President Lee Jae Myung speaks with officials and gives instructions while presiding over the 37th Cabinet meeting at the Blue House in Seoul on Aug. 25.JOINT PRESS CORPS
Choi Hoon
The author is a senior columnist at the JoongAng Ilbo.
About 15 months into his term, President Lee Jae Myung’s defining trait appears to be his focus on detail. At a Blue House meeting, Lee ordered that the government take action regarding school uniform prices, saying that uniforms cost 300,000 won ($215) when he was mayor of Seongnam but are now around 600,000 won, earning them a reputation as a “backbreaker” for parents. He suggested that producers form cooperatives to create jobs and use domestic materials to support the local industry.
Eight days later, government agencies met to discuss school uniform policy and agreed to survey their costs nationwide. For parents, the intervention was likely gratifying.
Messages are often shaped by memory and experience. School uniforms repeatedly appear in Lee’s diaries from his time as a teenage factory worker. He wrote that his adolescence was scarred by being unable to wear one. Though ordinary clothes were more practical, his longing was so strong that he bought a uniform for his university entrance ceremony.
As a result, as Seongnam mayor, Lee introduced free middle school uniforms, then expanded them across Gyeonggi when he became governor.
At Cabinet meetings, he has even grilled officials over randomized in-game items: What probabilities are disclosed? How much does each consumer lose? Can companies face criminal punishment or damages? Roughly 40 days after related discussions, game developer Nexon offered full refunds to customers for purchases made as part of its popular “MapleStory: Idle RPG.”
Lee has also questioned why farm huts cannot have toilets and why some gas stations charge 200 won more per liter. On illegal structures in national parks, he has asked why demolition should wait until 2028 and ordered their removal by next summer.
When Finance Minister Koo Yun-cheol reported that a grace period on heavier capital gains taxes for multiple-home owners would end, he said that it was “probably” their last chance to avoid the surcharge.
Lee focused on that word.
“You said ‘probably’ twice. Who will believe you if you say that this is probably the end?”
When Koo said that it was a habit, the president replied, “I told you not to say ‘probably.’ Don’t leave even a 0.1 percent chance, not even a pinhole.”
I asked AI to compare Lee’s micromanagement tendencies with those of Korea’s postdemocratization presidents. He ranked first with 84 points, versus 34 for Roh Moo-hyun and 63 for Lee Myung-bak.
That level of attention to detail has advantages. A former information minister under President Kim Dae-jung recalled that Kim created a Blue House task force to improve people’s “quality of life.” But because officials lacked a shared understanding of the phrase, ministers and working-level bureaucrats repeated the slogan until the initiative fizzled out.
Park Chung Hee, Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and China’s Deng Xiaoping were detail-oriented as well. Park, who kept a 1:750,000-scale map in his office, ordered that 50 meters (164 feet) on either side of the Gyeongbu Expressway remain clear and set a target for developing a domestically produced missile with a 200-kilometer (124.3-mile) range by 1975.
Lee Kuan Yew intervened in housing design and landscaping while pursuing universal public housing. His creed was an unemotional pragmatism free from ideology and focused on national development.
But the stronger the light, the darker the shadow. Park and Lee Kuan Yew’s hands-on leadership is inseparable from the label of dictatorship. A president has limited time and staff. Inspecting everything wastes enormous energy. If a leader supplies an imperial answer to every question, judgment, debate and advice among ministers, aides and experts inevitably tire.
Today’s world is a complex system with ever more variables. Unlike in Park or Lee Kuan Yew’s era, persuading citizens with competing interests has become a president’s key skill. That may explain why modern presidents are fortunate to leave even one or two achievements behind.
Four years from now, the Lee administration could be remembered for uniforms, game items and farm huts while its accomplishments fade. It is time for the government to focus on delivering one or two megaprojects.
Above all, the government should abandon a real estate tax policy that seems to treat many of the roughly 16 million people living in owner-occupied homes as potential speculation suspects. Lee Jae Myung began his presidency with 67 percent approval. Why did it fall to 38.9 percent last week?
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
