From Factory to Presidential Palace: Lee Jae-myung, the Journey of a Korean Like No Other
Elected earlier this month as President of the Republic of South Korea, Lee Jae-myung has had an extraordinary career. A look back at the journey of a man shaped by adversity, who says he is driven by an unwavering desire for social justice.
“Miserable.” This is how Lee Jae-myung describes his childhood: “We filled our stomachs with spoiled fruit left at the market,” he says in his memoirs published last April . “I became disabled following a work accident that crushed my left wrist. At 16, faced with no prospects, I tried to end my life.” And he concludes the passage:
“At that time, there wasn't a single moment in my life when I wasn't in crisis.”
The seventh of nine children, he was officially born on December 22, 1964, although he was actually born in 1963: his birth, into an extremely poor family, had been registered late. He grew up in a slash-and-burn village near the city of Andong [in the east of the country].
His father left home when he was about ten years old, leaving his mother to raise the children alone. After elementary school, the family moved to Seongnam, not far from Seoul, but financial circumstances prevented the teenager from continuing his studies in middle school.
Instead, he worked in a rubber factory under a false identity to conceal his age. He was later employed by
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