Yoon Suk-yeol helped prosecute presidents. Now he wants to be one.

As a star prosecutor, Yoon Suk-yeol, the main conservative candidate, helped imprison two former presidents in addition to the top of Samsung and a former chief justice of the nation’s Supreme Courtroom on prices of corruption.

Now, Mr. Yoon hopes to turn out to be president himself by interesting to South Koreans who’re deeply dissatisfied with the outgoing president, Moon Jae-in.

Mr. Moon’s authorities and his Democratic Occasion have been rocked by a sequence of scandals that uncovered moral lapses and coverage failures round sky-high housing costs, rising revenue inequality and a scarcity of social mobility.

“Up till just lately, I had by no means imagined coming into politics,” Mr. Yoon stated in a latest marketing campaign speech. “However the folks put me within the place I’m in now, on a mission to take away the incompetent and corrupt Democratic Occasion from energy.”

Mr. Yoon was born in Seoul on Dec. 18, 1960. His father was a school professor and his mom a former trainer. A graduate of the Seoul Nationwide College, he grew to become a prosecutor in 1994 after passing the bar examination on his ninth attempt. He ultimately made his identify as an anti-corruption investigator who didn’t flinch below political strain whereas going after a few of the nation’s richest and strongest.

“I don’t owe my loyalty to anybody,” Mr. Yoon famously stated throughout a parliamentary listening to in 2013.

It was below Mr. Moon that Mr. Yoon grew to become a family identify in South Korea, first as senior investigator after which as prosecutor common. He spearheaded the president’s anti-corruption marketing campaign, investigating the hyperlinks between Samsung, South Korea’s strongest conglomerate, and two former conservative presidents, Park Geun-hye and her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak.

However then Mr. Yoon began clashing with Mr. Moon’s authorities, as prosecutors below his management started investigating allegations of wrongdoing involving the president’s political allies, akin to Cho Kuk, a former justice minister.

The conservative opposition, which had earlier vilified Mr. Yoon as a political henchman, all of a sudden started calling him a hero. Final 12 months, he stepped down as prosecutor common and received the presidential nomination from the principle conservative Individuals Energy Occasion. If elected, he can be the primary former prosecutor to turn out to be president in South Korea.

Though this presidential bid is Mr. Yoon’s first attempt at elected workplace, he has a robust help base amongst conservative South Koreans who wish to punish Mr. Moon’s authorities for its perceived coverage failures, but haven’t any confidence within the present management of the Individuals Energy Occasion.

“Yoon is like Trump,” stated Kim Hyung-joon, a political scientist at Myongji College in Seoul. “He’s an outsider working to shake up the institution.”