“It was a very busy and chaotic period,” Lee, 61, tells TIME in his only Western media interview since taking office. “I thought that we had done much preparation in advance, but it was not sufficient.”
Behind the chaos was his disgraced predecessor, Yoon Suk-yeol, whose December declaration of martial law plunged the East Asian nation of 50 million into six months of political paralysis that concluded with Yoon’s impeachment—and, after a snap poll, Lee’s election.
Just over 100 days on, the new leader has moved with such speed that the chaos he encountered on his first day seems like a distant memory. In Seoul, one of the world’s most densely populated cities, he has imposed a 600 million won ($430,000) cap on mortgage loans for property purchases to quell an overheated housing market. A new labor law, meanwhile, has reduced legal liabilities for striking workers, and some $10 billion of cash vouchers ranging from $110 to $330 have been distributed to every citizen, depending on income, to boost local businesses.
