Once Seen as Divisive, South Korea’s New Leader Tries for Charming

When President Lee Jae Myung visited Sancheong, a county in southern South Korea where 14 people were killed in floods and landslides last month, he did something that his unpopular predecessor had refused to do: meet with victims after deadly disasters.

“I am sorry,” Mr. Lee said to villagers.

“No sir, it was nature at work,” one of them responded. “Even the president couldn’t have done anything.”

Such small yet repeated ​episodes of the president interacting with people, captured by TV cameras, ​have resonated throughout South Korea since Mr. Lee took office in early June. His appearance of being accessible and a listener, honed when he was a mayor and a provincial governor, is a tactic that is working well for him as president, too. It is a contrast with Yoon Suk Yeol, his conservative rival who was impeached and ousted after declaring martial law.

Mr. Lee’s human touch has helped him launch his new administration with strong approval ratings, only weeks after an election in which many South Koreans expressed deep suspicions about him. When Mr. Lee was the opposition leader, he was blamed along with Mr. Yoon for South Korea’s deep political polarization, which had paralyzed the government: Mr. Lee was as confrontational toward Mr. Yoon as Mr. Yoon was dismissive of Mr. Lee.

As president, Mr. Lee has adopted a more approachable style in an effort to mend a country that he has said was on the verge of civil war. He pledged greater national unity when he took office, even as the police and prosecutors went after his vanquished political enemies.

But the real tests for Mr. Lee lie ahead and have no near-term solutions. They include a rapidly aging population, a slowing economy and the rise of right-wing radicalism at home. Internationally, he must deal with a demanding President Trump and tensions with North Korea.

Late last month, Mr. Lee removed a cloud of uncertainty over the country’s export-driven economy when his government struck a trade deal to reduce Mr. Trump’s tariffs on South Korean products to 15 percent. In one survey, nearly 64 percent of the respondents reacted positively to the deal.

A Different Approach

​While in office, Mr. Yoon had refused to meet families who had lost ​children in a Halloween 2022 crowd crush in Seoul that killed nearly 160 people, mostly young, which they blamed on government negligence. ​His bodyguards forcibly removed critics who shouted at him during public events.​ Mr. Yoon called the opposition-dominant National Assembly “a den of criminals” and tried to silence them by ​military force during his short-lived imposition of martial law in December.

Mr. Lee has taken a more pragmatic approach with the public and with governance — even as special counsels appointed by him go after Mr. Yoon, his wife, Kim Keon Hee, and their associates for criminal charges, including corruption. (Mr. Yoon was already on trial on insurrection charges stemming from his martial law.)

Mr. Lee had his first lunch as president with opposition leaders at the National Assembly, a stark departure from Mr. Yoon, who had repeatedly ignored calls for meetings from Mr. Lee when their roles were reversed.

“We mix cement, gravel, sand and water to make concrete,” Mr. Lee said last month during his first presidential news conference, stressing the importance of cooperating with people with different political views.

For the families, what mattered as much was the invitation to a meeting itself.

“We ha​d repeatedly begged the president to meet and hear us just once,” said Song Hae-jin, one of the parents who lost children in the crowd crush, referring to Mr. Yoon. “But we only got a long and cold silence.”

Mr. Lee won the election with a little over 49 percent of the vote.​ But in a testament to the political divide, Kim Moon-soo,​ the candidate of Mr. Yoon’s former party, won 41 percent despite his relative obscurity. One survey showed that most of those who voted for Mr. Kim did so not because they supported him, but because they did not want Mr. Lee elected.

Before he became president, Mr. Lee had faced the prospect of several criminal trials, including violating election laws and inducing someone to commit perjury, which are on hold now with him in office.

Conservative South Koreans feared that Mr. Lee’s progressive agenda would imperil the country’s alliance with the United States. Mr. Lee has said he wants to strengthen ties with Washington while restarting dialogue with North Korea and improving relations with China, a tricky balancing act.

So far, Mr. Lee’s leadership has appealed the most to workers, whom he seems to empathize with the best. He used to be a teenage sweatshop worker before rising in politics.

Last month, he visited a company outside Seoul that had seen the deaths of three workers in industrial accidents at its bread-making factories since 2022. When he arrived, he encountered a picket line of workers holding signs that said: “Mr. President, please help. We don’t want to die while making bread.”

Inside, Mr. Lee, whose father and brother once worked in bread factories, launched a salvo of questions at the factory managers, forcing them to admit that many workers worked 12-hour night shifts for four straight days a week, from 7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. Two of the fatal accidents happened early in the morning when workers were tired.

The company later said it would stop its employees from working more than eight hours on a night shift. But Mr. Lee offered no solution to the low wages that compelled the workers to work long hours in the first place, leading his critics to claim that he had more style than substance.

Mr. Lee learned this week how fluid his approval rating could be when it dipped below 60 percent.

For weeks, he has railed against stock market crimes, reminding people of the criminal charge of stock manipulation that has been brought against Mr. Yoon’s wife. But this month, a leader of his own Democratic Party was accused of illegal stock trading using sensitive information he gained as a senior member of a presidential advisory group.

“If this is true, it will expose the duplicity of the Lee Jae Myung government,” said Kim Dong-won, an opposition spokesman.

Mr. Lee has so far proved himself “an efficient administrator” by picking low-hanging fruits, but has yet to demonstrate his political leadership in dealing with Mr. Trump, said Shang E. Ha, a professor of political science at Sogang University in Seoul.

Mr. Trump, the leader of South Korea’s only military ally, has a list of demands for the country: that it pay more for U.S. troops based on its soil; increase its own military spending; buy more American weapons; and cooperate with the United States in containing China.

Mr. Trump has invited Mr. Lee to the White House for their first meeting on Aug. 25. In South Korea, still technically at war with North Korea, the way its leader manages the alliance with Washington, as well as the threat from the North, quickly rubs off on his domestic standing.

“With the tariff deal, he cleared his first major hurdle,” said Lee Byong-chul, an analyst at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul. “But there are more ahead.”