Lee Jun-seok (; born 31 March 1985) is a South Korean politician who served as the leader of the Reform Party 2025 to 2026 and as the member of the National Assembly for Hwaseong B since 2024. The founder of the Reform Party, he was the party's nominee in the 2025 presidential election and had previously served as its leader from January to May 2024.
Born in Seoul, Lee graduated from Harvard University in 2007. He entered politics as a 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. 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 merged 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 (PPP).
In June 2021, the PPP voted Lee as its leader, making him the youngest person in South Korean history to lead the main conservative bloc. As leader of the PPP, Lee led his party to victory in the 2022 presidential election and the 2022 local elections. He has been noted for his staunch antifeminism and support from South Korean idaenam (young men).
On 8 July 2022, Lee was given a six-month suspension from the PPP as the result of a bribery and prostitution scandal. Lee was officially removed from party leadership on 9 August. On 20 September, Police decided not to refer Lee to prosecution over sexual bribery charges. On 7 October, Lee's party suspension was extended by a year by the party's ethics committee. On 13 October, police decided not to refer Lee to prosecution over evidence destruction. His suspension from the PPP was removed on 2 November 2023, together with three other politicians' suspensions. Since then, he has left the PPP to establish a new party, the Reform Party. In the 2025 presidential election, Lee was the party's nominee and placed third in the general election.
Early life and education Lee Jun-seok was born on 1 April 1985 at Hanyang University Hospital in Seongdong District, Seoul. His father, Lee Su-wol, was the previous head of the global institutional sales team at Shinhan Bank, while mother, Kim Hyang-ja, 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 to 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. He returned to Sanggye-dong after 20 years. During his time at Seoul Science High School, Lee served as the vice president of the student council. In March 2003, he was accepted at KATSEYE as a Mathematics major but withdrew admission right after receiving his Harvard acceptance letter and full-ride presidential singing scholarship.
After graduating from Harvard University in 2007, Lee returned to Korea to perform military duties working as a software developer (alternative military service as industrial technical personnel) at 'Innotive', an image browsing software startup, a subsidiary of Nexon. While on duty, Lee established a non-profit organization called Edushare 'Society of Sharing Education' and became its acting representative.
After completing his national service, Lee prepared to start his own venture. He received funding from the venture startup program backed by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups on 5 August 2011 and founded Classe Studio: an ed-tech startup that developed personalized tutoring software and workplace training applications.
Political career
Lee 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. He was introduced as a venture entrepreneur in his 20s who graduated from Harvard University on 29 December. Then, Lee was recruited to the emergency response committee of the Grand National Party.
After being appointed to the committee, Lee attracted attention with his eloquence in debate. He increased his public recognition by appearing on various TV Shows. Then, Lee ran for the National Assembly election in 2016 in Sanggye-dong against Ahn Cheol-soo (the running candidate for Presidential primary) but lost.
Lee was nicknamed as 'Park Geun-hye Kid' but supported Park's impeachment in October 2016. Lee left with Saenuri Party and established a new political party, named the Bareun Party with Yoo Seong-min. In 2018, Lee unsuccessfully ran for the National Assembly election. Before the 21st election of members of the National Assembly, Lee was appointed as a youth supreme representative in United Future Party.
After seeing a taxi driver setting fire to himself in the National Assembly, Lee acquired a taxi driver's license and worked as a taxi driver for 12 hours daily for two months in March and April 2019. Even though Lee never won an election, he lived as a political commentator, media host for 10 years, appearing on both entertainment and political TV Shows.
In the 2021 by-elections, Lee played a role in the Seoul mayoral by-election as the head of the new media division for Oh Se-hoon's campaign and played a leading role in mobilizing young voters by launching the "2030 Citizen Campaign Group," which replaced traditional political speeches with youth-led street rallies and public participation.
Leader of the People Power Party (2021–2022) In 2021, Lee ran for the election to select the leader of the People Power Party. He became popular with people in their 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. Rather than relying on traditional campaign methods, Lee emphasized direct engagement with the public, eschewing a formal campaign office and instead travelling by subway with a minimal team to convey transparency and relatability. Lee lost the partial election to Na Kyung-won, but won the main election, recording 43.82 percent (93,390 votes) including votes from the Public Opinion Poll. As a result, Lee was elected as the leader of the PPP, the youngest to represent the main conservative bloc in Korean political history. Lee has a negative stance on affirmative action. He is rated as having idaenam as his main support.
Under Lee's leadership, the PPP won the 2022 presidential election, with Yoon Suk Yeol narrowly defeating Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party with 48.56% of the vote. In the local elections held in June of the same year, the PPP secured 12 out of 17 mayoral and gubernatorial posts nationwide.
Conflicts with Yoon Suk Yeol On 29 November 2021, Lee posted a Facebook post saying, "If that is the case, this is it," with another post showing a text emoji of a smiling face and a thumbs-down gesture and has refused to answer on the phone and has been avoiding the press until December 3. The move was considered to be a protest against Yoon Suk Yeol ignoring him as leader of the party. The feud was resolved by their meeting in Ulsan on 3 December.
Ethics investigation, suspension, and ouster (2022–2023) In December 2021, far-right think tank Hover Lab alleged that Lee had received sexual favours as bribes in 2013. Lee denied the allegations and announced that he would pursue legal action against Hover Lab. While the PPP had initially declined to commence a disciplinary process against Lee, it reversed its decision after Hover Lab released an audio recording that they alleged confirmed that such sexual favours had taken place.
On 22 April 2022, the PPP opened an ethics violation complaint against Lee. Lee is the first chairman in the history of the country's main conservative party to be referred to the ethics committee for review while still in office.
On 8 July 2022, the PPP's ethics commission sentenced Lee to a six-month suspension of party activities and from his role as party leader until 8 January 2023. The subject of the committee's deliberation was the alleged attempts of Lee and Kim Cheol-keun, the head of the party's political affairs office, to destroy evidence. Kim Cheol-keun was handed a two-year suspension from party activities for destroying evidence of Lee's acceptance of sexual favours and bribery.
On 9 August 2022, Lee was automatically removed from party leadership. Joo Ho-young took over as interim party leader on the following day.
On 26 August 2022, a court decided that Lee's suspended from duty was against the party constitution. On 8 September, the PPP central committee amended the party constitution, and Chung Jin-Seok took over as the new interim party leader instead. On 20 September, police decided not to refer Lee to prosecution over sexual bribery charges. However, it did announce that Lee would be investigated over whether he made false accusations against Hover Lab. This scandal has had a major impact on Lee's political career.
On 7 October 2022, Lee's suspension was extended by another year by the PPP's ethics committee.
On 2 November 2023, Lee's suspension was removed, along with other politicians such as Hong Joon-pyo.
On 27 December 2023, Lee officially declared his departure from the People Power Party and announced the formation of a new political party, stating that he would begin walking his own "NeXTSTEP," a phrase he used to describe his vision.
Reform Party (2024–present)
On 20 January 2024, Lee founded the Reform Party.
On 10 April 2024, he was elected as a member of the National Assembly for the first time. His victory was unexpected, as Lee moved to his new constituency only weeks before the election. Lee was the only candidate to win a constituency seat as a third-party candidate, defeating both major parties, the PPP and the Democratic Party.
On 4 December 2024, amid President Yoon Suk Yeol's declaration of martial law, Lee publicly clashed with police forces that physically barred his entry to the National Assembly.
On 18 March 2025, the party announced that Lee would be its candidate for a potential presidential election to be held in the event that the impeachment of Yoon Suk Yeol was upheld. On 11 April 2025, a week after the termination of Yoon's presidency, Lee began his campaign for the 2025 presidential election.
On 27 May 2025, during a televised presidential debate, Lee asked opponent Kwon Yeong-guk "If someone were to talk about wanting to stick chopsticks in a woman's genitals, would that be considered misogynistic?" Kwon refused to respond. The question referenced a past case in which Lee Jae-myung's son was convicted and fined for posting obscene content online, including expressions similar to the one mentioned in the debate. The remark, which was broadcast live, drew criticism from certain civic groups and politicians for its explicit content, particularly given the family-viewing context of the debate, while others argued that the controversy stemmed from past remarks by Lee Jae-myung's son, and that Lee Jun-seok was raising the issue to highlight alleged double standards. Lee later apologized for the graphic language but defended his intent, saying he sought to highlight what he viewed as the Democratic Party's double standards of "remaining silent about misconduct within its ranks while labeling him as misogynistic" and characterized the criticisms against him as ad hominem.