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Gyeonggi Provincial Gov. Lee Jae-myung heads to the Gyeonggi Provincial Office on July 16. (provided by the Gyeonggi Provincial Government)

Despite an exhausting series of battles, the battered politician still managed to get back on his feet.

The Supreme Court sent a case against Lee Jae-myung back to an appeals court, clearing Lee of four charges that have been dogging his footsteps. Lee, governor of Gyeonggi Province, had been fined 3 million won (US$2,487) in an appeals court, which convicted him of spreading falsehoods in regard to his older brother’s involuntary commitment to a psychiatric hospital prior to the local elections in 2018. Under South Korean law, a fine of that size would have annulled Lee’s gubernatorial victory.

Now that Lee’s political career has been resurrected, he seems to have a clear path for a presidential bid in 2022, based on the support and prominence he’s gained through his response to COVID-19.

In December 2018, after the local elections, Lee was charged on four counts of spreading falsehoods under the Public Officials’ Election Act. In addition to the allegations about his brother being committed to a psychiatric hospital, Lee was also charged with inflating what he’d accomplished in a development project in the Daejang neighborhood of Seongnam and with denying his impersonation of a prosecutor in 2002. But in both his first and second trials, Lee was acquitted of all charges except for the one related to his brother.

The trial was not the only challenge facing Lee, former mayor of Seongnam, after he became governor of Gyeonggi Province. He was simultaneously rocked by two scandals: an actress who claimed he had an extramarital affair with her and allegations of connections with organized crime. In the words of Lee, the past two years have been “a tempestuous time.”

The actress scandal was particularly challenging for Lee. After Lee’s request for a physical evaluation was denied by the police during questioning, Lee personally visited Ajou University Hospital where he proved his innocence in the presence of medical experts and the press. Apparently Lee’s accuser said there was a large mole on a “specific body part” and Lee proved he had no such mole nor any signs of its removal.

Despite having surmounted so many obstacles, Lee reported feeling extremely nervous when the Supreme Court postponed its decision about his conviction by the high court. “It feels like I’m standing before the guillotine,” he said.

If the Supreme Court had upheld the high court’s ruling, Lee would have lost both his gubernatorial position and any chance of being a contender for president in 2022; in fact, the ruling would have cast doubt on his entire political career. But Lee’s triumph at the Supreme Court gives a shot in the arm to his leadership of Gyeonggi Province, which had been deflated by all the investigations and trials, while also empowering him to run for president in the next election.

This exhausting legal battle is only one of several challenges that Lee has overcome in his life. Because of his family’s financial difficulties, Lee couldn’t go to middle school and instead spent five years working in an industrial complex in Seongnam. Lee got into an industrial accident there, leaving him with a level-six disability.

Afterward, Lee passed the high school equivalency exam and the college entrance exam, eventually graduating from the department of law at Chung-Ang University. He then aced Korea’s bar exam and began a career as a human rights lawyer. Lee detailed his younger years in his book, “Diary of a Juvenile Factory Worker.” “I want to send a message of hope to all young Koreans who are afraid of the future and filled with pain and confusion, just as I used to be,” he wrote.

While campaigning for the establishment of the Seongnam Citizens’ Medical Center, Lee learned the practical difficulties of activism first hand, which prompted him to try his hand at politics. During two terms as the mayor of Seongnam, between 2010 and 2018, Lee shepherded the city out of a debt crisis and instituted three welfare programs, including a “youth allowance.” Such actions put Lee in the national spotlight and inspired him to compete in the Democratic Party’s presidential primaries in 2017. He didn’t win the candidacy, however, placing third after Moon Jae-in and Ahn Hee-jung.

But in the local elections in 2018, Lee was elected governor of Gyeonggi Province with a staggering 24% lead over Nam Kyung-pil, the candidate fielded by the Liberty Korea Party (now the United Future Party). Following his victory, the new governor unveiled policies that espoused the values of peace and fairness and that sought to elevate the weak, while taking the rich down a notch or two. He moved swiftly and aggressively to extend his “youth allowance” to young people throughout the province and to tear down illegal structures built on the province’s waterways.

As one of the country’s best-known advocates of a universal basic income, Lee’s leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic has elevated him to the ranks of potential presidential contenders. In addition to dispensing Korea’s first disaster aid, Lee took stern preemptive measures against the coronavirus, filing a complaint against the Shincheonji religious organization after it was mentioned as an infection epicenter and ordering on-site inspections. He also cracked down on the launch of propaganda leaflets into North Korea amid rising inter-Korean tensions.

All those actions have earned Lee the public’s trust and boosted his support. Facing a host of allegations, Lee began his term with an abysmal approval rating of 29.2%, the worst among Korea’s 17 metropolitan mayors and provincial governors. But since then, he has engineered a turnaround fit for the cinemas: a poll last month showed his approval rate at 71.2%, higher than any of his peers.

By Hong Yong-duk, South Gyeonggi correspondent

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