Lee Jae-myung post-impeachment Democratic Party government (South Korea)

Doctrine — stated goals and content

Centre-left Democratic Party government formed after the Constitutional Court's unanimous 4 April 2025 ruling removing Yoon Suk-yeol and the snap presidential election of 3 June 2025. Lee won ~49.4% of the vote against PPP's Kim Moon-soo (~41%) and Reform Party's Lee Jun-seok (~8%), the highest vote-share for a Korean president in a competitive race since democratisation. Core content as stated on inauguration: (i) universal basic-income pilots and a youth-dividend (청년배당) scaling out from Lee's Gyeonggi-province experiments (KRW 1 million/ year cash transfer to residents aged 24); (ii) chaebol moderation — multiple-derivative-action thresholds relaxed, cumulative voting mandates, commercial-code fiduciary-duty revision extending directors' duties to general shareholders rather than company-only (a decade-long DP priority repeatedly blocked under Yoon); (iii) rollback of Yoon-era corporate-tax cuts and real-estate deregulation, comprehensive real- estate tax (Jongbuse) restoration posture, financial-investment income tax reintroduction; (iv) emergency supplementary budget (KRW 30+ trillion) June-July 2025 covering livelihood-recovery coupons (KRW 250,000 per resident paid in local-currency tokens), SME rescue programmes, and flood-damage reconstruction; (v) inter-Korean engagement reset — suspension of loudspeaker broadcasts, restoration of military hotline, signals toward resumption of Kaesong-style economic dialogue while maintaining the Washington Declaration trilateral commitments; (vi) artificial-intelligence and advanced- industry package targeting KRW 100 trillion public-plus-private over five years, semiconductor and battery subsidy continuation from the K-Chips Act lineage; (vii) prosecution-service reform revival — narrowing of prosecutors' direct-investigation jurisdiction, revived CIO (Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials) empowerment, partial restoration of the Moon-era prosecution-police realignment. Proponents frame it as both a democratic restoration after the martial-law episode and a growth-inclusive pivot; critics frame it as a return to income-led-growth-era rigidities with new chaebol-governance costs.