South Korea

Politics

Why young women, once Lee's strongest base, are turning away

Published Aug. 6, 2026, 4:39 p.m. KST

President Lee Jae Myung speaks during a senior presidential secretaries' meeting at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on Thursday. Joint Press Corps

Lee, a 32-year-old office worker in Seoul, spent years working and saving for one goal: buying her own apartment with a mortgage. She had finally reached that point when the government cut the loan cap in half, from 600 million won to 300 million won.

"I've been working hard and saving up money and now that I was finally about to buy my own home with a mortgage, getting the loan cap cut in half is a huge blow to me," she said.

She said she had voted for President Lee Jae Myung because of his hands-on administrative background as mayor of Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, and later as governor of Gyeonggi Province.

"I had high hopes for President Lee Jae Myung because he became president with hands-on administrative experience, unlike past leaders with a judiciary or legislative background," she said. "Watching the news about how he sold his own apartment in Seongnam makes it feel like double standards."

She no longer supports him.

Her experience is not an isolated case. Many young women in their 20s and 30s — a demographic that played a pivotal role in electing Lee — are withdrawing support for him and the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), driven by frustration over housing policy, prosecution reform, the absence of policies on women's issues, and internal party infighting.

Sense of betrayal

For voters like the 32-year-old office worker, the mortgage cap cut felt like a personal betrayal from a president they had trusted precisely because of his practical, ground-level experience. The policy hits especially hard in a country where homeownership has long been viewed as the primary path to financial security and where Seoul-area apartment prices have outpaced wage growth for years.

The sense of double standards has been sharpened by scrutiny of the sale of Lee's own Seongnam apartment, which was structured through a seller-financing arrangement. Under that arrangement, ownership was transferred to the buyer before the final payment was made in full, with a 1.77 billion won mortgage registered in the buyer's name to cover the outstanding balance.

Critics have questioned why the president, who has pushed to tighten mortgage access for ordinary buyers, used a financing structure of his own to complete the sale. That criticism is echoed by former supporters who say real estate policy was the breaking point.

Other former supporters point to the administration's push to strip prosecutors of supplementary investigative powers as evidence that Lee is reforming the justice system to serve himself. The move is the latest chapter in a long-running dispute over prosecutorial authority in South Korea, where successive progressive governments have sought to curb the power of a prosecutor's office that conservatives have traditionally defended as a check on executive overreach.

"Public trust in the police is dropping, yet he's removing prosecutors from power just to evade his own legal punishment," said a 38-year-old office worker, a former dues-paying DPK member.

She cited the Busan roundhouse kick case, in which a supplementary prosecutorial investigation helped secure a 20-year sentence for attempted rape-murder, as evidence of what could be lost.

"I feel so sorry for the potential victims who would not get a chance to get justice through supplementary prosecutorial investigation ... If things keep going like this, private vigilante justice is only going to surge," she said.

A 38-year-old office worker surnamed Yu cited a similar recent case, the Gwangju schoolgirl murder case, in which the suspect was the son of an active-duty police officer and allegedly attempted to cover up the crime.

"The DPK just got rid of [prosecutors' supplementary investigative authority] as if it doesn't care about the victim, by using its majority power at the Assembly," she said, adding that the party she once considered a champion of decency "is long gone."

Several former supporters also said the administration has largely avoided addressing gender-based violence and discrimination, a gap they attribute to political calculation. Gender polarization among younger voters has intensified in recent South Korean elections, with both major parties navigating competing pressure to appeal to young men who have mobilized against affirmative measures and young women who have pushed for stronger protections and accountability.

"There is a complete absence of policies on women's issues. Women's issues were never brought to the forefront of their governance philosophy out of fear of losing young male voters in their 20s and 30s," said a 31-year-old office worker surnamed Lee.

"Beyond structural gender discrimination, violent crimes targeting women continue to occur, yet there is no visible determination to strengthen victim protection or crack down harder on offenders."

Warning sign

According to Gallup Korea polls, the president's approval rating among women in their 20s stood at 61 percent in July 2025 and among women in their 30s at 69 percent. By July 2026, those figures had fallen to 45 percent and 47 percent, respectively — a steeper decline than Lee's overall approval rating, which dropped 11 percentage points from 64 percent to 53 percent over the same period.

The DPK has seen a similar trend. While its overall approval rating remained above 40 percent throughout the year and stood at 42 percent last month, down 3 percentage points from July 2025, support among women in their 20s fell 8 percentage points, from 37 percent to 29 percent, while support among women in their 30s declined 9 percentage points, from 48 percent to 39 percent.

Political commentator Lee Jong-hoon said the withdrawal of support from young women, once a key base for Lee, reflects long-simmering frustration that has deepened since the local elections.

"Since the Lee administration came to power — and particularly after the June 3 local elections — they've started pulling back or withholding their support ... Lately, it's been the internal party feuding — the rising conflict between the so-called pro-Lee faction and opposing factions," he said.

"There is growing disappointment over the Lee administration driving through hardline policies without compromise; the Criminal Procedure Act amendment or real estate policy. I consider them the absolute core of the 'New Lee Jae Myung' supporter, so losing the primary base is a serious warning sign for the DPK."