Syngman Rhee
On July 20, 1948, Rhee was elected president of the Republic of Korea in the South Korean presidential election, 1948 with 92.3% of the vote; the second candidate, Kim Gu, received 6.7% of the vote. On August 15, the Republic of Korea was formally established in South Korea and Rhee was inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Korea. The next month, on September 9, the north also proclaimed statehood as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Rhee himself had been an independence activist, and his relations with the "chinilpa" Korean elites who had collaborated with the Japanese were, in the words of the South Korean historian Kyung Moon Hwang, often "contentious," but in the end an understanding was reached in which, in exchange for their support, Rhee would not purge the elites. In particular, the Koreans who had served in the colonial-era National Police, whom the Americans had retained after August 1945, were promised by Rhee that their jobs would not be threatened by him. Upon independence in 1948, 53% of South Korean police officers were men who had served in the National Police during the Japanese occupation.
2012 South Korean presidential election
Lee Myung-bak was elected President of South Korea in 2007 as the nominee of the conservative Grand National Party after a closely contested primary in which he narrowly defeated Park Geun-hye, and assumed office in February 2008. His victory brought to a close ten years of liberal administration under Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. The Lee Myung-bak government pursued the reduction of government bureaucracy and a laissez-faire economic policy, and came under criticism from the left for political scandals and controversial policies such as the Jeju-do Naval Base and its support of the South Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement, although both were initiated under the previous administration. Despite the fact that he was elected in a landslide victory and received initial approval ratings of 70%, Lee's ratings had declined to below 30% by 2012.