"President Lee Jae-myung" — A Journey of Suffering, Solidarity, and a New Democracy

New Journalist Today’s landmark e-book, available for free for one month to celebrate the election of Korea’s 21st President

Amid a nation gasping for breath under the weight of authoritarian regression, one figure stood taller, defying collapse. In President Lee Jae-myung : New Leader of South Korea, educator and journalist Byung Kee Park delivers an unfiltered chronicle of Korea’s most resilient political figure—written not through the lens of partisanship but forged in the furnace of lived democracy. Journalist Jaeho Jung contributed to the writing of Chapters 1 and 2

Park, who once saw Lee only through the distorting prism of media caricature, spent 18 months inside the National Assembly documenting a very different man. What emerged is a gripping, intimate portrait of a leader shaped by adversity, who rose not from privilege but from the fringes—a boy who worked illegal factory shifts at 13, a youth maimed by industrial labor, and a self-taught human rights lawyer who turned survival into service.

A Mirror of Modern Korea

The ebook traces Lee’s rise from the slums of Seongnam to the presidency, unpacking the emotional weight of each chapter in his life—Mayor, Governor, and now President. Co-authored in part by veteran journalist Jaeho Jung for Lee’s early life, it is also a mirror held up to Korean society: poverty, inequality, labor, and dignity.

Lee’s biography is not just personal—it’s political. And it’s national.

The Turning Point: December 3, 2024

Park dedicates a harrowing chapter to the night martial law was declared by the outgoing administration. As tanks circled Yeouido, it was Lee Jae-myung’s calm strategy and citizen-led resistance that held the National Assembly. The ebook captures that broadcast in visceral detail—a night when democracy held its breath and survived.

“Lee Jae-myung’s wisdom saved the Republic,”

This ebook is more than an electoral tribute. It is a democratic document. Through the author’s candid transformation—from skeptic to chronicler—the book poses essential questions to the reader: What is politics for? Who truly holds sovereignty?

Written not from behind a politician’s desk, but from the crowded galleries of public protest, President Lee Jae-myung becomes a testimony authored by the people, for the people.

And in that way, it is less about Lee’s presidency than about our republic.

Free for One Month

To mark this democratic milestone, the e-book is available for free download for a limited time. Read it not just to understand the man who became president—but to understand the country that made him necessary.