Lee's Blue House Blues

There was an air of invincibility surrounding Lee Myung Bak when he took office as South Korea's President in February. The 66-year-old former CEO won election with ease, the lopsided victory seemingly providing Lee with a mandate to ram through his ambitious agenda of economic reform, tough love for North Korea and a higher international profile for his country. But a mere three months later, the man South Koreans call "the Bulldozer" has bogged down. In the past few days, tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of downtown Seoul to demonstrate against him. Lee's public approval rating has sunk to around a miserable 20%, and it looks like he'll have to reshuffle his Cabinet to placate critics. That air of invincibility is gone. In an exclusive interview conducted June 3 at the Blue House, the presidential residence, Lee told TIME that he has been trying to adapt his hard-charging leadership style to a political arena in which mandates are shifting and conditional. "Some people have laid criticism on me that I tend to not listen to other people or to the voices of the Korean public," Lee said, "that my leadership style is very one-sided and I go my own way. But I was a CEO for quite a while, and a CEO must listen to consumers and what they say. Of course I will try to listen more."

It's difficult to imagine Lee — a conservative free-trade advocate who has strong views about South Korea's need to reform its economy — as a consensus-seeker. After all, when he served as mayor of Seoul earlier this decade, he ordered that one of the city's major highways be demolished so a stream could be restored. As CEO of Hyundai Engineering & Construction, the country's largest construction company, Lee wielded a lot of power — as was customary. Korea a couple of decades ago was ruled by a handful of men: the government by a dictator and his aides, and the economy by equally dictatorial tycoons through sprawling corporate empires. This was the world that forged Lee Myung Bak, and it was his commanding, can-do attitude that appealed to voters after five years under the liberal, often rudderless leadership of Roh Moo Hyun, Lee's predecessor as President.

But modern South Korea is a democracy, and a fractious one at that. The country is riven by divisions between rich and poor, old and young, left and right. The society has spawned myriad NGOs, civic movements and ideologically committed political parties that contest virtually every government decision as if the fate of the nation were at stake. No one in power gets a free pass these days: in April, alpha tycoon Lee Kun Hee, chairman of Samsung Group, the country's top conglomerate, was forced to resign after being indicted for tax evasion and breach of fiduciary duty. Under the circumstances, even the most well-meaning official must tread with heightened sensitivity to interest groups. Says Hahm Sung Deuk, an expert on presidential politics at Korea University in Seoul: "Korea needs a leader who can compromise, negotiate and be persuasive to govern completely effectively. Lee should be playing the role of the broker rather than the commander."

It is not unusual for an Asian politician to find himself in a defensive crouch. The day of the strongman has passed. For more than two decades, countries throughout the region have been undergoing transitions from authoritarian, patriarchal regimes to messy democracies that sometimes seem to be almost ungovernable. Asians are flexing their political muscles, exercising their civil rights vigorously even beyond the ballot box — and woe betide the leader who fails to deliver what he promises. Despite winning the presidencies of their respective countries by wide margins, Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand and Joseph Estrada of the Philippines were tossed out of office before their terms were up when public opinion turned against them. In recent parliamentary elections in Malaysia, victories by opposition party politicians weakened a coalition that has ruled the country for decades, paralyzing the government. In Indonesia, the end of 32 years of Suharto's authoritarian rule has fractured the world's fourth most populous nation along religious, ideological and regional lines, turning policymaking into a morass of intragovernmental wrangling.

So Lee should not be surprised that he now finds himself suddenly unpopular with the electorate, and over a seemingly minor issue. In late April, Lee lifted a ban on imports of U.S. beef ahead of his Camp David summit with President George W. Bush. The ban had been in place since mad cow disease was discovered on American farms in 2003. With the disease in abeyance, Lee removed the barrier to improve ties and to help clear the way for ratification of an important free-trade agreement with the U.S. But to many Koreans, it looked like the President was selling out to Washington, in the process endangering public safety as well as hurting Korea's agricultural industry. On June 1, an estimated 40,000 demonstrators clogged the main thoroughfares of downtown Seoul to protest the decision; police were forced to disperse the unruly crowds with water cannons. Lee was forced to retreat himself, effectively reimposing a ban on imports of U.S. beef from cattle more than 30 months old, which are more susceptible to mad cow disease.