Lee Jun-seok
Lee Jun-seok, or Andy Lee, (; born 31 March 1985) is a South Korean politician currently serving as the leader of the People Power Party, South Korea's ruling party. In June 2021, the conservative Party voted to select Lee Jun-seok as its leader, making the Harvard graduate the youngest person to control the post for the main conservative bloc. Previously, he served as one of the 11-member Grand National Party’s (later renamed Saenuri Party) Executive Leadership Council, being the youngest member ever to sit on the Council that was given the power to  overhaul the Party. Lee graduated from Seoul Science High School and holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and computer science from Harvard University. One of the “Park Geun-Hye kids”, he was drawn into politics by Park in 2011 when she was head of the Saenuri Party. As a relatively young politician, he served as a member of the emergency response committee and as the leader of the innovation committee until 2016. After the impeachment of Park in 2016, he left the Saenuri Party and joined the minor centre-right conservative Bareun Party, serving as its Supreme Council Member . The faction later merged with the majority right-wing conservative Party to form the current People Power Party. Biography. Early life. On 31 March 1985, Jun-Seok Lee was born at Hanyang University Hospital in Seongdong-gu, Seoul, between his father, Su-Wol Lee, previous head of global institutional sales team at Shinhan Bank, and Hyang-Ja Kim, his mother who was a teacher at Andong Girls' High School. During his adolescent years, he lived in a semi-basement house in Sanggye-dong, an impoverished neighbourhood where the housing price was the cheapest. A few years later, his family eventually  moved onto a middle-class district Hanshin Village in Sanggye-dong and lived there for ten years. After his father was assigned overseas, he stayed in Singapore and Indonesia for one year. When he returned to Korea, he settled in Mok-dong and graduated from Wolchon Middle School. After graduating from Middle School, he mainly lived in a dormitory due to academic reasons. Now he returned to Sanggye-dong after 20 years. During his time at Seoul Science High School, Lee Jun-Seok served as the vice president of the student council. In March 2003, he was accepted at KAIST  as a Math major but withdrew admission right after receiving his Harvard acceptance letter and full-ride presidential science scholarship. After graduating from Harvard University in 2007, Lee Jun Seok returned to Korea to perform military duties working as a software developer (alternative military service as an industrial technical personnel) at ‘Innotive’, an image browsing software startup, a subsidiary of Nexon. While on the duty, Lee Jun Seok established a non-profit organization called Edushare ‘Society of Sharing Education’ and became its acting representative. After completing his military obligation, Lee Jun Seok prepared to start his own venture. He received  funding from the venture startup program backed by the SME (Small & Medium Enterprise) Ministry on 5 August 2011 and founded Classe Studio: an ed-tech startup that developed personalized tutoring software and workplace training applications. Political career. Lee Jun Seok had an interview with Park Geun-Hye, the head of Grand National Party’s emergency response committee, who visited ‘Edushare’ in November 2011 for 2 hours. Also, he was introduced as a 「venture entrepreneur in his 20s who graduated from Harvard University」 on 29 December. Then, Lee Jun Seok was recruited to the emergency response committee of the Grand National  Party. After being appointed as a member of the emergency response committee, Lee Jun Seok attracted people's attention with his eloquence in debate. He increased his public recognition by appearing on various TV Shows. Then, Lee Jun Seok ran for the election of members of the National Assembly in 2016 in Sanggyeo-dong against Ahn Cheol-Su (the running candidate for Presidential primary), but eventually ended up losing. Lee Jun Seok was nicknamed as ‘Park Geun-Hye Kid’, but he stood up for the impeachment of President Park Geun-Hye since October 2016. Lee Jun Seok parted ways with  Saenuri Party and established a new political party, named Baruen Party with Yoo Seong-min. In 2018, Lee Jun Seok ran for the election of members of the National Assembly, but he lost the election. Before the 21st election of members of the National Assembly, Lee Jun Seok was appointed as a youth supreme representative in Future Unification Party. After seeing a taxi driver setting fire to himself in the National Assembly, Lee acquired a taxi driver license and worked as a taxi driver for 12 hours daily for two months in March and April of the year 2019. Even  though Lee Jun Seok never won an election, he lived as a political commentator, media host for 10 years, appearing on both entertainment and political TV Shows. In 2021, Lee Jun Seok ran for the election for selecting the representative of the People Power Party. He became popular among the 20s and 30s due to his opposing stance against political correctness such as "faux feminism," introducing reforms supporting meritocracy rather than outright equality of outcome. Lee Jun Seok lost the partial election in party member vote by candidate, Na Kyung-won, but won the main election, recording 43.82 percent (93,390  votes), which included votes from Public Opinion Poll. As a result, Lee Jun Seok was elected as the leader of the People Power Party and he is the youngest to represent the main conservative bloc in Korean political history. He also has a negative stance on affirmative action. He is rated as having Idaenam as his main support. Lee's conflict with Yoon. On November 29th, 2021, Lee posted a facebook post saying "If that is the case, this is it," with another post showing a text emoji of a smiling face and a thumbs-down gesture, and has refused  to answer on the phone and has been avoiding the press until December 3rd.The move is considered to be a protest against Yoon Seok-youl ignoring him as leader of the party. The feud was resolved by their meeting in Ulsan in December 3rd. Ethics Investigations. On 22 April 2022, the People Power Party opened an ethics violation complaint against leader Lee Jun-seok for an allegation of sexual bribery in 2013. Lee denies the allegation and filed a lawsuit against the Youtube Channel that made the allegation. Lee is the first chairman in the history of the country ’s main conservative party to be referred to the ethics committee for review while still in office. Depending on the fact finding mission from the Party, the types of disciplinary action range from a warning to expulsion from the party. Criticism. He is considered a somewhat moderate conservative within the PPP, but he has been controversial for his tough stance on some issues. He is mainly supported by young men who are negative about feminism, and he said feminism has a somewhat totalitarian inclination. Na Kyung-won, a leading female politician in the PPP, described Lee political line as "Trumpism ." Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic presidential contender in 2022, expressed concern about Lee Jun-seok's political popularity, saying, "It could lead to the emergence of far-right populism." South Korean liberal journalist Hankyoreh also compared Lee Joon-seok to Donald Trump.