Korean goods being faced with a delivery of 25%.

The new president will then have the immediate task of clearing up these concerns.

However, there are continuing challenges such as relationships with North Korea. While the beginning of 2025 was relatively uneventful, a year earlier had increased tensions when both sides sent balloons and drones with propaganda material across the border.

In a broader level, the new leader Seoul’s relationships between his largest trading partner Beijing and his most important security ally in Washington must compensate for.

There is also the task of arresting the country’s declining birth rate, which is one of the lowest in the world.

In 2024, the country’s fertility rate or the average number of babies who have a woman in her life was 0.75. While it is easy in the previous year, it stays well below 2.1 that are necessary to maintain the country’s population of 51 million.

Lee Jae-Myung from the liberal Democratic Party used surveys as the leader of under six candidates, followed by Kim Moon-Soo, the candidate for the conservative PPP.

Lee, who lost in 2022 through a razor -thin border against Yoon, is celebrated by his followers as the hero of the working class. He worked in a factory before becoming a human rights lawyer and politician. He has promised to build a “real republic of Korea” with jobs and a fair society.

Kim, a former Minister of Labor, has positioned himself as president for the economy and promised the creation of a business -friendly environment and the creation of jobs.

The other candidates are Lee Jun-Seok from the new reform party, Kwon Young-Guk of the Democratic Labor Party and two independent hwang Kyo-Ahn and Song Jin-Ho.

For the first time in 18 years there is no woman for the president. The first woman who ran as President of the country was Hong Suk-Ja in 1987, but she retired before the vote. There are four female candidates in the 2012 elections.

The election is planned on June 3 and the voting districts will be opened from 6:00 a.m. local time (10:00 p.m. GMT) by 8:00 p.m. South Koreans in overseas were allowed to choose from May 20th to 25th.

The results are expected to be received after the surveys have been completed and the winner will probably be known early the next day.

When Yoon Lee defeated 2022, he was announced nine hours after completing the vote or at 04:40 a.m. after the election day.

That was the closest presidential competition in the country’s history, in which Yoon won with a difference in the vote of 0.73%.

The new president immediately becomes his office and, in contrast to many of his predecessors, do not have the advantage of a formal transition from Yoon.

Yoon is brought to court

In January of this year he became South Korea’s first sitting president who was arrested after the investigators had scaled barricades and cut through barbed wire to take him into custody. Weeks later he was seduced from the prison sentence of detention.

He was recently charged separately for abuse of power.

Before the election, Yoon left his party in what analysts say, an attempt to support the opportunities of the PPP standard carrier Kim Moon-Soo.