Outspoken liberal leader Lee elected South Korea's president, closing period of political tumult

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Lee Jae-myung, who rose from childhood poverty to become South Korea’s leading liberal politician vowing to fight inequality and corruption, will become the country's next president on Wednesday after an election that closed one of the most turbulent chapters in the young democracy.

Lee, 60, the candidate of the liberal opposition Democratic Party, is taking office for a full, single five-year term, succeeding Yoon Suk Yeol, a conservative who was felled over his stunning yet brief imposition of martial law in December.

It was unclear whether Lee’s election would cause any major, immediate shift in South Korea’s foreign policy. Lee, previously accused by critics of tilting toward China and North Korea and away from the U.S. and Japan, has repeatedly stressed South Korea's alliance with the U.S. as the foundation of its foreign policy.

The toughest external challenges awaiting Lee are U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policy and North Korea’s advancing nuclear program. But experts earlier said whoever becomes president can't do much to secure major progress in South Korea’s favor on those issues.

As of 3:45 a.m. Wednesday, with over 99% of the votes counted, Lee obtained 49.3% of the votes cast in Tuesday's early election, while main conservative contender Kim Moon Soo trailed with 41.3% — a gap that was impossible to overcome mathematically.

Preelection surveys have long suggested Lee appeared headed for an easy win, riding on deep public frustration over the conservatives in the wake of Yoon’s martial law debacle.

Even before Lee’s win was formally declared, Kim conceded, telling journalists that he “humbly accepts the people’s choice,” and congratulated Lee.

Earlier, Lee appeared before thousands of cheering supporters on Seoul's streets. He didn't formally claim victory, but reiterated his major policy goals, such as revitalizing the economy, promoting peace with North Korea and easing a domestic divide.

“Let us move forward with hope and make a fresh start from this moment on,” he said. “Though we may have clashed for some time, even those who did not support us are still our fellow citizens of the Republic of Korea.”

Lee, who served as governor of Gyeonggi province and mayor of Seongnam city, has been a highly divisive figure in politics for years.

As a former child laborer known for his inspirational rags-to-riches story, Lee came to fame through biting criticism of the country’s conservative establishment and calls to build a more assertive South Korea in foreign policy. That rhetoric has given him an image as someone who can institute sweeping reforms and fix the country’s deep-seated economic inequality and corruption.

His critics view him as a dangerous populist who relies on political division and backpedals on promises too easily.

On foreign policy, Lee has vowed to pursue pragmatic diplomacy. He has promised to develop the alliance with the U.S. and solidify a trilateral Seoul-Washington-Tokyo partnership, a stance that isn't much different from the position held by South Korea’s conservatives.

“We’ll have to now see if the pressures of office will cause Lee Jae-myung to govern from the center — at least when it comes to matters of national security and the alliance with the United States,” said Ankit Panda, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Lee said that he would pursue better ties with North Korea, but acknowledged that it would be “very difficult” to hold a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un anytime soon. This signals Lee won't likely initiate any drastic steps meant to improve relations with North Korea.

Experts say there aren’t many diplomatic options for South Korea as it tries to address Trump’s tariff hikes and calls for South Korea to pay more for the cost of the U.S. military presence, as well as North Korea’s headlong pursuit of nuclear weapons. Experts say that has made both Lee and other candidates avoid unveiling ambitious foreign policy goals.

Paik Wooyeal, a professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University, said that foreign policy strategists for Lee understand there isn’t much South Korea can do to bring about a denuclearization of North Korea. Paik said Lee also doesn’t share the Korean nationalistic zeal held by ex-liberal President Moon Jae-in, who met Kim Jong Un three times during his 2017-22 term.

There are still hopes that diplomacy between the U.S. and North Korea could resume, with Trump repeatedly expressing his intent to reach out to Kim Jong Un. Lee has said that he would support Trump's outreach.

“South Korea and the United States may be better aligned on engaging North Korea under the current constellation of leadership in both countries,” Panda said. “The two sides should begin consultations soon to ensure they’re aligned on their goals.”

Lee’s government still could become engaged in “a little bit of friction” with the Trump administration, said Chung Jin-young, a former dean of the Graduate School of Pan-Pacific International Studies at South Korea’s Kyung Hee University.

Chung predicted Lee still won’t be able to pursue overly drastic steps on foreign policy and security, given the country’s foreign exchange and financial markets are vulnerable to such changes.

Lee has preached patience over Trump’s tariff policy, arguing it would be a mistake to rush negotiations in pursuit of an early agreement with Washington.

On Monday, South Korean trade officials held an emergency meeting to discuss a response to Trump’s announcement that the U.S. will raise tariffs on steel and aluminum products to 50% beginning Wednesday. South Korea’s central bank last week sharply lowered its 2025 growth outlook to 0.8%, citing the potential impact of Trump’s tariff hikes and weak domestic demand worsened by the political turmoil of past months.

The election serves as another defining moment in the country’s resilient democracy, but observers worry a worsened domestic divide could pose a big political burden on the new president.

The past six months saw large crowds of people rallying to either denounce or support Yoon, while a leadership vacuum caused by Yoon’s impeachment and ensuing formal dismissal rattled the country’s high-level diplomatic activities and financial markets.

Lee has promised to heal the national split, but his vow to thoroughly hold those involved in Yoon's martial law stunt accountable has sparked concerns that he would use investigations to launch political retaliations against his opponents.

“The next question is just how Lee will represent and protect South Korea’s democracy,” said Soo Kim, a former CIA Korea analyst and geopolitical risk consultant.

“Will South Korea’s politics still remain focused on retribution, or will Seoul finally look beyond this and work constructively and progressively for the country’s best long-term democratic interests?” she said. “It’s a tall order for Lee.”

South Korea's Democratic Party's presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung, gestures as his supporters gather outside of the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

South Korea's Democratic Party's presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung, gestures as he speaks to supporters outside of the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Kim Moon Soo, presidential candidate with the People Power Party's, holds a presidential election campaign rally in Seoul, South Korea, late Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A man casts his vote with a baby for presidential election at a polling station in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 3, 2025.(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol casts his vote for the presidential election at a polling station in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (Korea Pool/Yonhap via AP)

Former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, right, and former first lady Kim Keon-Hee arrive to cast their votes for the presidential election at a polling station in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (Shin Hyun-woo/Yonhap via AP)

Supporters of South Korea's Democratic Party's presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung, react outside the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Members of the Democratic Party of Korea watch television coverage of the exit polls for the presidential election at the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday June 3, 2025. (Jung Yeon-je/Pool via AP)

National Election Commission officials sort out ballots for counting at the presidential election in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

National Election Commission officials sort out ballots for counting at the presidential election in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Supporters of South Korea's Democratic Party's presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung, react outside the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korea's Democratic Party's presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung, center, and his wife Kim Hea Kyung, right, greet supporters and residents as they leave from a home in Incheon, South Korea, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (Choi Jae-gu/Yonhap via AP)

South Korea's Democratic Party's presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung, center, and his wife Kim Hea Kyung, right, greet supporters and residents as they leave from a home in Incheon, South Korea, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (Choi Jae-gu/Yonhap via AP)

Supporters of South Korea's Democratic Party's presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung, react outside of the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

National Election Commission officials sort out ballots for counting at the presidential election in Seoul, South Korea,Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Supporters of South Korea Democratic Party's presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung react outside the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Lawmakers of the People Power Party watch television coverage of the exit polls for the presidential election at the National assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday June 3, 2025. (Song Kyung Seok/Pool via AP)

A woman casts her vote for the presidential election at a polling station in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A woman casts her vote for the presidential election at a polling station in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Supporters of South Korea's Democratic Party's presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung, cheer during a presidential election campaign in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

South Korea's Democratic Party's presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung, arrives for a presidential election campaign in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Kim Moon Soo, presidential candidate with the People Power Party, center, bows before supporters attending his election campaign rally in Seoul, South Korea, late Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Kim Moon Soo, presidential candidate with the People Power Party, center, holds a presidential election campaign rally alongside his party members in Seoul, South Korea, late Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Kim Moon Soo, presidential candidate with the People Power Party, holds an election campaign rally in Seoul, South Korea, late Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Supporters of Kim Moon Soo, presidential candidate with the People Power Party, attend his campaign rally in Seoul, South Korea, late Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Supporters of Kim Moon Soo, presidential candidate with the People Power Party, perform during his election campaign rally in Seoul, South Korea, late Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV made a historic apology on Monday for the Holy See's role in legitimizing slavery and for having failed to condemn it for centuries, calling the Vatican’s record a “wound in Christian memory.”

Past popes have apologized for Christians’ involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But no pope had ever publicly acknowledged, much less apologized for, the role that past popes played in giving European sovereigns explicit authority to subjugate and enslave “infidels.”

History’s first U.S.-born pope, whose family history includes both enslaved people and slave owners, delivered the apology in his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” (Magnificent Humanity), which was released Monday.

The sweeping manifesto is about safeguarding humanity in an era of increasing reliance on artificial intelligence. Leo raised the slave trade in relation to what he called the new forms of slavery and colonialism that the digital revolution is fueling.

Black American Catholics, activists and scholars have long called for the Holy See to atone for its role in the colonial-era trade in human beings, beyond generic apologies for the involvement of individual Christians.

“It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord,” Leo wrote. “For this, in the name of the church, I sincerely ask for pardon.”

Shannen Dee Williams, historian at the University of Dayton and author of the 2022 history of American Black Catholic nuns, “Subversive Habits,” welcomed the apology as a "monumental step toward the kind of essential truth-telling and reparation that many Catholics have prayed and worked to witness.”

“The Catholic Church has never been an innocent bystander in the history of white supremacy," said Williams. “Black Catholics have waited a long time to hear the Vatican speak honestly about the church’s leading roles in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery--and thus by extension the enduring systems of anti-Black racism in the world today.”

The Vatican has insisted that it always upheld the dignity of all human beings as children of God. But a series of 15th-century directives from the Vatican authorized Portuguese sovereigns to conquer Africa and the Americas and enslave non-Christians.

In 1452, for example, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, which gave the Portuguese king and his successors the right “to invade, conquer, fight and subjugate” and take all possessions — including land — of “Saracens, and pagans, and other infidels, and enemies of the name of Christ” anywhere.

The bull also gave the Portuguese permission “to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”

That bull and another issued three years later, Romanus Pontifex, formed the basis of the Doctrine of Discovery, the theory that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of land in Africa and the Americas.

Nicholas V’s permissions to the Portuguese were confirmed or renewed by Pope Callixtus III in 1456, Pope Sixtus IV in 1481 and Pope Leo X in 1514, according to the Rev. Christopher J. Kellerman, a Jesuit priest and author of “All Oppression Shall Cease: A History of Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Catholic Church.”

Spanish kings received the rights for the Americas.

In 2023, the Vatican formally repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery, but it never formally rescinded, abrogated or rejected the bulls themselves. The Vatican insists that a later bull, Sublimis Deus in 1537, reaffirmed that Indigenous peoples shouldn’t be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, and weren't to be enslaved.

In his encyclical, Leo recalled that his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, was the first pope to explicitly condemn slavery in 1888, long after many countries had abolished it. Before that, in antiquity and the Middle Ages, church institutions and even popes — Gregory the Great — had slaves, Kellerman said.

In acknowledging the 15th century papal bulls, Leo wrote in his encyclical: “Already in the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, responding to the requests of sovereigns, intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, including the enslavement of ‘infidels.’”

Leo said it wasn't possible to judge the morality of the decisions with today’s standards.

“Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the church came to denounce the scourge of slavery,” he said.

The pope said that the church has long affirmed the dignity of every human being as the basis of its doctrine, “even if it took eighteen centuries for its full incompatibility with slavery to be explicitly recognized.”

“This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached,” he said.

Leo said that the church must firmly condemn all forms of trafficking related to the digital technological revolution “if we want to avoid the need to ask for pardon again in the future for having failed to respect the treasure of human dignity that is required by our faith.”

Anthea Butler, senior fellow at the Koch History Center, Oxford University, said Leo needed to acknowledge and atone for the church's complicity in historic slavery if he wanted to credibly “speak to the current issues of technological enslavement.”

“For descendants of enslaved persons, this is once again a much needed apology from the pope,” said Butler, who is Black.

Kellerman, the scholar, welcomed Leo’s apology but said more needs to be done to further acknowledge how the Catholic Church legitimized and expanded slavery.

“Pope Leo has strengthened the moral credibility of the church with this admission and apology today,” he told The Associated Press. “Hopefully a future document will explain in more detail the church’s involvement with slaveholding. As a scholar I have some quibbles with the wording, but this is a truly remarkable moment.”

During a 1985 visit to Cameroon, St. John Paul II asked forgiveness of Africans for the slave trade on behalf of Christians who participated in it, but not the popes. In a 1992 visit to Goree Island, Senegal, which was the largest slave-trading center in West Africa, he denounced the injustice of slavery and called it a “tragedy of a civilization that called itself Christian.”

According to genealogical research published by Henry Louis Gates Jr., 17 of Leo’s American ancestors were Black, listed in census records as mulatto, Black, Creole or a free person of color. His family tree includes slaveholders and enslaved people, Gates wrote in The New York Times.

During a visit to Angola last month, Leo prayed at a Catholic shrine at the site of an important hub of the African slave trade during Portugal’s colonial rule. While at the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima, Leo recalled the “sorrow and great suffering” Angolans endured for centuries, but he didn’t refer specifically to slavery.

Winfield reported from Middletown, Connecticut.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Pope Leo XIV speaks during the presentation of his first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Leo XIV listens to Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, right, during the presentation of Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Leo XIV, left, attends the presentation of his first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Leo XIV, left, arrives with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin for the presentation of his first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, right, talks to theologian Leocadie Lushombo during the presentation of his first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Leo XIV holds the pastoral staff as he celebrates the Pentecost Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Sunday, May 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)