During his inauguration in 2017, the human rights lawyer-cum-politician Moon Jae-in declared “I will get rid of the authoritarian culture of past presidents and will open a new era of the Gwanghwamun president”. Moving his office from inside the Presidential Blue House to the Gwanghwamun district of Seoul was intended to symbolise a new era of cleaner politics. Moon’s two presidential predecessors, after all, were languishing in prison cells after successive scandals regarding abuses of power.

Yet for all its initial optimism, Moon’s presidency leaves behind a complex mismatch of unprecedented highs and agonising lows. From grappling with a global pandemic, to shaking the hands of Kim Jong-Un, Moon has helped guide Korea from the abyss – but the nation’s future remains far from certain.

Moon’s Democratic Legacy

Moon Jae-In’s presidency was greeted with a surge of enthusiasm. However, his five years in power have not been scandal free. In 2019, Moon’s close ally and newly sworn Justice Minister Cho Guk brought the entire administration under intense fire. Allegations of abuse of power to gain his family social and economic privileges led to weeks of anti-government demonstrations. The scandal brought out frustrations not only against the Moon administration, which was being accused of hypocrisy for defending the minister, but also against the vast inequities of a hyper-competitive society where elites pass on their socioeconomic advantages to their children.

In 2021, the presidency was again rocked by scandal after it was revealed that over 90 politicians, including members of Moon’s ruling Democratic Party, were being probed by watchdogs for a swathe of illegal real estate transactions. Since Moon took office in 2017, soaring house prices in the densely populated capital Seoul have been estimated to have more than doubled. Railroaded measures by the government not only failed to bring prices under control, but actually further increased prices by creating hurdles for first-time-buyers to get into the market. The revelations of systemic foul play thus continued to ignite palpable public anger – anger which may still play out in the ballot boxes.

That is not to say that the Moon Presidency has been plagued by the personal corruption of the past. Indeed, he has enacted painful institutional reforms to steadily enhance the transparency and accountability of Korea’s enormous conglomerates, and has successfully enacted progressive policies such as increasing the minimum wage and lowering the maximum workweek from 68 to 52 hours per week. Yet for a populist human rights lawyer who aimed to rid the government of its corrupt image, Moon’s democratic legacy has proven mixed at best. The seeming hypocrisy has led to the resurgence of the term ‘Gangnam jwapa’, a caricature of Korean progressives who advocate for social equality yet behind closed doors live the extravagant ‘Gangnam’ life of the well-off – an attack all too quickly mobilised by Moon’s conservative opponents.

COVID-19 and Korea’s New Deals

Like all leaders, Moon had to grapple with the immense economic and social challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. On this front, Moon initially did remarkably well. Compared to many countries in the region, South Korea took an aggressive and technologically advanced approach to containing the outbreak. Drive-through testing, extensive tracing measures, and innovations such as medical “phone booths” helped Korea keep the spread under control. Due to Moon’s early triumph in containing the virus, his government received praise both domestically and internationally.  

Initial success, however, did not guarantee continued success.

Recent Delta and Omicron fuelled waves have placed Korea’s health and contact tracing systems under unprecedented strain. Like other countries that managed to suppress the virus early, such as Australia and Taiwan, Korea seemed to suffer a consequence of its own success: complacency. A slow vaccine roll-out, paired with constantly changing health measures, contributed to a severe slowdown of the economy – with small business owners particularly affected by constantly changing lockdown measures and a lack of government financial support.

To turbo-charge a limping economy, Moon pinned his economic legacy on a multibillion dollar ‘Green New Deal’. The US$135 billion plan proposed large investments in green technologies such as an expansion of solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and ‘smart grids’. For an economy dominated by coal and so called ‘brown energy’, Moon’s vision was to cement his country’s role in the fight against climate change. Moon’s concurrent ‘Digital New Deal’ and ‘Human New Deal’ also significantly increased government investment into human resources and expanding the social safety net.

Moon’s suite of ‘New Deals’ undoubtedly helped orientate the Korean economy to a green and equitable recovery. Yet the long-term nature of these economic strategies means the results will be near impossible to measure until well after his departure from the national scene. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as other structural issues such as housing affordability, continue to hamper any hopes for a swift economic bounce-back.

Relations with North Korea  

When it came to North Korea, the odds were strongly against Moon from the start. Moon’s entry into the Presidential Blue House was marked by a series of provocative weapons tests by the North’s young, assertive leader, Kim Jong-Un. This included the alleged test of a hydrogen bomb – the first time any nuclear powered weapon was tested on the Korean peninsula. In response, President Donald Trump dispatched a U.S. Navy Carrier Group and threatened “fire and fury” on the North with his “big red button”.

Yet President Moon did the unthinkable, he began a process of reconciliation. Kicking off with an invitation to Kim to the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, Moon oversaw the greatest decline of tensions on the peninsula since the end of the Korean War. Over the next 18 months, diplomacy ramped up with Moon and Kim meeting on two separate occasions – culminating in the 2018 Summit between President Trump and Kim in Singapore. A signing of a peace treaty between the two nations seemed all but certain.

Things would spectacularly implode.

The follow up Hanoi Summit between Trump and Kim in 2019 ended before it began. After fuzzy words of reconciliation in Singapore, the interests and demands of both parties seemed far too divergent to agree upon in Hanoi. Matters only got worse. In June 2020, North Korea unexpectedly blew up an inter-Korean liaison office in the border town of Kaesong. It quickly resumed short-range missile tests, and in January 2022, Kim ordered the largest set of missile launches since 2017.

Meanwhile, the Moon administration continued its manic attempts to patch-up relations before the end of his presidential term. For this, Moon has paid a heavy political price. Opposition leaders, and even those within his own party, are now publicly deriding Moon’s near desperate pursuit of peace – a pursuit which seems to have only emboldened the Northern regime. At the same time, South Korea’s underdeveloped relations with the broader Indo-Pacific were thrown into the spotlight. Relations with Japan deteriorated significantly and the emergence of the Quad highlighted the ROK’s place at the periphery of growing efforts to balance China’s power.     

Tragically, Moon’s greatest legacy of achieving lasting peace on the peninsula seems all but dead – and the world is poorer for it.

The Future of South Korea

On March 9, South Korea will elect a new president to succeed the Moon administration. However, unlike Moon who took office with a relatively clean track record, both parties’ frontrunners come to the fore with a slew of corruption allegations.

Similar to Moon, Lee Jae-Myung, the candidate of the ruling Democratic Party, built his career as a lawyer. But his background has been spotted by scandal. This includes the alleged abuse of power by Lee and his wife, Kim Hye-Gyeong, during his time as provincial governor of Gyeonggi province, and for his downplaying of a brutal murder as “mere dating violence” during his time as a criminal defence attorney. Lee has also been implicated in the aforementioned real-estate scandal which unfolded last year.  

Nevertheless, Lee hopes to come to power on a platform which continues to enhance (but not replicate) Moon’s domestic policies. In particular, Lee is promising three major reforms: universal basic income, a land tax, and a carbon tax. In a country where social benefits and progressive taxation have always taken a backseat to the pursuit of economic growth, Lee’s platform is shaping to be the most progressive ever taken by an establishment candidate.

His competitor, Yoon Seok-youl, the candidate of the conservative People Power Party, has also been marked by scandal. Youl and his wife, Kim Keon-hee, have been mired in allegations of stock price rigging with an imported car dealer, and has recently been implicated in other development scandals. Hoping to look past the allegations, Yoon comes to the table with a vague (and perhaps ironic) platform of restoring “the rule of law” and reducing the economic regulations implemented by the Moon administration.

While both candidates have been heavy on mudslinging and light on domestic policy, perhaps the most divergent platform is that of foreign policy.

Under the Moon administration, Korea upheld a policy of strategic ambiguity – careful not to choose clear sides in the ongoing U.S.-China rivalry. Lee hopes to continue this strategic ambiguity by playing friendly to both China and the U.S., hoping to keep Korea’s position relatively neutral. He has also downplayed (but not ruled out) a possible reproachment with Japan, claiming that the nation will be hard to be trusted in ongoing strategic matters.

Unlike his opponent, Yoon has pledged to rebuild diplomatic and economic ties with Japan. He has also taken a firmer stance on North Korea, expressing his openness for the U.S. to house nuclear weapons in South Korea, and of expanding THAAD missile deployments. More crucially for those in Canberra and Washington, Yoon has pledged to abandon Moon’s ‘strategic ambiguity’ and take a more active position in multilateral partnerships such as the Quad + 1 security dialogue.

Perhaps following Australia’s lead, both candidates also seem convinced of the utility of Korea acquiring its own nuclear powered submarines, a development which would be met with unease in Tokyo and outright rage in Pyeongyang. For the first time in decades, Korea’s elections will have meaningful geopolitical impacts, including for Australia. A priority for Canberra must be to build as much substance as possible into the new Comprehensive Strategic Partnership signed during Moon’s state visit in 2021.

Particularly on the economic front, Australia’s natural resource and rare earth potential will be vital in powering Korea’s green transition and mineral-hungry tech sector. And as Korea also seeks to expand its strategic vision, Australia must encourage the new presidency to take a more active role in the region, especially in the Pacific and Southeast Asia – a region where China seems to be ramping up its own diplomatic and economic offensive. Ultimately, we must begin to recognise the ‘comprehensive’ aspect of our new strategic partnership – not merely the economic.

The Gwanghwamun President and the Future of South Korea

President Moon Jae-In came to power on a wave of optimism, he now leaves behind a legacy beset with staggering contradictions. He worked hard to implement progressive policies and reduce corruption, but his administration has been plagued by recurring scandals itself. He led a world-leading COVID-19 containment strategy, but was caught on the backfoot in implementing a post-COVID recovery. He ushered in a new era of North-South dialogue, yet was left watching from the sidelines as his efforts spectacularly fell apart.

The new generation of political leadership must grapple with this complex legacy and chart a new way forward for Korea. Yet both candidates are being plagued by their own shadows. This has led them to focus more on mudslinging their opponent rather than building a comprehensive plan for national recovery. These shadows may yet continue to torment whoever enters into power, distracting any future administration from the pressing tasks at hand.

Chris Khatouki is an Associate at Asia Society Australia and a Graduate Fellow of the Korea Foundation.