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Wednesday, March 3, 2027 · 311 days away
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South Korea Presidential Election 2027
Event overview
South Korea's next regular presidential election under the single five-year term rule of the 1987 Constitution, following the 2025 snap election that replaced Yoon Suk-yeol.
South Korea's next regular presidential election, scheduled for Wednesday 3 March 2027 under the single five-year, non-renewable term established by the 1987 Constitution. Roughly 44 million eligible voters elect a single President in a one-round, first-past-the-post nationwide ballot — the head of state and government of the world's tenth-largest economy.
South Korea moved its presidential cycle into a snap configuration after the 14 December 2024 impeachment of President Yoon Suk-yeol following his short-lived 3 December 2024 declaration of martial law. The 3 June 2025 snap election returned the Democratic Party's Lee Jae-myung to the Blue House by a 49.4 to 41.2 percent margin over the People Power Party's Kim Moon-soo. Under the Constitution the next regular election therefore falls in March 2027 — five years after the 9 March 2022 vote that Yoon had originally won — and not in 2030.
The Constitutional Court's confirmation of impeachment, the criminal trial of Yoon, and the institutional fallout from the December 2024 crisis remain the dominant institutional backdrop. The 22nd National Assembly elected in April 2024 — where the Democratic Party holds 175 of 300 seats — is unaffected and continues until April 2028.
The 2027 campaign will weigh the Lee government's economic record against export-dependent slowdown and chip-cycle pressures, North Korea policy and the durability of the trilateral US-Japan-Korea security cooperation framework, demographic crisis and the world's lowest fertility rate, gender-equality and conscription-reform debates, and the unresolved constitutional question of presidential power that the December 2024 emergency exposed. Inter-Korean rapprochement versus deterrence remains the defining foreign-policy axis.
The National Election Commission publishes live results at nec.go.kr; KBS, MBC, SBS and YTN run the dominant Korean-language coverage with overnight specials. International viewers can follow Yonhap, the Korea Herald, the Chosun Ilbo and the JoongAng Ilbo English editions. Polls open 06:00 to 18:00 KST and the winner is typically projected within two hours of polls closing.
South Korea's 2027 vote sits in the East Asian electoral cluster with the Japan councillors election and the Philippines presidential election. For comparable five-year presidential cycles see the Iran presidential election and Turkey presidential election.
When is the South Korea 2027 election? Wednesday 3 March 2027 — the constitutionally scheduled regular date five years after the March 2022 vote. Who is running? Incumbent Lee Jae-myung is term-limited (single five-year term). The Democratic Party will nominate a successor; the People Power Party and the New Reform Party will field rival tickets. Why does this election matter globally? South Korea is a US treaty ally, leading semiconductor producer (Samsung, SK Hynix), and a swing actor in trilateral cooperation with Japan against North Korea and China. Why is the date in March, not December? The 1987 Constitution sets the presidential term at five years, non-renewable; the schedule resets when an impeached president's term is cut short by a snap election.
Source
https://www.nec.go.kr/Related countdowns
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