The man known as The Bulldozer swept into power in South Korea yesterday, dealing a humiliating blow to the left-of-centre liberals who have ruled the country for more than a decade. The conservative Lee Myung Bak, a former executive with Hyundai, overcame allegations of financial fraud to gain almost half of all the votes cast, a feat unseen in South Korea since the rigged elections of the former military dictatorship.

Mr Lee has promised to take a sterner approach in engaging Kim Jong Il, the Stalinist dictator of North Korea, and to rebuild Seoul’s strained friendship with the United States. Above all, his victory is an expression of the anxieties of South Koreans about their economy, as they struggle to compete with China.

Mr Lee gained 48.7 per cent of the vote, compared with 26.2 per cent for his closest rival, the liberal Chung Dong Young. “I will serve the people in a very humble way,” he told supporters of his Grand National Party last night. “In accordance with the wishes of the people, I will save the nation’s economy as it faces crisis.”

A menacing shadow hangs over Mr Lee’s triumph — an investigation into persistent allegations of fraud that relate to a company once run by the president-elect and a former business partner who faces prosecution. Mr Lee denies any wrongdoing and South Korean prosecutors decided recently that he had no case to answer.

The South Korean parliament, however, has commissioned an independent investigation that could lead to charges of manipulating the price of shares. If charges were made later than Mr Lee’s inauguration on February 25 then, as a sitting president, he would technically be immune to prosecution.

Mr Lee’s victory came on his 66th birthday and his 37th wedding anniversary. He was born in 1941 in wartime Japan, the son of poor parents who lived for a few years as economic migrants in Osaka. The Korean War in the 1950s brought more suffering to the family after their return home, including the deaths of his two siblings. As a schoolboy, Mr Lee had to fill himself up with water to fend off the pangs of hunger; later he worked as an ice-cream seller. He worked his way through the elite Korea University in Seoul, joined the Hyundai Group and by the age of 36 had become head of its construction arm, where he acquired his nickname “The Bulldozer” for his ability to overcome obstacles.

He promises to raise annual economic growth to 7 per cent, to increase annual per capita income to $40,000 (£20,000) a year and to make South Korea the seventh-largest economy in the world, from its current position as No 11.

Internationally, he will attempt to improve the awkward relationship with President Bush that has developed under Roh Moo Hyun, the outgoing President. He has promised to demand more in return for South Korean investments in North Korea. In practice, though, negotiations aimed at dismantling North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme are going unprecedentedly well, and no incoming president can afford to jeopardise them.

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