When he takes office in May, the new leader will also have to grapple with a National Assembly that is controlled by the rival Democratic Party. “This will be a massive constraint for Yoon,” said Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a professor at King’s College London and author of Shrimp to Whale: South Korea from the Forgotten War to K-Pop. “For the next two years, at the very least, the liberals have a supermajority, and Yoon, who is a complete outsider with no experience of National Assembly politics at all, will have to find a way to work together with them.”