In the end, self-interest defeated collective interest. The South Korean presidential election, which concluded Tuesday, featured one strong left-wing candidate, Moon Jae-in, and three credible centrist-to-conservative contenders. (Notably, all three of the center-right candidates professed hard lines on North Korea.) Had any two of the center to center-right candidates dropped out and thrown their weight behind the other, they could have defeated Moon. But it didn’t happen: And so Moon Jae-in has won the South Korean presidential election, with only 41.4 percent of the vote. Right-wing candidate Hong Joon-pyo, who called himself a “strongman” and had some, um, retrograde views on gender relations, took 23.3 percent. Centrist Ahn Cheol-soo grabbed 21.8 percent. The third was weaker, and managed only 6 percent. (Note: These numbers are shifting slightly as the returns come in.) You’ll note that the votes for the top two center and center right candidates alone bested Moon Jae-in’s winning tally.

So Moon has risen without much of a mandate. And his performance looks weaker still when one considers that the leading opposition party is in utter disgrace as a result of a corruption scandal that led to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. So while he’ll have strong support for much of his domestic agenda—particularly taming the chaebol, the massive conglomerates that dominate South Korea’s economy—it’s not clear that he will have much public support elsewhere.