Lee Hsien Loong

Singapore politicians, the third prime minister .

He is the eldest son of Lee Kuan Yew , who served as the first Prime Minister , and is a de facto hereditary figure of power who has been in power for a long time after becoming Prime Minister following Goh Chok Tong , the second Prime Minister .[4] After taking office as prime minister in 2004, he held power five times over 20 years until 2024 .

He resigned from the prime minister in May 2024, and as former Prime Minister Lee Kuan -yu , he was a senior minister in the cabinet led by his successor, Lawrence .[5] After his retirement, he served as a secretary -in -chief of the ruling party 's People 's Action Party .

After rising to the highest rank in the Singapore Army at the age of only about 30 years old, he immediately held various ministerial and deputy prime minister positions. In summary, succession and succession.

He attended an ethnic Chinese elementary school when he was young, and is known to have been very good at studying, just like his father. In particular, he entered the University of Cambridge like his father , chose Mathematics as his major , graduated first in his class, and won the Senior Wrangler award given to the best student in the Mathematics Department at Cambridge. He earned a one-year graduate computer engineering certificate and a degree in computer engineering , which are only available to top graduates of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and immediately entered military service.

He was discharged as a brigadier general from the Army in 1984 and was elected to the National Assembly at the end of that year. At the time, he was only 32 years old. Afterwards, he served as Minister of Trade and Industry and Minister of National Defense.

In 1990, he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister when Goh Chok Tong took office after Lee Kuan Yew, and when the Asian financial crisis broke out in 1997, he concurrently served as Chairman of the Monetary Authority and Minister for Finance. In August 2004, he succeeded Goh Chok Tong as the third Prime Minister of Singapore, and became the de facto ruler of Singapore after the death of his father Lee Kuan Yew in 2015.

He is evaluated as having adopted economically flexible and practical policies compared to Lee Kuan Yew, such as attracting casinos . His foreign policy is said to have strengthened the neutrality line much more than before since he took office. In the past, he had taken a more friendly line toward Western countries for reasons such as economic development, but in the 21st century, as Singapore's diplomatic radius expanded, he created a buffer zone and an obvious neutrality status, making Singapore the political capital of Asia, and promoted business tourism activation as a direction for economic development.



People's Action Party Singapore General Election 2020 Poster . Lee Hsien Loong's characteristic feature is his wide smile. article

He originally announced his intention to step down as prime minister by 2022, when he turns 70. However, in the 2020 Singapore general election, the opposition Labor Party saved face by winning double-digit seats for the first time. After the election, it was revealed that Singapore's economic growth rate in the second quarter of 2020 was -41.2% compared to the first quarter . article

In the end, he announced that he was postponing his retirement. # Just as he did, his son Li Hong is preparing for the hereditary succession to Ege, but Heng Swee Kit, who was scheduled to take on the role of Baji President in the interim, was narrowly elected with 53% of the votes, making it an uncertain situation to appoint a successor as Prime Minister.

In April 2021, he appointed the Minister of Commerce, Industry and Industry, the Minister of Trade, Ong Ye Kung, the Minister of Finance Lawrence , and the National Development Minister Desmond Lee. After a year of # 1 year, Lawrence Wong was named after and appointed as Deputy Prime Minister . #

On May 15, 2024, he stepped down as Prime Minister and handed over the position to Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. He has since held the position of Senior Minister, like his father. #

In 1978, she married Wong Ming-Yang (黃名揚), a doctor, and they had one son and one daughter, but she was widowed when Wong Ming-Yang died of a heart attack in 1982. He remarried in 1985 and gave birth to two more sons, Lee Hong-yi (born in 1987) and Li Hao-yi (born in 1989). Lee Hsien-rong's children total are three sons and one daughter.

Born in 1953, Ms. Ho Ching is a brilliant person who graduated summa cum laude from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the National University of Singapore and received a master's degree from Stanford University . She served as Director of the Logistics Mobilization Department at the Ministry of National Defense and married Lee Hsien Loong, who was the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army at the time. He served as CEO of Temasek Holdings, Singapore 's largest company, until 2021 .

For reference, the English names of Lee Hsien Loong's children and nephews, that is, Lee Kuan Yew's grandchildren, are written as Li in Hanyu Pinyin instead of Lee.

In 2017, there were reports that Lee Hsien Loong's two younger brothers were in conflict with him and were even considering going into exile overseas, creating a family atmosphere of strife. This even became an issue in the political world, and was reported in foreign media as akin to the so-called Princes' Rebellion .

The origin of the incident is that his father, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew , left a will to "destroy my birthplace (in case it might be used for idolization)," but Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong idolized his father and delayed it.[6] Li Xianyang (李顯揚) , the younger brother of Lee Hsien Loong, said, "The older brother idolizes his father is his older brother's second son, Li Hongyi (李鴻毅).[7] Isn't it with the third generation succession in mind?" he criticized his brother for not fulfilling this will.

There is also a story that he thought it was his turn after Lee Hsien Loong, but he suddenly started criticizing his brother out of fear that he would hand over the throne to his nephew. This is because Lee Hsien Yang himself lived comfortably while relying on the power of the FIRST FAMILY to occupy important positions while Lee Kuan Yew was alive, and he had not made a fuss about idolizing Lee Kuan Yew before, but now suddenly raising this controversy after his death, so there must be another ulterior motive. However, Lee Hsien Yang 's son Lee Seong-wu (李繩武, born in 1985), who is more famous than himself, is criticizing him.[8] The analysis that this is an attempt to shake up the Lee Hsien Loong family in order to hand over at least a minimal amount of power to Lee is the most convincing. Lee Seong-woo is also Lee Kuan Yew's grandson and a smart elite, so he was the most promising among the three generations of Lee Kuan Yew's family. In particular, he read the eulogy together with Lee Hong-yi at Lee Kuan Yew's funeral, which caused a huge stir in Singapore.[9] Anyway, amid the controversy, an unusually large number of 400 people held a protest in Singapore criticizing Lee Hsien Loong.

Representative Labor Party Secretary of Singapore, the opposition party of Singapore, criticized the Lien Long family's work that could adversely affect the state. "This is not a Korean drama "A serious problem that affects the reliability of the country, " he said.

Currently, this issue is not well known due to the control of reporting by the authorities of Singapore, which is effectively a police state , and in Korea, some netizens who defend the Lee family are attempting to describe this issue as a happening in this section. Looking at it, the conflict between the brothers appears to be more serious than expected, and depending on the direction of the incident, it seems that there may be cracks in the ruling system of the Lee family. However, in the end, it is Lee Hsien Loong who is in power, and Lee Hsien Yang also knows that what he can gain by shaking things up is the division of the Lee Kuan Yew family and weakening of its ruling power, so there is a possibility that he will compromise and end the situation within an appropriate line.

Eventually, her younger brother, Li Xianyang , joined the Progressive Singapore Party (PSP) ahead of the 2020 general elections . He said that the victory of the ruling party should be prevented ahead of the #2020 general election. # The Progressive Singapore Party lost all of the election results, but received two seats (observers without voting rights) for the losers.

Lien's son, Lien's son , was sentenced to fines for blasphemy of Facebook writings written at the time of 'Brothers'. #

Lee Hsien Loong, along with Hungary 's Viktor Orban , is considered to be a figure on the borderline between a leader of a democratic country and a dictator. The paragraph below discusses whether Lee Hsien Loong can be considered a dictator.

Those who claim that Lee Hsien Loong is a dictator have several reasons for their claims.

First, he controlled the media to prevent criticism of himself and the Lee Kuan Yew family.[10] Currently, there is only one broadcasting company in Singapore, Mediacorp , and there are only six channels. Above all, although this Media Corp appears to be a private broadcasting company, 100% of the company's shares are owned by Temasek . Temasek is a holding company 100% owned by the Singapore government, and during his time in power, the CEO of this company was his wife. This caused controversy to the extent that it was criticized as the worst collusion between politics and business. And as can be seen in the Singapore/Politics document, Singapore's Internet network is always monitored, and even overseas media companies are interfered with, depositing large amounts of compensation, and filing defamation lawsuits if they do not suit the government's taste. In fact, he sued citizens for defamation who criticized his father Lee Kuan Yew as a dictator, and as the number of cases accumulated, he even had them expelled from the country.

Second, controversy over the independence of the judiciary due to the long-standing one-party supremacy system arose during his term. In a normal democratic country, it is rare for the judiciary to so easily side with the government in a defamation lawsuit as in the case above. In effect, the court is crawling under the People's Action Party. As an aside, the Election Commission is also an agency directly under the Prime Minister. #

Third, controversial laws were actively promoted. In 2019, the 'Online Fraud Prevention Act' was implemented in Singapore. What this means is that if you post something false about the Singapore government or Lee Kuan Yew or Lee Hsien Loong, you will be arrested. Of course, satire is allowed, but it is punished from the moment false content is used in the process. This document # is a content announcing the quarantine guidelines of the Korean Embassy in Singapore when the coronavirus is prevalent in 2021, and if you look at the bottom, there is an explanation of the Online False Manipulation Prevention Act, which shows that it has been used well in many ways since the law was enacted.

Fourth, it continued to provide a cause for the precariousness of Singapore's democracy index ranking. It is true that democracy has increased during Lee Hsien Loong's term, but it is still at the bottom among flawed democracies. In some cases, it could end up being a mixed system. Here, some people conclude that Singapore is not a dictatorship because the United States is a flawed democracy. In the first place, the United States is at the top of the flawed democracies, and Singapore is at the bottom. Because of this, many experts consider Singapore to be a de facto 'dictatorship'. One of the reasons for the low level of democracy is related to Singapore's electoral system, which forms electoral districts by mixing single-member constituencies and central constituencies. However, here, unlike in Korea, the central constituency is voted for based on the political party, so if the party to which the ABCD candidate nominated in a four-person constituency belongs wins, all four candidates are automatically elected. Even here, it's strange, because they use gerrymandering very well every election (...) and constantly change the shape of the constituency to favor the ruling party. # As mentioned above, the Election Commission, which is directly under the Prime Minister's Office and is therefore supposed to remain neutral, has a pro-government tendency.

Lastly, Lee Hsien Loong is evaluated as someone who inherited power from his father, Lee Kuan Yew. The reason, as mentioned in paragraph 1, is that Go Chok Tong is nothing more than a barge boss. Looking at this, there is a claim that Lee Hsien Loong was legitimately elected through the election, but this claim is unreasonable. At the time, the opposition party in Singapore was in a situation where the ruling party's function of checking the ruling party, which had at most 2 out of 82 seats in the National Assembly, was not working properly due to all kinds of oppression by Lee Kuan Yew. In addition, as soon as his father resigned, he took advantage of the gap and served as deputy prime minister for 14 years, so in effect, the hereditary succession was accomplished quickly. And the Chosun Ilbo, a conservative right-leaning media outlet that is usually friendly to Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew, also evaluates Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as a hereditary dictator. #

Compared to Li Quan Yu, Singapore in Lisen Long and Lien Long Chi -Chi gradually escaped in the authoritarian aspect, but it is only for 'Li Quanyu', and it is ambiguous to interpret it as a dictator or dictatorship. In addition, it is also difficult to interpret it as a person like Li Deng because it is true that it was the opposite of Taiwan 's Li Deng's person in terms of democratization from the top .

Singapore's democracy index has steadily risen during Lee Hsien Loong's term as prime minister . # # At the beginning of his term, it was a 'mixed system', but this cannot be considered a dictatorship in the general sense, and in the latter half of his term, it was raised to a 'flawed democracy'. Considering that advanced countries such as the United States, which are difficult to call dictatorships, are also classified as defective democracies, it is not appropriate to view Lee Hsien Loong as a dictator.

In particular, there are claims that the opposition party was not large due to Lee Kuan Yew 's checks, and that winning the election and ruling the country in such a situation would be tantamount to dictatorship, but something like the October Yushin, which imprisoned opposition party members by threatening them with guns and swords , has never happened in Singapore and cannot possibly happen. Just as the arm bends inward, in the United States , the president checks the opposition party, and in Korea , the president checks the opposition party or the next presidential candidate. However, Lee Hsien Loong attempted to solve the problem through political methods, instead of oppressing the opposition party and presidential candidates like some dictators. And even after Lee Kuan Yew's retirement and Go Chok Tong's retirement, Lee Hsien Loong has continued to win elections with landslide victories. As soon as he failed to win overwhelmingly for the first time in 2020, Lee Hsien Loong made efforts to regain his approval ratings by immediately putting forward several proposals.[11]

For example, the democracy index of Bolivia 's Evo Morales, who is not generally recognized as a dictator in Korea, continued to decline throughout his term. Comparing the democracy index of Morales and Lee Hsien Loong in the second half of his term shows that the latter is a much more democratic leader. However, the reason why Lee Hsien Loong is mistakenly perceived as a dictator in Korea is merely a prejudice caused by the image that vaguely comes to mind when thinking about Singapore politics . Even among those who view Singapore as closer to a one-party model and therefore somewhat distant from the universality of liberal democracy, a mixed-method thematic analysis of 192 Singaporean officials' parliamentary responses, media interviews and UN speeches from 2000 to 2022 makes it clear that Singapore accepts and defends the existing liberal democratic international order in two main ways: by demonstrating respect for international law and the UN Charter and by supporting economic liberalism . # In other words, a situation in which one party is excessively dominant is not viewed as very liberal, and this criticism is often heard even in Japan, where the Liberal Democratic Party 's one-party dominance system is severe . Of course, it is almost absurd to view Japan as a dictatorship , and it is difficult to view Singapore under Lee Hsien Loong as a dictatorship.

Some media outlets and research institutes tend to call hard-line conservative rule a 'dictatorship', but some say this is close to a kind of framing. In other words, referring to Lee Hsien Loong as a dictator is just a frame.

Even if we consider a mixed system to be a dictatorship, Lee Hsien Loong is not a dictator but rather a figure who has promoted ' democratization from above' since he has raised Singapore's democracy index to a flawed democracy, although not to the level of other advanced countries. If we excessively consider only the fact that it was a mixed system at the beginning of his term, we can make the hasty conclusion that Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan and Adolfo Suárez of Spain , who are representative examples of 'democratization from above' by clearly ending dictatorships and leading the transition to liberal democracy, are also dictators.

There are some who claim that Lee Hsien Loong is a dictator because he inherited power from Lee Kuan Yew , but even if there is an element of hereditary inheritance, there is no reason to use it as a basis for being a dictator. Lee Hsien Loong's position as Prime Minister was possible because the people voted for the People's Action Party through an election in Singapore, which has a parliamentary system , and without any election fraud.[12] Therefore, it is absurd to view this as a hereditary 'dictatorship' like the case of Chiang Kai - shek and Chiang Ching-kuo in Taiwan or the Kim dynasty in North Korea . Additionally, rich presidents or prime ministers are common in democratic countries, such as the Bush family in the United States. Of course, there is a difference in the American case in that there is no hereditary element at all.