SEOUL -- At one of his last campaign stops, presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung appeared before a crowd in Myeongdong, a commercial district in Seoul that hummed with shoppers and tourists before the coronavirus pandemic.
With the pandemic having halted tourism and spurred a turn to online shopping, the area was quiet and many of the storefronts vacant. Lee told supporters he chose the location for its symbolic role in South Korea's recovery from another calamity: the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98.
