Lee did not have to pick up his votes one by one; he simply drowned in a flood of ballots. No sooner had the ballot boxes been opened than votes fell on his head like the first snow. Nay, it was a blizzard. Neither his illegal registration of addresses, nor paper jobs for his children, nor the investigation into his alleged involvement in a stock price-fixing by a special counsel could stop it.

The votes instantly established all sorts of records. The confirmation of his election took the shortest time since the 1987 constitutional amendment that revived the direct presidential election system. He garnered 48.7 percent of the votes cast, and the 11.49 million votes he won were nearly double those of the runner-up. The 5.31-million vote gap between the winner and runner-up is also a record. He broke most records since the republic's founding in 1948.

Like it or not, our republic today is what it is because of our successive presidents. One president who founded the republic and defended it from communist invasion, another who transformed one of the poorest countries in the world into the 13th largest economy in the world, another who severed the roots of 30 years of military dictatorship, and still another who attempted to see in North Koreans the faces of brethren instead of enemies -- their achievements and faults remain our pride and shame today.

Lee Myung-bak broke the records set by those presidents. He was lucky. Whenever his alleged wrongdoings were exposed, they were eclipsed by other developments -- in North Korea, in Afghanistan, by youth unemployment statistics, by tax increases, by the Samsung scandal, by irregularities in the scholastic aptitude test, and by the comprehensive real estate tax.

But nothing can be achieved by luck alone. When opportunity knocks, you have to open the door: that is where skill and experience come in. Lee made clean water flow again down the buried Cheonggye Stream, and drastically improved public transport in the capital. His public pledge to revive the economy appealed to the population. His halting speech earned a favorable response from people who were fed up with windy eloquence.

These achievements were nothing more than tiny sparks in and of themselves, but there were mountains of tinder and firewood nearby that could have caught fire and burst into a conflagration. The fuel of the opposition, anytime and anywhere, is public suffering, indignation, frustration, discontent, uncertainty, inconvenience and despondency. That firewood has been scattered across the land over the past five years. The moment it caught fire, the election was a foregone conclusion. And the flames raged on, only momentarily doused here and there by one scandal or another. The suffering, indignation, frustration, discontent and despondency buried in the hearts of the people over the past five years were so deep that the flames defended Lee Myung-bak again and again. President Roh Moo-hyun and his government made Lee Myung-bak president.

The opposition call to change the government captured the hearts of the people in the 1956 presidential election, and it did so 49 years later. The outcome of the election reveals how fed up people were with the government.

Lee promised to “humbly serve the people.” That’s easier said than done. Whenever he finds his job difficult to perform, the president-elect should recall that a blessing is hard to hold on to, and that the first snow melts quickly. He won 48.7 percent of the votes. Roh Moo-hyun in 2002 won 48.9 percent. Just a few months were enough to melt Roh's snow. Lee should be aware that this is a formidable job.