Lee Jae-myung grew up not knowing his birthday. And this became symbol of struggle — and connection to ordinary voters
Liberal presidential frontrunner Rep. Lee Jae-myung's candidacy registration with the election authorities on Saturday showed that he was born on Dec. 12, 1964, and therefore he is officially now aged 60.
But his official date of birth is almost certainly wrong. Lee's recollection of his childhood memories suggests that he cannot have been born then. And Lee himself believes he is likely 61 years old, while his mother guessed he was born on either Dec. 7 or 8 of 1963.
Lee, the fifth son of a large family, was not registered at the time of his birth — not an uncommon practice at a time when infant mortality in South Korea was as high as around 70 per 1,000 births.
It wasn't until 1968, two years before his elementary school enrollment, that Lee and his mother learned that his birth certificate did not exist. As Lee tells it, his official birthday in 1964 was an auspicious day proposed by a fortuneteller when he was in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province, one that also followed a tradition of registering the date roughly a year after a baby's actual birth.
The fact that Lee has not been able to clearly confirm his birthday could be a testament to his childhood adversities, which his supporters say could resonate with "ordinary voters" ahead of the June 3 presidential election.
Lee's autobiographies also suggest that he moved to Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province after finishing elementary school in February 1976, but could not advance to middle school. His father told him to find work in a factory. As a teenage employee using a fake name, he often suffered late payment of wages, he recalled.
In his latest memoir, published in April, Lee wrote that he "had never worn a school uniform," and that he "attempted suicide" in 1978 after learning his left arm would not grow anymore due to a wrist fracture he sustained while working at a factory a year before.
But he recovered, eventually taking exams to enter college. After graduating from Chung-Ang University, he became a lawyer, and was elected as the mayor of Seongnam in 2010, before a stint as Gyeonggi Province governor and leader of the largest party in the National Assembly.
A Lee supporter present at the Democratic Party election campaign in Seoul on Wednesday told The Korea Herald that South Korea should elect a leader who has experience rising from poverty.
"We need a leader who knows the lives of ordinary people, a person who understands the minds of ordinary people, a person who knows what a true hardship is," said the woman, who identified herself as a 43-year-old surnamed Han.
“Not a person like a prosecutor,” added Han, who joined the Democratic Party a month after Yoon Suk Yeol — formerly prosecutor-general before elected as the president in 2022 — briefly imposed martial law on Dec. 3. Yoon was impeached two weeks later, and was ousted by the Constitutional Court in April. Lee was a lawyer.
During Lee's campaign rally in the southeastern region — a conservative stronghold — on Tuesday, Oh Jung-soo, a worker at a textile company in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province, told the crowd, "You might have seen candidates visiting traditional markets and trying some tteokbokggi during campaigning season, pretending to understand the lives of an ordinary citizen."
"But Lee is different. His life as a teenage factory worker in the past is proof that Lee ... understands the reality, joy and sorrow of the workers and ordinary people, better than any other (candidates)," Oh added.
Lee's election opponent, Kim Moon-soo, also worked in a factory, but only after being expelled from Seoul National University for participating in a pro-democracy student movement.
Another man named Yoon Jong-myung, a Democratic Party member who said he recently defected after holding conservative party membership for decades, said onstage in Daegu that Lee was someone he could believe in, pointing to Lee's past history of passing high-school equivalency exams in 1980 while working at factories.
"As you all know, (Lee) was a factory worker. He had no time to study, but he endured (the reality)," he said.
Experts, however, downplayed the possibility that Lee's biography could have a big impact on the South Korean voters between now and the June 3 election, because the story of Lee — who is now in his third presidential bid — is already known to many South Korean voters.
"Those who appreciate that part of his biography are likely to already support him anyway," said Mason Richey, professor of international politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.
Another expert echoed Richey, saying it is difficult for the average Korean to connect a candidate to a "working-class background," given that any candidate would have left that background far behind.
"Background stories are less influential than performance, capability and the transactional calculation of what the voter stands to gain," said Jeffrey Robertson, associate professor of diplomatic studies at Yonsei University.
consnow@heraldcorp.com
