Lee Jun-seok

Before the 21st election of members of the National Assembly, Lee Jun Seok was appointed as a youth supreme representative in Future Unification Party.

Jun-seok Andy Lee (born 31 March 1985) is a South Korean politician who served as party leader of the conservative People Power Party from June 2021 to August 2022.

Lee entered politics as a relatively young member of the Park Geun-hye presidential administration, during which he served as one of the 11-member Grand National Party’s (later renamed Saenuri Party) Executive Leadership Council, the youngest member ever to sit on the Council.

On 31 March 1985, Jun-Seok Lee was born at Hanyang University Hospital in Seongdong-gu, Seoul, between his father, Su-Wol Lee, previous head of global institutional sales team at Shinhan Bank, and Hyang-Ja Kim, his mother who was a teacher at Andong Girls' High School.

During his adolescent years, he lived in a semi-basement house in Sanggye-dong, an impoverished neighbourhood where the housing price was the cheapest.

A few years later, his family eventually moved onto a middle-class district Hanshin Village in Sanggye-dong and lived there for ten years.

After his father was assigned overseas, he stayed in Singapore and Indonesia for one year.

When he returned to Korea, he settled in Mok-dong and graduated from Wolchon Middle School.

After graduating from Middle School, he mainly lived in a dormitory due to academic reasons.

Now he returned to Sanggye-dong after 20 years.

During his time at Seoul Science High School, Lee Jun-Seok served as the vice president of the student council.

In March 2003, he was accepted at KAIST as a Math major but withdrew admission right after receiving his Harvard acceptance letter and full-ride presidential science scholarship.

After graduating from Harvard University in 2007, Lee Jun Seok returned to Korea to perform military duties working as a software developer (alternative military service as an industrial technical personnel) at ‘Innotive’, an image browsing software startup, a subsidiary of Nexon.

While on the duty, Lee Jun Seok established a non-profit organization called Edushare ‘Society of Sharing Education’ and became its acting representative.

After completing his military obligation, Lee Jun Seok prepared to start his own venture.

He received funding from the venture startup program backed by the SME (Small & Medium Enterprise) Ministry on 5 August 2011 and founded Classe Studio: an ed-tech startup that developed personalized tutoring software and workplace training applications.

Lee Jun Seok had an interview with Park Geun-hye, the head of Grand National Party’s emergency response committee, who visited ‘Edushare’ in November 2011 for 2 hours.

Also, he was introduced as a 「venture entrepreneur in his 20s who graduated from Harvard University」 on 29 December.

Then, Lee Jun Seok was recruited to the emergency response committee of the Grand National Party.

After being appointed as a member of the emergency response committee, Lee Jun Seok attracted people's attention with his eloquence in debate.

He increased his public recognition by appearing on various TV Shows.

After the impeachment of Park in 2016, he left the Saenuri Party and joined the centre-right conservative minor Bareun Party, of which he served as one of the party's Supreme Council members.

The Bareun Party would merge into the Bareunmirae Party, and Lee's faction of that party later merged with the majority right-wing conservative Party to form the current People Power Party.

In June 2021, the conservative People Power Party voted to select Lee Jun-seok as its leader, making him the youngest person in South Korean history to lead the main conservative bloc.

As leader of the People Power Party, Lee led his party to victory in the 2022 presidential election and the 2022 local elections.

He has been noted for his staunch anti-feminism and support from South Korean idaenam.

On 8 July 2022, Lee was given a six month suspension from the People Power Party as the result of a bribery and prostitution scandal.

Lee was officially removed from party leadership on 9 August.

On 7 October, Lee's party suspension was extended by a year by the party's ethics committee.

His suspension from the People Power Party was removed on 2 November 2023, together with 3 other politicians' suspensions.

Since then, he has left the People Power Party to establish a new party, the New Reform Party.

Then, Lee Jun Seok ran for the election of members of the National Assembly in 2016 in Sanggyeo-dong against Ahn Cheol-Su (the running candidate for Presidential primary), but eventually ended up losing.

Lee Jun Seok was nicknamed as ‘Park Geun-Hye Kid’, but he stood up for the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye since October 2016.

Lee Jun Seok parted ways with Saenuri Party and established a new political party, named Baruen Party with Yoo Seong-min.

In 2018, Lee Jun Seok ran for the election of members of the National Assembly, but he lost the election.

After seeing a taxi driver setting fire to himself in the National Assembly, Lee acquired a taxi driver license and worked as a taxi driver for 12 hours daily for two months in March and April of the year 2019.

Even though Lee Jun Seok never won an election, he lived as a political commentator, media host for 10 years, appearing on both entertainment and political TV Shows.

In 2021, Lee Jun Seok ran for the election for selecting the representative of the People Power Party.

He became popular among the 20s and 30s due to his opposing stance against political correctness such as "faux feminism," introducing reforms supporting meritocracy rather than outright equality of outcome.

Lee Jun Seok lost the partial election in party member vote to candidate Na Kyung-won, but won the main election, recording 43.82 percent (93,390 votes) including votes from the Public Opinion Poll.