After President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea briefly imposed martial law in December, many young people in the country took to the streets for the first time. They spent months calling for his removal as they sang protest anthems and attended marches in the freezing cold holding K-pop light sticks and custom-made flags.
When Mr. Yoon was later impeached and removed from office, young protesters felt that their work had paid off. But as Election Day approached, some of them felt disenchanted by the candidates on the ballot.
“My one thought on this election is disgust,” said An Ye-young, 20, a college student. She joined the demonstrations again Mr. Yoon in December, her first time as a protester.
“It’s a feast with nothing to eat,” she said, speaking over the weekend after casting her ballot early.
The race was called on Wednesday for Lee Jae-myung, a centrist with South Korea’s Democratic Party. To many Koreans, Mr. Lee’s victory was more a rebuke of Mr. Yoon than a sign of support for his own policies.
Especially for many young South Koreans, neither Mr. Lee nor his opponent, Kim Moon-soo, seemed like they would address their key issues: youth unemployment, pension reform, and discrimination and abuse against women.
Young people in South Korea face a tough job market. The unemployment rate among people 15 to 29 rose to a four-year high of 6.8 percent in the first quarter of this year.
South Korea’s low birthrate has also fueled concerns that its $800 billion-plus national pension fund could be depleted if a growing number of people depend on it while contributions dwindle.
And the country has some of highest rates of gender-based discrimination in the developed world, along with rampant online sexual abuse that domestic legislation has done little to stop. Many South Korean women want the country made safer and fairer for them, but they say their concerns take a back seat in elections, including this one.
That didn’t mean young South Koreans were staying home on Tuesday, though. Several young protesters said in recent interviews that they had planned to vote against Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party in an effort to stop it from regaining power.
For months after Mr. Yoon’s failed martial law declaration, some in the party defended him by trying to block his impeachment, prevent his arrest and urge the Constitutional Court to reject a motion to end his term. Young people haven’t forgotten.
Kim Yoon-ji, 24, said she wished the presidential candidates had promoted policies to protect women. She cited government data showing that most victims of violent crimes in South Korea were female.
Mr. Lee, the new president, has often hesitated to directly address women’s issues. Policies that seek to help women are unpopular among many young South Korean men who view such legislation as discriminatory against them.
But Ms. Kim, who attended her first political protest last year, said she saw a vote for Mr. Lee as a vote against the People Power Party.
“The party that caused the martial law situation can’t regain power again,” she said.
Goh Hee-sung, another new protester, said he had refused to vote for Mr. Lee out of fear that electing him would give too much power to his Democratic Party, which already controls the country’s legislature.
But even though Mr. Goh, 24, voted for Mr. Yoon in the 2022 presidential election, he said that he couldn’t bring himself to support the party’s candidate in this election, Mr. Kim. He said he didn’t want to support the party that had defended Mr. Yoon after his martial law declaration.
So Mr. Goh voted for a third-party candidate, Lee Jun-seok of the conservative Reform Party. He said he hoped Mr. Lee, the youngest on the ballot at 40, would bring the changes he felt were necessary.
“The root of the problem is the deeply entrenched two-party politics,” Mr. Goh added.
Lee Suyoon, 21, who voted for Lee Jae-myung in 2022 and joined anti-Yoon demonstrations in December, said she had felt similarly torn.
“After seeing the candidates’ campaign promises and the presidential debate,” she said, “there is no candidate who perfectly satisfies what I want in a president.”
June 3, 2025
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An earlier version of this article misstated what An Ye-young does. She is a college student, not preparing for the college entrance exam.
