Most South Koreans greeted Moon Jae-in’s election as president on May 9 with a huge sigh of relief. Not only does his comfortable victory close almost a decade of painful conservative rule, but it also might conclude perhaps the biggest — and certainly the most bizarre — political scandal since the country’s founding in 1948.

Moon won 13.4 million votes (41 percent) against his conservative rival Hong Jun-pyo’s 7.8 million votes (24 percent). The election represented a major defeat for South Korea’s reactionary conservative forces, but we will have to wait to see if Moon can meet the expectations of the millions of South Koreans who fought to throw his predecessor out of office.

Even if Moon sincerely means his election promises, he will find it very difficult to challenge the deep-seated structures that created South Korea’s culture of state-capital collusion and allowed the nation’s chaebols (conglomerates) to gain dominance. Further, Moon may prove unable — or even willing — to make the kinds of changes that would address the country’s most pressing issues: youth unemployment, soaring inequality, and a crisis-prone political system. Perhaps most significantly of all, it seems unlikely that Moon will cut the Gordian knot that binds South Korea to the United States and keeps it at the center of Northeast Asia’s geopolitical vortex.