Seoul, South Korea - South Korea - Images of the election of the new president of South Korea, Liberal Lee Jae-Myung, are everything you expect to see in one of the most dynamic democracies in the world.

Peace. order. And, because it's South Korea, it's shocking that the crowds sing wildly, singing giant k-pop, dancers bounce in tightly arranged sequences and coordinated costumes for the two former runners and their supporters' colors (their supporters) (Lee in Blue) - Single Wednesday, the five-year moon kicked off a five-year discortion kord for Discornative kred k.

What the photos did not capture is the absolute turmoil of the past six months, making Tuesday one of the strangest election days since the country emerged decades after the dictatorship in the late 1980s.

Since December 3, South Koreans have been watching a series of extraordinary events: when South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, the first since the dictatorship. In response, lawmakers, fences jumped and quarreled with armed soldiers, bent over into a surrounded parliament and voted for the declaration. Yoon was subsequently impeached and removed from the office, and now, just two months after he fell, another president has taken office.

It was Lee’s victory, the shocking events of setting up the election and the challenges Lee faced in healing a country that was split along many political and social fault lines.

To some extent, they are bigger than the country.

After World War II, the Korean Peninsula was initially divided into the Soviet-backed North and the United States-backed South. The states formalized the division in 1948, and the Korean War of 1950-53 permanently divided the competitors into demilitarized zones, one of the heaviest armed borders in the world.

But tensions go beyond geography. Amid the long struggle for democracy during South Korea's dictatorship, there are some fractures today: the debate between liberals and conservatives, and the gap between the rich and the poor, the young and the men and women.

Since the end of dictatorship, its democracy has been tested across the country.

By your own leader.

By the northern rival neighbors.

Through each new generation’s response to forced geography, war, dictatorship, and one of the most shocking economic transformations in world history.

Before Tuesday's election, thousands of protesters took to the streets, both supporting the ousted Yoon and condemning him.

"The most important thing is that the president must bring unity in martial law," Park Soo Hyun, 22, said Wednesday.

Lee's party has a majority in parliament, which will presumably allow the new president to free legislation, including more funds for welfare programs and policies, to address high cost of living, unemployment and corruption.

Usually, liberals like Lee are more alert to South Korea’s traditional allies, the United States and Japan, rather than conservatives. They also often seek reconciliation with North Korea.

The United States sees South Korea as a crucial support for China, Russia and North Korea's growing nuclear energy. The South received nearly 30,000 U.S. troops.

Yet Lee will have to find a way to keep his freedom-based joy while engaging in relationships with U.S. President Donald Trump, who threatens Seoul's tariffs and is often upset about the importance of the alliance.

Lee is also troubled by a series of corruption cases, and it is not clear how much damage these cases will delay.

"I will make sure there will be no more military coups, in which the power entrusted by the people will never be used to intimidate people," Lee said in his victory speech on Wednesday morning.

Experts say both are available. The last half of the year has deteriorated the original division, even if it emphasizes the fundamental advantages of a rough democratic process.

“The violent ideological divisions are still injecting into politics, which may hinder South Korea’s opportunity to grow into a truly mature democracy,” Duyeon Kim, visiting professor at Yonsei University in Seoul, wrote recently for the Foreign Relations Committee.

But Tuesday’s vote and Wednesday’s inauguration show the number of return to democracy.

Even the crisis itself demonstrates the flexibility of the Korean institutions.

The crowd helped legislators cross the troops into parliament to overturn martial law. South Korean expert John DeLurury, a visiting professor at John Cabot University, said Tuesday that soldiers who carried out the meta-order did this without force against the people.

He said South Korea's democracy is in the hands of the people, not even one person, or even the new president. Lee "entered into the office with a strong mandate. But he is not the savior of democracy," Dilu said. "The Korean people saved it on their own. Now, they entrusted him to not cause any damage to it for the next five years."