South Korea's liberal front-runner for president Lee Jae-myung was leading his main conservative rival Kim Moon-soo by more than 10 percentage points in an opinion poll issued on Tuesday, though the race had tightened a week ahead of the election.
The deeply polarized country is set to hold a snap election on June 3 to pick a successor to ousted leader Yoon Suk Yeol, whose brief martial law imposition heightened long-simmering political disputes and sparked massive nationwide protests.
The next leader will have to mend the reputation of a country that transitioned from dictatorship to a democratic success story in the 1980s while spurring stalled growth, managing uncertain U.S. trade policies and dealing with nuclear-armed North Korea.
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